Flu mutating 8 times faster than any flu virus known

Flu mutating 8 times faster than any flu virus known: The new bird flu could be mutating up to eight times faster than an average flu virus around a protein that binds it to humans, a team of research scientists in Shenzhen says. Dr .He Jiankui, an associate professor at South University of Science and Technology of China, said yesterday that the authorities should be alarmed by the results of their research and step up monitoring and control efforts to prevent a possible pandemic. With genetic code of the virus obtained from mainland authorities, the team scrutinized haemagglutinin, a protein that plays a crucial rule in the process of infection. The protein binds the virus to an animal cell, such as respiratory cells in humans, and bores a hole in the cell’s membrane to allow entry by the virus. The researchers found dramatic mutation of haemagglutinin in one of the four flu strains released for study by the central government. Nine of the protein’s 560 amino acids had changed. In a typical flu virus, only one or two amino acids could change in such a short period of time, He said. “It happened in just one or two weeks. The speed may not have caught up with the HIV, but it’s quite unusual for a flu.” The fast mutation makes the virus’ evolutionary development very hard to predict

theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com...

As in all things it depends on the source....This may be the Mother of all Flu's or just another Ho-Hum virus in a far away land...One thing about it if you do get this bug it appears the faster an admittance to the hospital the chances of survival do increase. Still to sketchy to get a handle on this new virus but it does seem to be spreading.

reply to post by 727Sky

As it stands right now? Spanish Lady Redux wouldn't be all that extreme a statement to make. Not quite ..not yet...but as close as I think the CDC either American or Chinese has seen. They're scared. Not simply worried, but scared. Frankly, I'm getting there in watching the epidemiological data feeds and numbers of infections to deaths to rate of spread. This one may well be a big one we all remember for a very long time to come.

IF they can make a vaccine in time (They're wayyy late for starting and nothing was going yet. This strain is new to form and mutate) then I may even take a flu shot myself. Anyone on here knows I'm almost militantly against flu shots ....but I'm not willing to die for that stand, either.

i had the H1N9 and that flu was no joke.....
i hope this one slows down because there has been alot of news about it latly, more then i remember n9 virus getting

how fast you get admitted to the ER all depends on who is working at theER at the time though, there are alot of dumb doctors, my sister is a doc, i'm not calling her dumb but i've heard stories.

i'm sure we all have a couple

www.newyorker.com...

A little different take on this particular strain:

H7N9, however, seems to have an R0 of zero, at least between humans. Scientists call this “stuttering transmission,” in which an animal virus infects a person, but further human-to-human transmission does not occur. One case, of a Chinese son contracting the disease while caring for his flu-stricken eighty-seven-year-old father, seems to be an exception. As Michael O’Leary, a W.H.O. representative in China, explained, “It’s not unexpected that if a person is sick and maybe receiving very close care, from a very close contact, that once in a while, [the disease] will pass to the other person.” The C.D.C.’s Frieden concurred: “At this point, it looks like direct contact with live poultry in China is the main risk factor.”

If there is one thing that is worrying scientists about H7N9, it’s that there is probably little preëxisting immunity to it. We’ve never had this variant before, so our bodies don’t know how to fight it. The Chinese government has made available the full genetic sequence for H7N9, and it looks as though some of H7N9’s genes are adapted to mammals, which suggests that the virus may have spent some time living and mutating in pigs before moving back to birds. (Since influenza viruses mutate pretty easily, certain genetic and antigenic properties from last year’s flu can be distinct from this year’s flu, which is why it makes sense to get a flu shot every year.) Michael O’Leary, of the W.H.O., explained that right now, H7N9 is an animal virus that occasionally infects humans. But, he said, the virus could change to make human-to-human transmission possible—though he added that there’s no evidence that it is happening so far.

Again as in all things it depends on the source and what you will believe.

Extinction Protocol is actually a good source because they always link out to their source at the end of each article. In this case, it was the South China Morning Post for the source.

Source

This isn't the only virus mutating, although it may be the scariest. There have been many mutating viruses this past year as well as increasing bacteria drug-resistance. Here's a few more with a theory as well www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by 727Sky


Just a thought, maybe an irrelevant one, but funny that the article mentions the virus may have been living in pigs before transmitting back to poultry.....is there a possibility this could be related to the thousands of pigs found dumped in rivers in China. As far as I am aware there was not ever any explanation for the pig deaths......just a thought.

It's hard to judge just where this will go, remember all the scare and hype around the bird flu from Mexico? It fizzled within a few months. Then again, this strain in China has some unusual hallmarks, and I'm wondering if it's man-made. The ER will most likely not be your savior - As I have much experience with ER's from being a social worker of sorts, I know that if you showed up there claiming you had a serious flu like that, they would just give you the bum's rush and send you home with instructions for rest and liquids. They wouldn't even do a test to rule it out!

If it becomes a pandemic, you are on your own my friends. I suggest reading up on herbs with strong antiviral properties and formulate a family plan should it come to that. It doesn't hurt to be prepared.

