Word: strains
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When the Senate voted last week to add $4 billion to a defense-spending bill to prepare for a bird-flu epidemic, three-fourths of the money was earmarked for Tamiflu and other antiviral medications. But a dilemma looms. It's difficult to predict when--or if--the current strain of the virus, which is known to have killed just 60 people worldwide, will mutate into something more easily spread among humans. Makers of flu vaccines can't simultaneously produce both bird-flu and regular-flu varieties in sufficient quantity. Shift gears too early, and it could be a false...
...like public health authorities in the U.S. and many other countries, you're counting on the anti-viral drug Tamiflu (generic name oseltamivir) to save you should bird flu become pandemic, you may have to think again. A Hong Kong expert told Reuters on Friday that a strain of the H5N1 virus isolated in northern Vietnam this year is resistant to Tamiflu. More common human flu viruses have also recently been shown to be developing a resistance to another set of antivirals called adamantine drugs...
They closed the set out with an old standard from Hopeland, “Untitled #9—Popplagio (Pop Song).” It begins with a sweet, rolling guitar strain, but eventually collapses into cacophonous entropy. I’m not a big fan of the song, but it reminded me of the problem about the womb—eventually, the placenta breaks, and you’re out on your own. Horrifying...
...Quite a bit would have to go wrong before it came to that. Even if the virus, H5N1, mutates into a strain that can jump from person to person, it's not inevitable that it will make it into Australia from Southeast Asia, says CMO Horvath, chairman of the National Influenza Pandemic Action Committee (NIPAC). It's likely the first cases of person-to-person transmission in Asia would occur in clusters, where local authorities, working alongside the World Health Organization and AusAID, would try to contain the virus by quarantining the sick and giving them - and those...
...fast-track. CSL will soon begin clinical trials on a prototype vaccine based on H5N1. With this head start, the company would be capable of producing enough vaccine to inoculate every Australian in a minimum of three months from the time a pandemic started and the exact strain was identified. If a pandemic does break out, authorities would hope that H5N1 was the culprit, since CSL's project is to some extent based on that premise. "This is a good scientific gamble," says Horvath, "but if it's (a different strain) . . . well, it's a bit like buying a battleship...