Some Worrisome Virus Updates
Submitted by Robert Bast on May 11, 2013 – 4:12 pmNo Comment
Flu
Professor Hualan Chen, director of China’s National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, deliberately mixed the H5N1 bird-flu virus, which is highly lethal but not easily transmitted between people, with a 2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans.
The researchers claim the work could help develop a vaccine.
[Source: Daily Mail]
Yep, you heard right. Chinese scientists have deliberately created a bird flu hybrid virus, one that could kill millions of people if it escaped the lab, in order to create a vaccine for it. They have created a vaccine for a virus that doesn’t yet exist in the wild. This opens up the terrifying possibility that someone might, for financial gain, let the virus “escape”.
Meanwhile the mortality rate of the H7N9 bird flu in China has reached 24% – 31 deaths from 130 cases. Fortunately the virus still hasn’t mutated into the type that can be transmitted between humans – you literally need to catch it from a bird. But for how long?
“The longer the virus is unchecked in circulation, the higher the probability that this virus will start transmitting from person to person,” Colin Butte, an expert in avian viruses at Britain’s Pirbright Institute, said. [Source: Reuters]
As a comparison of mortality rates, the 1918 Spanish flu, which less than a century ago killed 5% of the world’s population, had a mortality rate of only 2%. How many more people would be preppers today if that flu was still something people discussed?
The USA are taking the threat seriously, allowing emergency use authorization:
The US’s emergency authorisation will allow the use of a kit that looks for flu genes using a polymerase chain reaction test, which has been made specific for H7N9. The kit has had preliminary tests but would normally need more exhaustive tests to be approved.
[Source: New Scientist]
Gonorrhea
A drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea could be worse than AIDS… and unfortunately after all these years of people knowing that a quick visit to the doctor will get rid of it, it might take a long time to get them to adjust to the return of this risk. Currently 800,000 people catch gonorrhea in the USA every year. Without a cure, that could mean millions of (painful) deaths in a few short years.
“Getting gonorrhea from this strain might put someone into septic shock and death in a matter of days,” Christianson said. “This is very dangerous.” The gonorrhea strain has not yet claimed any lives, but the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have asked Congress for $54 million to find an antibiotic to treat the strain. In a Capitol Hill briefing last week, health officials said an education and public awareness campaign is crucial in minimizing the effective of HO41. William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition for STD Directors, said that if the ‘sex superbug’ spreads, it could quickly kill many people before a treatment is discovered.
[Source: RT.com]
MRSA
A strain of MRSA is making farmers ill – presumably because of all the antibiotics they feed cows these days.
SARS-like coronavirus
Saudi Arabia has had 13 cases in a recent outbreak of a new strain of coronavirus that has emerged from the Gulf and spread as far as Britain and France, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, and seven of those have died.
[Source: Reuters]
