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To understand how
to prepare for a swine flu pandemic, it's important to know what
happened in 1918 and what is approaching today.
I believe you must first
know about viruses and the mutant swarm to completely prepare
for the swine flu.
Viruses
today for most people are a mystery,
even though there has been much progress in their
understanding since 1918. Their existence goes against what
we, as humans understand. Viruses do not eat food or thrive on
oxygen. They do not create waste, have sex or reproduce by
themselves like most other living beings on this planet. In
fact, you cannot say that they are a living being without the
use of their host.
A virus’s only function
is to replicate itself and by doing so, it satisfies its
instinctive reason for existence. It must have a host in order
to replicate and its primary goal is to make as many copies of
itself as possible. It does this by invading cells and forcing
them to make millions of new viruses. The genes are the
commanders that tell the cell what to do. When there is
activation of a gene cell, production of protein is a result.
A virus is successful when it takes over a cell and replaces
the genes with its own into the genome, and in the process
controls the cell’s own genes. At this point, the cell only
produces what the invading gene wants and forgets about its
own needs.
The cell then creates hundreds of thousands of
proteins, and together with the viral genome
form new viruses. This marks the end of the host cell, which
destruction comes when the new viruses escape after the new
particles explode out of the cell surface to invade other
cells. All viruses as a group are highly evolved and very
efficient. You could almost call them a perfect infection
machine. The influenza virus is among the most proficients.
The swine flu is a hybrid virus created from pig and bird
elements. Whenever I refer to the influenza virus I’m talking
about the hybrid virus unless noted.
Everything in the human body has identity; it has either a form on its surface,
a marking or something that sends that message. The body knows
simply through contact, which is how the body is aware of what
is going on within itself. Visualize someone fitting a hand
into a five-finger glove instead of that same glove fitting on
a foot and you will understand. When there is a match, there
is a binding to the object. There is a constant bumping of
cells, viruses, and bacteria in the body. If there is no fit,
nothing happens and the bumping continues. However, when they
do fit and are close enough to bind, this is when the sparks
fly and the body wakes up.
The influenza virus is sneaky hiding from
the immune system by entering the cell instead of fusing with
it. This technique allows the swine virus to become almost
invisible not letting the immune system find it until too
late. After the virus enters the cell, it changes shape,
dissolves and then fuses with the cell. At this point, the
order giving genes flow into the cell. This whole process
takes about ten hours for an swine/influenza virus to attach
to a cell and then burst. When it burst a swarm of between
100,000 and one million new swine/influenza viruses escape the
exploded cell.
Whenever an organism reproduces it, genes create exact
copies of themselves. Well, not exact copies
because there are many mistakes or mutations that occur in the
process. Humans’ genes for example mutate at a much slower
rate than viruses. swine flu viruses mutate very
rapidly and experts call them a "quasi species" or a "mutant
swarm." There are trillions of closely related viruses made
from the creation of a mutant swarm. There will be many
different versions of themselves and the swarm as a whole will
have almost every possible variation. Most of the mutations
will have a negative effect on the virus and will destroy
either the virus or its ability to infect. The bad part is
many of the other mutations will adapt quickly to its
environment. Therefore, when you hear that the virus has
mutated rendering certain drugs ineffective the mutants swarm
are to blame. A drug-resistant mutation of an influenza virus
can emerge within days. This has already been the case with
Tamiflu (to a certain extent) one of the leading
antiviral drugs. So do not put all your faith in Tamiflu to be
your answer to the pandemic. To beat the bird flu you must
understand the capabilities of the virus in order to make a
good plan.
The body's defense against an infection is our immune
system. As mentioned earlier, the immune
system knows what belongs in our bodies and what does not by
its shape and form. If the immune system detects a "non-self,"
marking, it will attack.
Antigens are what the immune systems read and bind
to. It is anything that causes the immune
system to respond. The immune system will attack anything that
has a "non-self" marking or foreign antigen. This is the first
line of defense that counters and attacks an infection.
The immune system will chop up invading viruses into
pieces. The white blood cells learn to
recognize the antigen as an enemy and they signal production
of a large amount of antibodies and killer white cells that
will attack the target antigen. The body releases enzymes
causing it to raise its temperature creating fever. Redness
and swelling are all side effects of the antigen leaving the
system. Known as the "immune response" its only problem is it
takes time and a delay can allow an infection to gain a head
start and even to kill.
Once the body makes it through an infection, it gains an
advantage. After the immune system defeats an
infection, "memory T cells" and antibodies that bind to the
antigen stay in the body. This time the immune system can
respond so quickly that a new infection will not even cause
symptoms. However, you still might carry the virus back to
your quarantine environment, so you still need to stay in
isolation in a special negative pressure room. The secrets to
vaccinations are they expose people to an antigen and start
the immune system to respond to that disease. The same thing
happens naturally with the influenza virus. After people
recover from the virus, their immune systems will act quickly
targeting the virus that infected them. Therefore, if someone
got an infection from the virus and didn't die, then there is
a good chance that they would not catch it again. This information is
very important to anyone preparing for a bird flu pandemic
because if you get an infection and survive. If the same
antigen attacks again, the immune system will respond much
more quickly than before.
