An article from New Scientist, don't let the headline alarm you yet but please read the whole article to understand the story, excerpt :
" The H5N1 bird flu virus may be evolving the ability to spread from mammal to mammal, says a team who have discovered that pigs in Indonesia have been infected with the disease since 2005. It's one step in the frightening chain of events that could lead to human transmission and a pandemic.
The H5N1 bird flu kills 60 per cent of the people it infects. However, most infections occur after direct contact with an infected bird and the disease does not appear to spread well between humans. As long as human to human transmission remains rare, the virus cannot cause a flu pandemic.
This could change. One way the virus could develop the ability to spread among humans is to first infect pigs, which have many biochemical similarities to humans. Flu viruses adapted to pigs have less trouble adapting to humans than do bird flu viruses – one pig-adapted virus caused the swine flu pandemic in 2009.
Chairul Nidom of Airlangga University in Surabaya, Indonesia, and colleagues in Japan, have been tracking H5N1 in pigs since 2005 in Indonesia, the country hardest hit by the avian flu virus."
Showing posts with label New Scientist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Scientist. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
World : Swine flu hoax? Get real
Via New Scientist, please read the whole article :
" ONCE upon a time, a village asked its nerds to warn it when wolves threatened the chickens. One day the nerds saw wolf tracks - but how many wolves were there, and how hungry? The forest was big and there was not enough time to find out before sunset, so the nerds advised the panicked villagers to buy rifles.
But before the rifles were even loaded, one small and skinny wolf slunk out of the woods, killed two chickens and ran away. The nerds tried to explain that there were probably more wolves out there, but the angry villagers took the rifles back to the store and lynched the nerds.
This is the parable of swine flu.
Governments had asked the World Health Organization to coordinate their response to flu pandemics, and when one broke in April 2009 the WHO did exactly that, triggering expensive government health measures and vaccine purchases. Critics now allege the flu was less deadly than normal flu, meaning vast sums of public money were wasted on nothing more than a scare. Some even claim that it was a conspiracy to boost vaccine company profits."
" ONCE upon a time, a village asked its nerds to warn it when wolves threatened the chickens. One day the nerds saw wolf tracks - but how many wolves were there, and how hungry? The forest was big and there was not enough time to find out before sunset, so the nerds advised the panicked villagers to buy rifles.
But before the rifles were even loaded, one small and skinny wolf slunk out of the woods, killed two chickens and ran away. The nerds tried to explain that there were probably more wolves out there, but the angry villagers took the rifles back to the store and lynched the nerds.
This is the parable of swine flu.
Governments had asked the World Health Organization to coordinate their response to flu pandemics, and when one broke in April 2009 the WHO did exactly that, triggering expensive government health measures and vaccine purchases. Critics now allege the flu was less deadly than normal flu, meaning vast sums of public money were wasted on nothing more than a scare. Some even claim that it was a conspiracy to boost vaccine company profits."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)