OK so I am hearing mixed reports of this new strain of bird flu, in combination with what I recall is the dreaded M word…mutation.
So how bad is it?
Refresh my memory - why level of mutation causes a pandemic?
animal species —> another species
human----> human
I am hearing it is mutating in ways never previously seen. But no details.
1918 deja-vu?
Don’t be afraid of the M word. Viruses mutate all the time. If they didn’t, we would develop an immunity to them and they would die out and that would be the end of it. You’re falling for media hype.
When a virus replicates itself, it doesn’t always make a perfect copy, causing a mutation. Over time these imperfect copies become so different from the original that your body’s immune system doesn’t recognize them any more and you become vulnerable to them again. This is why you need to get a new flu shot every year. Each year they pick out the most common strains and make vaccines for them. Those vaccinations are good for a few years, after which that particular strain will have mutated so much that the vaccination is no longer effective for it. If by then that strain happens to be showing up in large numbers around the world, they’ll put a new vaccine for it in that year’s vaccination mix. This happens year after year with every flu virus strain. Flu viruses (and other viruses as well) mutate all the time. That in itself is no biggy.
H7N9 is a type of influenza A. I’m guessing that it evolved (mutated) out of one of the other similar influenza A strains. It is a concern for two reasons. First, this particular virus has a protein in it (PB1-F2) that is similar to what was in the 1918 bird flu. For reasons that don’t seem to be well understood, this protein might make the virus much more deadly to humans. Second, H7N9 has mutated so that it doesn’t just infect birds any more. Now it can infect humans as well.
Mutated in ways not previously seen? That sounds like silly media hype. It’s yet another flu, yet another one of the strains of influenza A that is commonly found in birds (hence, “bird flu”). It contains a protein that might make it dangerous, but it’s too early to say if this is the beginning of something big or if this will end up being a whole lot of nothing.
This virus has supposedly killed three or four people in China (number varies according to whose news source you read). That’s a bit of a concern, but it’s too early to say anything for certain.
New flu mutations happen all the time. It’s not time to panic yet.
Additionally, most “successful” flu mutations cause the strain to sacrifice virulence for transmissibility. So more people may get it, but it will not be as dangerous.