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What do you think about the swine flu outbreak? Doesnt it seem a bit weird how the virus is a mixture if swine, human, and bird flu? Bioterrorism possibly? What is your view?

[Mod edit: Spam deleted]

Try this link:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/short ... st-vi.html
(That was the first link I found when I searched the web for "swine flu bioterrorism" - I was actually trying to see if this post was some sort of spam, because I didn't really see the point of

It is NORMAL for virii to spread from humans to animals and vice versa. As part of that process, the virus involved will mutate and change. Most of these mutations are "bad", so the virus dies out. Every now and again, the process "improves" the virus, and a stronger/harsher form occurs.

This is nothing new. The Spanish flu in the early 1900's is a H1N1 form. I suspect it was originally caught from some domesticated animal.

Since virii attach themselves to the host DNA, they require similar DNA sequences. But between humans and other mammals, there are HUGE amounts of common DNA. Birds are a little bit further apart genetically, but still have a lot of DNA in common. I heard somewhere that a banana shares 85% of the DNA with humans. I'm not sure how true that is, but I personally do not find it impossible.

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Mats

so i should keep away from bannans

Eating bananas is kind of canibalism, whil eating meat is not

Frankly, I always preferred pork over bananas

If you're a bioterrorist the 1918 Spanish flu virus is the one to go for. It has been recovered intact, and presumably still infective, from bodies of flu victims buried in permafrost.

Good to hear bananas are part human.

And wash your hands, your mother was right.

my favorite is Pork wrapped in Banana leaves!

I think vaccines in the last ten-fifteen years, since the enormous bump in funding for AIDS vaccines, have become Very Big Business Indeed(tm), and that we will in the future always have a possible or actual virus scare going.

My thoughts on the Swine Flu outbreak has been taken by the media and has been taken to sound worse than it actually is.

I work in one of the swine flu centres and have seen people with it, it's not nice but it's going to happen.

You might find Guns, Germs and Steel interesting. The author claims that many common diseases originates from farm animals.

But i guess most of us are going to get through this just fine. It might be interesting to see some statistics on casualties from swine flu, AIDS and malaria the next 12 months.

Just hope it's not like SARS. That was pretty horrible here.
The people dying was bad obviously but I think the economic crunch that can happen as a result is something that no one's planning for. One of the places I work at has about 300 employees and if half are told to stay home because they have flu-like symptoms, how long are the other 150 people going to be able to keep it up? Now imagine that for a five-employee Mom & Pop store or something like a hospital, police, firefighters, food processors, farmers etc.
That part worries me more.

fafler wrote:But i guess most of us are going to get through this just fine. It might be interesting to see some statistics on casualties from swine flu, AIDS and malaria the next 12 months.

I'm absolutely convinced that AIDS and Malaria will kill 10x more than Swine Flu during 2009. In 2007, 2 million people died from Aids/HIV - according to avert.org. WHO reported 700 deaths so far in swine flu on the 21st of July (although it does explain that deaths by swine flu may not be reported as such, as the ACTUAL cause of death is not swine flu, but for example heart failure - and unless tests are made to determine that the dead was infected by swine-flu it's impossible to tell that it was actually caused by swine flu). Since AIDS/HIV is a much slower killer in general, it's much less likely to be under-reported.

The Swine flu pandemic appears to have started around mid-march in Mexico. So that is 700 people in roughly 4 months. 159 deaths were reported on the 29th of April, so 3 months ago. I don't actually think it's going to get that so much worse that it kills ~1000x persons a month for the next several months.

As to Malaria, it appears to be worse than AIDS/HIV, although I couldn't find any concrete statistics. It kills 853 000 children per year, and I think around 3 million per year of all ages - most of those in sub-saharan Africa.

So, yes, it's very likely that other diseases are MUCH worse than Swine Flu. But I guess it makes a difference that the Swine Flu is affecting rich countries, rather than Malaria and AIDS that are to a large extent in poor countries (mainly Africa).

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Mats

In context, about 36000 die every year from normal flue in the USA alone.
I have (hearsay!) heard that swine flue is nowhere near as lethal as the 1918 Spanish Flue was, but higher than a normal flue. I have (more hearsay!) heard that about 1% of those infected by the swine flue die.

Sorry to side-track:
This is a flue
http://www.workshopstoves.co.uk/worksho ... l-flue.asp

Flu is an illness. Add an e, and it's a sort of chimney made with pipes.

The wikipedia numbers indicate a number somewhere between 0.5 and 1% mortality rate. So if 300 million people get infected this year, it would match the AIDS deaths for the year. And 500 million infected this year would make it match the malaria deaths numbers. That is a very large proportion of the population of this planet.

http://www.workshopstoves.co.uk/worksho ... l-flue.asp

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Mats

So, yes, it's very likely that other diseases are MUCH worse than Swine Flu. But I guess it makes a difference that the Swine Flu is affecting rich countries, rather than Malaria and AIDS that are to a large extent in poor countries (mainly Africa).

smack on the money and yes this is definitely the cause why it's so hyped.......