Remember, the breadwinner could still carry the virus home to
the rest of the family and that's why an isolation room would
be necessary.
Influenza however has a way to fool the immune system. It
mutates so fast that the immune system cannot keep pace with
the changes. Many times mutations cause changes that are so
minor that the immune system can still recognize and bind to
them, and easily defeat a second infection.
Nevertheless, other times mutations change the
shape of the cell enough that the immune system cannot recognize
it. Known, as "antigen drift" and
it can cause a new infection to the virus.
Obviously, a large drift in an antigen can create
problems. In fact, it can cause epidemics. One
study found that there were nineteen in the United States in a
thirty-three-year period. Monitoring of the drift, each year
causes vaccines to work. However, the match is never exact
because the influenza viruses exist as a mutating swarm that
will always have different enough viruses to get by the
vaccine and immune system.
Antigen drift however, does not cause great
pandemics. Pandemics generally develop only when there are dramatic
changes. When there is an entirely new gene, coding that
replaces the old one. The name for this very rare occurrence
is "an antigen shift." Most people in the world
will have no antibodies that can attack these new viruses and
the virus can spread around the world explosively. An antigen
shift occurs when a virus that normally infects birds attacks
humans directly or indirectly. It can happen directly, when an
animal virus jumps to humans and adapts with a simple
mutation. It can also occur indirectly when influenza viruses
ADAPT through the mutant storm from species to
species.
A Swine Flu virus not only mutates rapidly, but it also has the ability to combine two different
influenza viruses to infect the same cell, known as
"reassortment." Reassortment mixes
segments of some genes of one virus to some segments from
another. A new virus was created, increasing the chances the
virus can jump from one species to another. If a bird
influenza virus infects someone who also had a human influenza
virus, then the two viruses might easily reassort their
genes. This is how the hybrid virus came about. A combination
of birds, pigs and humans creating the novel hybrid.
Chances increase that such a mix could
pass easily from person to another person causing a lethal
adaptation to humans.
How the bird flu virus becomes more infectious and
dangerous.
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To Prepare for The Swine Flu Virus
You must understand it. Through understanding you will
create a better plan to SURVIVE
it.
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News that the Swine flu virus has mutated to a less
lethal,
but far more dangerous form confuses many
people. If it is less lethal, then why is it more dangerous?
It has to do with how viruses survive, grow and pass from one
person to the next. An extremely deadly virus, like Ebola,
which kills 90 percent of the people infected, actually is not
dangerous to the human population as a whole. Why, because it
does not spread easily from one person to the next which is a
requirement for a worldwide pandemic to occur. This is because
it kills its host too quickly. The host dies before they get a
chance to pass it to the next person. A pandemic virus is
highly infectious and spreads from one person to another in an
undetectable way. When a virus becomes less lethal to each
host, it is able to survive in the host in an undetectable
state, and for a longer period, this is what makes pandemic
viruses extremely dangerous. A dangerous virus is one that
kills a small percentage of its hosts and hides in a hidden
state easily passing from one person to the next. How
contagious a virus is along with its kill rate determines how
dangerous it is.
The most dangerous viruses that kill the largest number of
people have a low kill rate instead of a
high kill rate. An extremely deadly virus could wipe out a
small community, which of course would be very horrifying but
less dangerous to the human race. Why, it wiped out the
community and there is nobody left to spread it.
On the other hand, a virus with a very low kill
rate, it kills only one or two percent of its
hosts, but is highly infectious is the most dangerous. Since a
very high percent of the people who are infected do not die of
it, they can walk around airports, sporting events, and cities
spreading the virus. In the history of infectious disease, the
most deadly viruses, in terms of the total number of people
killed worldwide, were highly infectious, not necessarily
highly lethal. If you look at the 1918 Spanish flu, the virus
killed about 2.5% of its host.
The World Health Organization (WHO) made
the following announcement about the bird flu virus. "The swine
flu gets more dangerous, but less lethal." Experts of infectious disease say that the
bird flu virus is in the process of mutating to a less lethal
strain. This fact has them very worried. Therefore, instead of
killing 90 percent of people it infects, the virus has lowered
its kill rate to about 50 percent. This means the virus is
mutating into a form that can survive inside a person's body
without detection and without killing that person, making it
far more contagious. This is what concern the WHO and the CDC
the United State Health Agency. They are experts in infectious
disease and know the history of pandemics. If this virus kill
rate drops further, down to 20 percent or less it will become
even more deadly globally.
Its threat to the world will be more
pronounced
and will become
more of a pandemic threat because the virus could easily slip
out of the country where it started. It will slip out and get
onto airplanes and into airports and spread rapidly from one
country to another.
How does this information affect you? You’ll
have to make important decisions from the beginning of the
pandemic to the end. When the pandemic does start the more you
know about it the better you\pard plain
’ll be able to
adjust to it. Also, you’ll be more able to determine if
information given to you is consistent with things you already
know. Once the pandemic starts, it could happen very quickly
leaving little to no time to prepare. |
