Word: h5n1
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...viruses that triggered pandemics over the past century - the catastrophic 1918 flu, but also the 1957 and 1968 pandemics - had a particular mutation in the gene that makes a protein called PB1-F2. The H1N1 virus also seems to lack mutations that make the especially virulent H5N1 avian flu, which has killed more than half the people with confirmed infections. (See pictures of the effects of swine flu in Mexico...
...Mexico or the U.S. (Despite several countries' bans on pork imports, it's important to remember that the disease cannot be contracted by eating pork.) The original reservoir for flu viruses is actually wild birds, which can spread infection to domestic birds and people - as we saw with the H5N1 avian flu in Asia - and to pigs. Pigs make particularly good biological mixing bowls since they can be infected by bird-, swine- and human-flu viruses and provide a hospitable environment for the viruses to swap genes and create entirely new strains in a process called reassortment. That is what...
...recent years, since the ongoing H5N1 bird-flu virus first surfaced, health officials have focused mostly on Asia as the breeding ground for the world's next pandemic flu virus. But Daszak points out that Mexico, where people, pigs and poultry can exist in close proximity, is an overlooked hot spot for new viruses. Given the booming global livestock trade - more than 1.5 billion live animals have been shipped to the U.S. from all over the world in the past decade - it's possible that the A/H1N1 virus originated in an Asian bird that was exported to Mexico, where...
...power to spread to other mammals, like us. That's what makes pigs such potent mixing bowls for flu. The roundabout bird-pig-human route may be less common than the straight bird-human jump, but it may be more problematic. Strains of avian flu, like the much-feared H5N1, can infect individual humans, but they can't make the person-to-person leap. Avian flu that is passed through the pig's mammalian system, however, can be passed readily among humans. (Read "Why Border Controls Can't Keep Out the Flu Virus...
...world has most likely missed its chance to contain the virus. When the WHO's pandemic alert system was first conceived, phase 4 was intended to indicate the moment when a new flu virus had been identified and could spread effectively from person to person (as Asia's H5N1's bird flu virus, which reached phase 3, has never been able to do), but was still limited enough that health officials could launch a global effort to contain it and snuff it out with antiviral drugs...