Aids, malaria, yellow fever, parasites, salmonella and all...they "just" kill off "poor brown people in third world countries"; whereas Sars, swine flu, bird flu or whatever might actually have a go at white male conservative corporate executives

since this planet definitely suffers from too many of those, here's to more of those viruses!

the sheer cynical approach of the mass media makes me sick and even more misanthropic than I already am.

if aids research got a tenth of the money and time that military spending gets, it would be extinct already.
but killing poor people in third world countries to protect oil wells with high tech weaponry is big business.

also: scared people are easier to control and rob blind of their hard earned money. hence all the scare with viruses, the fake war on fake teror and all that stuff
for those who missed it all; the banks just stole a few trillions of community finances by one of the biggest scames ever pulled off since the invention of capitalism

but hey, nothing to see here, move along
SWINE FLU! SWINE FLU!

if numbers would mean anything we'd be scared to death by aids and malaria, cause these kill of more people than terrorism ever did

but hey, what the heck, the dead are all dirtpoor Africans......


the more I know people, the better I appreciate animals.

Smack on the money. One of the AIDS activist at a symposium mentioned that we all know that no one is going to actually live on Mars but look at the money going there...You don't need Mars atmosphere specifically to do helpful science in space. The reserve quite close to where I live has only 50% running water. If they were white, that wouldn't be acceptable, we all know it and it still happens because no one in power is willing to call it pure racism.

And just a note on the bright side, Sidguppy, the SARS epicentre is no longer shiny white, it's quite beautifully multicoloured
On the crappy side, so were the victims, both here and in China
Have you read Shake Hands With the Devil by Romeo Delaire about Rwanda? You can't put it down but it will outrage you beyond belief.

Here's my little edit because there's too many really awesome "white guys". There's a lot of non-white nasties out there too. Just think of those 'poor' countries full of gold, diamonds, oil etc, the ones with the head honchos living in the palaces with private jets etc. I think you'll have to throw those nasties on the fire too. A better target might be Greed, not people with a certain colour skin. None of us has a perfect history.

Terrorists schmerrorists. Ya wanna real scare, watch the documentaries King Corn or The Future of Food. Here in the states our FDA (the guys that approve vaccines) are bought and sold like so many congressmen. The chemical kids that brought us such hits as Bhopal, India and Love Canal are now the proud owners of almost all of our food crop seed 'cuz our government allowed them to place a patent on all of the seeds in their Dooms Day seed vault (yeah, that's right, you can now patent life forms thanks to people like Monsanto and Dow).

The corn that 90% of American farmers now grow for cattle feed and high fructose sugar substitutes is a genetically altered / engineered hybrid that carries genes from the ecoli virus in its nucleus, but the FDA thinks that's just peachie keen O.K. with them. The funny thing is...as safe as they seem to think it is, Europe and Japan won't let the crap in their countries. At the same time we can't even depend on our own government to make these food chemists tell us which foods that they've put it in. Europe considers accurate easily understood warning labels a common sense right to know where as our congress people consider it an undue burden on free enterprise. Can you imagine all of our soda cans with a big warning sticker over the Coke or Pepsi logo warning people that they're not just drinking empty calories but that they're also suckin' down ecoli virus as a bonus?

I think foreign bioterrorists might be a bit of an improvement. At least we don't have to pay their salaries for life.

Sorry...didn't intend my 1st post to be a rant. Must be the fluoride in my water...

fishpimpin wrote:I think foreign bioterrorists might be a bit of an improvement. At least we don't have to pay their salaries for life.

Sorry...didn't intend my 1st post to be a rant. Must be the fluoride in my water...

Don't know - after they are arrested, taxpayers will have to pay their keep

Welcome aboard

(ps regarding the ban on GM food in Europe and Japan, being an European myself, I rather think it has to do with dirty politics, such as protectionism for farmers, than real good arguments)

Welcome to Planet Catfish

Sorry...didn't intend my 1st post to be a rant. Must be the fluoride in my water...

Feels good to just spit it out once in a while, eh?

I just wanted to point out that my initial suspicion about the thread - that it would be a spam-attempt was confirmed this morning when the original poster edited the post to add links to some site. I removed those. So do not expect the original poster to discuss the subject - this thread was created simply to promote a better score in google searches [by adding links to that site from other highly rated sites, meaning it's getting a higher score in the google scoring system].

Edit: I should say that I find the discussion very interesting, so please keep going. Just don't expect the original poster to take part in the discussion.

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Mats