H7N9 is not know to cause human to human transmission. Most of all the cases can be directly contributed to contact with livestock. Now if this mutates into a virus that can cross into diffrent animals, than your might want to start to worry and take percussions such as not exposing yourself to large groups of people. Also pharmaceutical companies like to hype viruses so people line up to get their vaccines. Remember swine flu?

Why is no one asking why these flu strains keep popping up in China. The Chinese government would NEVER test bio-weapons on its own people, would they?

No use getting a flu shot for this one, the other flues mutate before the vaccines are distributed. The vaccines will be worthless before they even figure out how to make the vaccine.

Originally posted by madmac5150
Why is no one asking why these flu strains keep popping up in China. The Chinese government would NEVER test bio-weapons on its own people, would they?

Flu backwards is ulfclose to elfElfs are short

reply to post by madmac5150


If a virus with an R0 of zero (as in, no proven human-human transmission) is the height of Chinese bioweapons, then I think we can all sleep soundly. Especially considering what their next door neighbor admits to having at the Vector lab.

reply to post by InternalMedDoc
I never said they were good at it... but what better way to test communicability that to toss a few infected chickens around and see what happens?

reply to post by madmac5150


Right, but what I'm saying is that we KNOW they have more communicable and deadly diseases. Why would they "re-invent the wheel" with a new flu strain rather than just weaponize an already existing pathogen? It's certainly a lot easier to weaponize malaria or dengue rather than create an entirely new virus.

reply to post by InternalMedDoc


Regardless, I will be avoiding Peking duck and Kung Pao chicken for awhile...

reply to post by madmac5150


Me too, but mostly because I don't want any more of a belly than I (unfortunately) already have

reply to post by InternalMedDoc


New outbreaks cause more fear and raise alarms. There are already widespread outbreaks of dengue and malaria both this year but nilly a word in the media.

Here is a link about Dengue Fever becoming a 'global epidemic'

WHO says dengue 'global epidemic'

An annual two million cases of dengue fever were reported over the last two years by 100 countries, with between 5,000 to 6,000 of them resulting in death.

Thousands of deaths that don't make the news because Dengue is old news.

It would seem the Human to Human transmission aspect is one the jury is still out on and not looking real good for a not guilty verdict coming soon?

The H7N9 bird flu strain is on the rise, having already killed 22 people in China while infecting 108. That’s a kill rate of 20% — among the highest ever witnessed in a bird flu strain. It has also spread outside of China, infecting a Taiwan national who brought the infection back to Taiwan and now rests in critical condition in a Taiwan hospital.

Health authorities in the region haven’t yet said this strain of bird flu has achieved human-to-human transmission, but it seems increasingly likely that such a trait either already exists or will develop very quickly. That’s because the virus has been spreading among chickens without any symptoms showing. It doesn’t make the chickens sick, in other words, allowing chickens to be “stealth carriers” of a virus that can easily leap to unsuspecting humans.

S ource

I know.. Not the best source by Rabbit standards ...but I'm NOT linking out to the disease outbreak/tracking site I watch right at the moment. Doom Porn is on steroids for this and 2 other bugs at the moment. It's throwing gas onto a fire that doesn't need it.

However, that article sums up the fears well enough. Also.. for those asking about why China? As I understand this..China is the top pork consumer in the world and one of, if not the top chicken producer in the world. In rural China, much of the humans and livestock live in close quarters and share bugs back and forth. Usually that's not a real bad thing for them since it builds immunity but when a weird bug pops up and mutates? It doesn't have far to hop.

The U.S. has a similar issue with the Corporate livestock farming to compress enormous numbers of animals into tight and unhealthy conditions. Some biologists have called it a ticking time bomb in a giant incubator with an unknown time set for the next super bug to mutate out of that mess.

.....Dengue Fever as well as a couple others are ones I'm also watching but don't worry too much about, simply because Dengue Fever and it's related bugs usually focus within geographic areas and do not make annual trips through every major nation in the world as the Flu does. H7N9 also has no immunity within humans naturally and no vaccine currently available touched this one. Not yet, anyway. (Still running over 20% mortality on known cases to losses.)

First there"s thousands of dead Pigs in a river. Then there"s several thousands more dead. Then 2 weeks later it finally comes out that over 1 Million pigs died. Young. Old. Little. Big.

Then comes the Flu bug linked to Birds. If I didn't know any better I would say the Crows and Ravens got into the Pigs and it spread from there.

You can't have 1 Million animals die and not have it linked to this Virius in some way at the same time. Don't forget all the dogs that also died. Were they being fed Pork...?

If this is linked and I bet it is to China's food supply in some way don't eat anything coming from China. They export Beef. Pork. Chicken.

I think this virius is in some way linked to Mammals and Humans are Mammals too. This is heading everywhere and its in everything.

Whenever I see this topic it always brings me back to this news story I read long ago. It's a rather curious story about a scientist who makes 5 mutations to a varation of bird flu making it extremely contagious.


In that experiment, researchers had taken a bird flu gene and put it in the swine flu virus that started spreading between people a couple of years ago. Mice infected with this lab-created virus got very, very sick.



www.npr.org...