Quote:
Originally posted by boneprone
We had a pandemic outbreak of the flu at Internext so it seems.....
|
Yeah.. well at least you guys recovered.
If this virus mutates like the spanish influenza, you could die from the flu in 6 hours.
"As their lungs filled ? the patients became short of breath and increasingly cyanotic. After gasping for several hours they became delirious and incontinent, and many died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth. It was a dreadful business."
Not only was the Spanish Flu strikingly virulent, but it displayed an unusual preference in its choice of victims---tending to select young healthy adults over those with weakened immune systems, as in the very young, the very old, and the infirm. The normal age distribution for flu mortality was completely reversed.
We're at Phase 0, PL 2: 2 or more human infections with a novel virus have been confirmed. The ability of the virus to spread between people or to cause serious disease is still questionable.
They report that pigs and ducks have been infected.
The 1918 spanish flu originated from pigs.
Yikes.
http://www.ksu.edu/biology/pob/pandemic.htm
"One speculation was that the Spanish flu virus passed from birds to pigs and then onto humans, a mode of transmission thought to produce the most dangerous strains of influenza. It was not until recently, however, that Taubenberger's genetic analysis concretely supported the antibody evidence that the virus had in fact come from pigs. "
"There's an enormous amount of influenza carried by birds," said Webster. "The pigs act as 're-assorters,' where the influenza viruses from humans and birds rearrange their genes and are then let loose upon the world again." The Asian and Hong Kong flu's were the result of this type of reassembling.