Scientists have long feared H5N1 combining with another more easily transmitted flu.

And this Superflu would be upon us in the winter.. the second wave. :0

HMMM Do some fucking reading asshole.


Commentary
Recombination and Hitch Hiking Drive H1N1 Tamiflu Resistance
Recombinomics Commentary 12:02
January 11, 2009

Last winter, about 11 percent of the throat swabs from patients with the most common type of flu that were sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for genetic typing showed a Tamiflu-resistant strain. This season, 99 percent do.

"It's quite shocking," said Dr. Kent A. Sepkowitz, director of infection control at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. "We've never lost an antimicrobial this fast. It blew me away."

The above comments from the Donald McNeil NY Times article that brought the Tamiflu resistance issue to light, apply to the United States. However, the spread of H274Y is worldwide and for some Asia countries, like South Korea or Japan, the switch is even more dramatic. Resistance in South Korea last season was 0% (in 99 isolates tested) and 3% in Japan (largely concnetrated to a single prefecture). That was largely because another clade of H1N1 (Hong Kong/2562 or 2C) was circulating, largely due to the acquisition of HA A193T which drove adamantine resistance to 100% in H1N1 2C..

In some locations, like Hong Kong or Hawaii, both sub-clades were co-circulating, which allowed A193T to jump from 2C to 2B via homologous recombination. The acquisition of A193T by 2B drove H274Y to 100% worldwide, including South Korea and Japan.

The increase in South Korea and Japan is cause for concern because both countries frequently report H5N1 infections in poultry, and last spring a culler in South Korea was PCR H5 positive. Moreover, H274Y in Japan and South Korea at levels close to 100% of H1N1 strongly suggest the same sub-clade is in China and Russia, where H1N1 is common. In Beijing, a recent H5N1 case was confirmed, and a health care worker also developed symptoms, raising H2H transmission concerns.

In addition to the transmission of H5N1, there also is the concern that H5N1 infected patients could be dually infected with H1N1 also, allowing H274Y to jump from the H1N1 background to H5N1 and lead to widespread H274Y on H5N1. This concern will increase as H5N1 transmissions in humans becomes more efficient.

H274Y already has a history of jumping from one H1N1 genetic background to another. In the 2006/2007 it was present at low levels on clade 2C in China. It then jumped to clade 1 (New Caledonia) in isolates in the US and UK in the 2007/2008 season. However, levels remained low until the 2008/2009 season, when H274Y jumped to clade 2B (Brisbane/59) in Hawaii. Additional acquisitions, including D354G on NA (which was acquired from earlier H1N1) lead to the spread of H274Y to many countries in Europe and North America.

However, the acquisition of A193T in the US and UK in late 2007 led to its spread into the southern hemisphere over the summer, when H274Y levels rose to 100% in South Africa. That rise was followed by levels approaching 100% in the northern hemisphere. In addition to North America and Europe, the clade 2B with H274Y on NA and A193T on HA has emerged in Japan, where H1N1 matched the major sub-clade in the United States. The additional HA changes (G189V and H196R) have forced school closings in Japan and are they likely cause for the explosion of Tamiflu resistant H1N1 in South Korea.

More information on resistance levels in China and Russia would be useful, since influenza in both countries is dominated by H1N1 and the spread in Asia of H274Y in seasonal flu would increase the likelihood of a jump from H1N1 seasonal flu to H5N1 pandemic flu.

[link to www.recombinomics.com]

Here's a thread I'm keeping updated with recent events in Asia. It's starts with a memo about a warning of a possible pandemic I received from a US embassy in China at the beginning of the month. Keep in mind swine flu did not go mainstream until a couple weeks after my original post about the warning. I'm getting the feeling now that the US government knows something that isn't being widely reported.

Thread: H5N1 Pandemic Warning from an American Embassy in China



I never thought I would do this but this weekend I'm going to stock up on canned food.

glad you are finllay coming around brother

I was under the impression this virus was already a
re-assortment of avian/swine/human flue - but yes, it is still H1n1, not H5n1 - which is a bit scarier, yes!

