Word: infectivity
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...killed more than 50 million people worldwide and that serves as a reminder of the kind of threat that the world could face (see ESSAY). A reconstruction of the 1918 virus, reported in scientific journals last week, shows it to be an avian strain that mutated just enough to infect humans directly and easily...
...influenza viruses--if you trace their lineage back far enough--got their start in birds, and the great majority stay there. But a handful of flu viruses adapt to the point that they can infect people. Each year the viruses capable of invading human cells mutate slightly in a way that leads to fresh outbreaks, but most people will still have a partial immunity because of previous exposure to similar viruses. Occasionally, though, a strain that had seemed to infect only birds will cross over more or less intact into humans. Because this new strain is so different from garden...
...column for the online magazine Salon that, after being diagnosed with the flu, he licked doorknobs at the Bauer campaign headquarters. “I wanted to seed his office with germs, get as many of his people sick as I could, and hopefully one of them would infect the candidate,” Savage wrote...
...Orleans, where officials initially thought they had been spared the worst, the hesitation seemed to start locally and then infect the chain of command all the way to Washington. Some New Orleans police officers turned in their badges, unwilling to work in the lawless city. On Tuesday, when parts of the city were already under 20 feet of water, the Pentagon deployed five ships to the Gulf--four from Norfolk, Va., four days away. On Friday, 6,500 National Guard finally arrived to help restore order...
...effective way to reduce the risk of wild birds transmitting the virus. The Dutch learned their lesson the hard way two years ago; then a milder virus strain led to the death or destruction of 31 million birds at a cost of more than j780 million. The virus also infected 83 people, most of whom suffered mild symptoms; one veterinarian died. Jan Odink, president of the Association of Dutch Poultry Processing Industries, says Dutch farmers support the policy: "It just takes some droppings from these passing birds to create a risk. And if you're too late, you have...