H7N9 is mutating under radar

reply to post by billy565


Hello, trying not to come off as hostile but,
I do not worry about war, terrorists, space rocks, zombies, aliens, alien zombies, etc etc.
But I do worry about pandemics. They are very real and the worst thing we could possibly do is not worry about them.

reply to post by FartyMeBurpy


We can't yet understand the mortality rate until we have real numbers. That is the mortality rate for those reported.
I wouldn't be too confident as of yet.

Originally posted by Flyzoid
reply to post by FartyMeBurpy

 

We can't yet understand the mortality rate until we have real numbers. That is the mortality rate for those reported.
I wouldn't be too confident as of yet.

As of yesterday's report its 20%. This article also speaks of the human to human spread. Like many flu viruses it appears to be in the elderly and very young

news.discovery.com...

reply to post by Flyzoid


I guess, but how is worrying about it going to help?

I'm just saying the doctors and scientists at the cdc and 'who' should maybe worry a little but what's the point in losing sleep over this?

Is there anything you can do about it? If a pandemic or any disaster kills off most of the worlds population do you really want to survive?

Why waste the time you have today worrying about what may or may not happen tomorrow?

(I'm not being hostile either we just have a difference of opinion. No hard feelings.)

Originally posted by Dianec

Originally posted by Flyzoid
reply to post by FartyMeBurpy

 

We can't yet understand the mortality rate until we have real numbers. That is the mortality rate for those reported.
I wouldn't be too confident as of yet.

As of yesterday's report its 20%. This article also speaks of the human to human spread. Like many flu viruses it appears to be in the elderly and very young

news.discovery.com...

Okay I was wrong. It's 60% (on April 1, 2013 versus article above written on 4/18/13). Depends on which one you want to believe at this point.

www.independent.co.uk... fectious-strain-of-birdflu-8556082.html

reply to post by billy565


Yep I see what your saying mate, it's just a horrible feeling for me to believe this could one day affect my family. Both my wife and my youngest daughter caught the swine flu 08 and it was a very scary thing for me as they were very sick. But alas, I will take your advice and not worry about it so much
😉

reply to post by Dianec


The 60% mortality rate mentioned in the independent news site refers to the H5N1 virus which the scientific boffins have been playing with. This new beastie could feasibly do the same. For peace of mind, and until some reliable statistics show up, I'll stick with the amended mortality rate of 20%, which is dire enough.

The thing that worries me is that they have not determined the vector of transmission. A multi-vector mode of spreading a virus that utilises random human-human transmission as well as bird-human transmission sounds ... engineered.

reply to post by FartyMeBurpy


One thing that I never understood, probably because I'm no virologist is why in place of surprising a virus in all fronts, especially when there are other species that share a common susceptibility we do not incentive the development of more benign stirps. To a point some of the pathways for the creation of vaccines do include genetic nullification of the virus but why not promote benign mutations or even as we do to control wild fires, incur in the calculated risk of spreading controlled less dangerous stirp (well this goes into probabilities since mutations chaotic) across the known known vectors as to avoid unwanted proliferation of the unwanted one.

I can't wait I hope it reaches U.S. Sounds like fun.

reply to post by Flyzoid


Mutating "under the radar" is right. H7N9 first appeared in turkeys in Minnesota in 1988 - then it spread to other countries in domestic poultry (trade) and wild birds (migrations). But it only started infecting people about 3 weeks ago, in China. Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier (of H5N1 fame) says the kind of mutations H7N9 now has show this new strain is NOT a "bird flu."

Only 0.00081% of birds and chickens tested had the H7N9 strain infecting humans (39 out of 48,000). None of the pigs and dogs tested positive. So if it's not in birds and chickens, and not in pigs and dogs, where is it hiding? How is it spreading? Where did it come form? ...Was it genetically engineered?

Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier told CNN …the virus is not actually a bird flu. “Known normal bird viruses have to adapt substantially to infect people, but not these,” he said.

Case fatality rate as it is now has no bearing on what it would be if it goes pandemic. It will very likely mutate to a more virulent but less deadly strain before that happens however, fatalities will increase as hospitals are overloaded. People who would survive if put on respirator in the ICU will die.

They have said that people who got this flu haven´t been contacted with poultry and dont know how infection happens. They should look man´s best friends too dogs and cats, they can be innocent carriers.

Some clarifications and thoughts:

1. At this moment the virus spreads only from birds to human (and possibly the other way). I assume infection of H7N9 can occur by eating poultry that had been infected by the virus and wasn't cooked enought and therefore bear a risk for infection (explanation to why people got sick despite of not contacting poultry directly) .

2. The small number of infections in poultry means that bird-to-bird transmission is low (it seems the virus doesn't adapt very rapidly at least in birds, in humans? we don't know yet).

3. This low number of infected birds doesn't mean that this virus cannot infect well humans.

4. The region where the virus first originated in humans in china adequates to bird migration routes of birds coming from New Zealand and Australia. These wild birds were heading north (northern coast of Russia mainly) for breeding. It's a matter of time until the virus spreads to human in other places around the world. Even if this virus dissapears suddenly, it will apear very soon again my guess.
Bird migration: m2m.riotinto.com...

reply to post by lucidmind


Erm. H7N9 first appeared in turkeys in Minnesota in 1988 - then it spread to other countries in domestic poultry (trade) and wild birds (migrations). Only 0.00081% of birds and chickens (39 out of 48,000) tested positive with the H7N9 strain now infecting humans in China. None of the pigs and dogs tested positive either.

Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier (of H5N1 fame) says the kind of mutations H7N9 now has show this new strain is NOT a "bird flu." If it's not in birds and chickens, and not in pigs and dogs, but does infect humans, where did it come from?

This is real, and this is scary stuff.... I hope they can find out what is going on and maybe learn more about mutation.