Word: viruses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like a patient suffering from a particularly tenacious case of, well, the flu, the H1N1 virus seemed to gain ground and then lose it over the weekend, leaving health officials cautious but hopeful that the disease might be on the wane. The number of confirmed infections continues to rise, with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting 898 infections in 18 countries as of May 3, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tallying 226 confirmed cases in 30 U.S. states. The continuing spread led Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to predict on Sunday that the WHO might soon...
...global network of flu experts began to take a good look at the genetic structure of the H1N1 virus, there were indications that the bug might turn out to be little more dangerous than an average flu. Though scientists can't say exactly what genes make a particular strain of flu unusually deadly, all of the 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...
...Even if H1N1 seems to lack the killer instinct at the moment, flu viruses are unpredictable, and there's no guarantee that it couldn't change form. Flu season in the southern hemisphere is just beginning, and if the virus establishes itself in countries like Argentina or Australia, it could cause real damage. And there are still open mysteries, like why the bulk of the infections in the U.S. - and the confirmed deaths thus far in Mexico - have been found in people who are relatively young, which is unusual for the flu, or why this strain seems to be spreading...
...that would be a mistake. First of all, it's important to understand that pandemic does not necessarily equal apocalypse. A pandemic occurs when a new flu virus emerges and starts spreading easily from person to person, and then from country to country. (To declare Stage 6 for H1N1, the WHO needs to see sustained spread of the virus in multiple regions of the world; so far, that has happened only in North America.) A pandemic doesn't mean that a new virus is unusually deadly, only that it spreads easily - as H1N1 seems to do. It wasn't possible...
...Read "Why Border Controls Can't Keep Out the Flu Virus...