A major mutation, he went on, normally occurs twice a century. Since the last dramatic antigenic shift was in 1918 with the Spanish Flu, which scientists now say emerged from avian populations, we are long, long overdue. The key vector forces are an animal/bird flu virus and human flu virus meshing with each other to form a new hybrid, the central medical nightmare arising from this being a brand new mutation that no one will have a built-in immunity to. That is the other overarching factor in a major mutation – there is no immunity against it. When a person is exposed to it, his or her immune system will be up against it for the first time.
Because of this lack of evolved immunity within masses of people, an antigenic shift always has the potential to go pandemic, or global. And Bret believes it will likely do so because of the instantaneous nature of world travel, communication and contact. One infected individual can go through crowds and crowds of people just in airports from one end of the planet to another in less than a day.
For your historical information, note as well that there have been two other pandemics since the great Spanish Flu pandemic, the Asian Flu pandemic in 1957 and the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968. However, these were actually slight mutations in existing human flu DNA foot prints and less likely to completely traumatize one's immune system.
DISPELLING MISCONCEPTIONS
Brett wants to dispel some major misconceptions about viruses. First of all, this virus was not directly transmitted from a pig (or bird since indications are that there is an avian strain in the DNA too.) Although humans can contract a virus from a swine (or bird), that same flu bug cannot then jump from human to human. Someone else must go back and interface with the same pig. The swine strain must mutate first after combining with a human virus, so the fact that there is no obvious contact between those already infected with this new virus with farm pigs, or any epidemic of sick pigs, does not ipso facto mean that it was manufactured in a laboratory. The original pig/human contact leading to the mutation could have been some time ago.
Brett also cautions that it is a serious mental error to equate the virulence of a flu strain with its contagiousness. This A (H1N1) strain may be highly contagious, yet moderately virulent. The jury is still out on that right now. Yes there have been a number of deaths in Mexico, but have they really reported the full number of individuals who have become infected? If we go with the official tallies Mexican authorities have released, it would appear that one out of ten stricken have died, which is scary, but it is possible that many more people have been infected with the strain than were reported. What if the actual ratio is one in a hundred? There are some 20,000,000 people in Mexico City, so the number of fatalities is rather small thus far in relation to that huge number. Meanwhile in other parts of the world, the severity of illness has been considerably less, at least so far. This could, however, change.
As to charges that this is a weaponized bio-virus, Brett considers this extremely unlikely. If it was, say, accidently released from the U.S. Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, then why is its epicenter in Mexico? If it was purposely released in Mexico, then what would be the exact goal and why would such a disease that would be certain to boomerang back into America even be contemplated, possibly infecting the very infectors themselves. In other words, why would you employ a bio-weapon that you cannot control?
Brett also points out that complicated strains with multiple animal/bird virus components can indeed occur in Nature, and not only in a lab. So in Brett's mind, the idea that this is a bio-weapon, as opposed to the reality that we are long overdue for a naturally occurring dramatic antigenic shift, is not very strong. Further investigation will hopefully get to the bottom of this.
TWO WAYS THIS CAN GO
Brett basically posits that this can go two ways. Either way he believes we are still very likely facing a pandemic, particularly in the Third World, where urban living conditions are often overcrowded and unhygienic, and with frequently rundown health facilities often few and far between.
Moreover, even in this country, emergency rooms and clinics are ill-equipped to handle anything approaching a pandemic. They would be overwhelmed. They already have problems enough, as it is, treating everyday people, so Brett can imagine how nightmarish it will be in our ERs with large sectors of the population sick and panicked.
Brett also points out that the incubation period of swine flu is rather short, one to three days, which means this only increases the potential for exponential growth of the virus around the world, especially in Asia and Africa. This is what leads him to say that "Nothing will stop it regardless of what governments and doctors do."
But the bigger question is, how virulent will the virus get? Right now Brett is optimistic that it will play itself out as a mild infection, based on the cases that have been treated in the US and elsewhere beyond Mexico. Mexico, however, is the big question mark, because it has, apparently, been rather virulent there. There is also the possibility that this can evolve into something more deadly, especially in the Third World, where villagers often live with their pigs and fowl, which creates new opportunities for the virus to recombine with other bird or swine flu strains. The Third World, to put it bluntly, is a brewing pot for mutations.
So on the one hand any global influenza can run its course without being overly lethal, but on the other hand it can also go the way of the Spanish Influenza of 1918, which wiped out, depending upon whose statistics you care to believe, anywhere from 50 million to 100 million people. The Spanish Flu, also an A(H1N1) virus, came on the tail end of World War I, spreading rapidly throughout the world, probably aided by the large population migrations going on at that time and possibly introduced into Europe by American troops from the Deep South. The unique thing about that flu, though, was that it devastated the young and the healthy much more than the old and infirm, the exact opposite of the way victim statistics usually go during a normal flu season, and this was because no one, especially the young, had built up immunity to it. Consequently we had what is called a "cytokine storm", whereby a person's own healthy immune system will go into some kind of hyperdrive in response to this new invader and begin to attack even the body's own healthy cells.
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