So we’ve got this new, scary pneumonia from China…why does this stuff always seem to originate in the Hong Kong area, anyway?
What stuff?
This “stuff” is originating in a lot of places, especially India, but as I’ve mentioned in another thread, Hong Kong has the infrastructure to allow it to spread and hence get media notice. Flues like this break out quite frequently, although only a few of then are deadly. These areas tend to lack the public health care required to control outbreaks.
It has less to do with the outbreak and its control, but its ability to travel. In this example, the flu was easily communicable and originated some where in the rural Chinese countryside. People from that community are able to travel to Hong Kong fast enough that they arrive sick, instead of dying in the village or dying on route. Hong Kong then has a massive international airport, so that the person in the village can now get sick, take a train to Hong Kong, and hop on a plane to Toronto (we have several cases here).
Aside from the rapid travel problem, access to modern medicine (general public health care), clean water, a population density increase the number of outbreaks.
I’m not completely sure but I believe that the flu can hop from pigs to chickens to humans. Given Southeast Asia’s human/animal density, poor sanitation and human/livestock co-habitation there seem to be greater opportunities for flu strains to develop and spread.
I could have sworn that Cece did a bit on this, but heck if I can find it now. I think the basic idea is that birds drop virus-laden poop, pigs eat the poop and mutate the virus through their extremely tough immune systems, then sometimes the virus can make the jump from pigs to humans. Ditto to what Grey said about sanitation and co-habitation, which makes Southeast Asia a frequent patient-zero point.
It seems to be rural China’s fascination with ducks and pigs:
“Perhaps most surprisingly, pandemic influenza appears to have an agricultural origin, integrated pig-duck farming in China. Strains causing the frequent annual or biennial epidemics generally result
from mutation ( antigenic drift ), but pandemic influenza viruses do not generally arise by this process. Instead, gene segments from two influenza strains reassort to produce a new virus that can
infect humans (16). Evidence amassed by Webster, Scholtissek, and others, indicates that waterfowl, such as ducks, are major reservoirs of influenza and that pigs can serve as mixing vessels for new mammalian influenza strains (16). Pandemic influenza viruses have generally come from China. Scholtissek and Naylor suggested that integrated pig-duck agriculture, an extremely efficient food production system traditionally practiced in certain parts of China for several centuries, puts these two species in contact and provides a natural laboratory for making new influenza recombinants (17). Webster has suggested that, with high-intensity agriculture and movement of livestock across borders, suitable conditions may now also be found in Europe (16).”