One good thing I've read about the H5n1 fatality rate (if you can call it good) is that rate is so high, it is not conduscive to wide spread pandemic - yet....meaning, it kills so fast, it kills it's host(s) at a faster rate than the transmission rate, which keeps it somewhat in check.

What will be scary is if the recombination occurs, causing a slightly milder strain of the H5n1. At that point, it's like a scale balance - the virus only needs to drop the fatality rate just below the transmission rate to become an extremely deadly pandemic.

never say never

Thanks for the thread everyone. I have something to add; that Chinese lady from the WHO - (MS Chan I think her name is) I watched her statement last weekend (phase 3) and then the one (phase 5) today. Just her body language and the way talkws will tell you that something is seriously amiss here.

[link to orthomed.com]

nice post GF !!!

:::hi5ver:::

There are two was H5N1 could become pandemic. The first is for the H antigen to mutate to be able to bind with the human upper respiratory tract viruses. Right now it can only do that for birds. You can still get it now if it gets very deep in your lungs.

The second way is for it to transfer its lethal genes to a human virus through reassortment. Right now it seems this is the most likely scenario.

It has not been explained what is meant by the CDC analysis that the virus contains human, two types of swine and a bird gene segments. If these are on the H antigen so that it can infect both birds, asian and american swine and humans then I'd say we are in deep trouble as that would probabaly be genetically engineered.

As there are very few humans that have H5N1 I would say the reassortment would occur in birds or pigs that are infected by humans with this variant.

There are actually four genes that give the thing killer potential.

Right now they have the capacity to marry the lethal viruses from the 1918 swine flu to a common human flu virus by reassorting these four genes with it and they have done it in the lab and used it to kill ferrets. This is in the open literature. They could certainly do the same with H5N1.

But you could say attach the gene that allows it live in the lung tissue and two others and leave one out. All four have to be there together for 1918 lethality (they tried substituting them alone and in combinations to learn this).

If this is infectious to birds and pigs then the reassortment will probably take place in a chicken or pig farm and jump back to humans. Thats probably why Egypt killed all their pigs if there was bird flu there.

The CFR was talking about H5N1 a couple of years ago in their publication Foreign Affairs.

I have a friend that just got back from Mexico. He has been in really remote areas. He said there thousands dead not hundreds. That they were burning piles of bodies. The government was confiscating all cameras and video equipment. He said he was talking to a policeman and when he said "I didnt know the flu was this bad" the policeman turned and said very sternly "these people were killed by the cartels". He told me that he saw no blood or external wounds and that some of the bodies were still dressed in hospital gowns. I have known this man for a very long time and he has never misled me in anyway before. He was being very truthfull!! Has anyone else this???

This is quite possible

Anyone else heard this?

Well, all the scientists have heard of this possibility and are now scrambling behind the scenes for this very scenario.

Here are only 2 of hundreds of recent articles regarding this possibility.
[link to sciencenow.sciencemag.org]

As Swine Flu Spreads, Its Chances to Mutate Increase
By Dennis Normile
ScienceNOW Daily News
29 April 2009

TOKYO--Swine flu has reached Asia, with South Korea reporting its first suspected case yesterday. Like the vast majority of other cases outside of Mexico so far, it is mild, but virologist Kennedy Shortridge warns that is no reason for complacency. He says that the farther the virus spreads, the more chance it will mix, or reassort, with other flu viruses in circulation and turn into something more lethal. "The prospects for change [in the virus] are considerable and worrying," he says.
Shortridge is a professor emeritus at the University of Hong Kong, where he led investigations into the initial emergence of H5N1 avian influenza in 1997, when it killed six of the 18 people it infected. The city squelched that outbreak by slaughtering all 1.4 million chickens and ducks in the territory. H5N1 re-emerged in 2003 and since then has claimed 257 lives while devastating poultry flocks throughout much of Asia and parts of Africa. Shortridge has long advocated global cooperation in the surveillance of circulating flu viruses to spot emerging new strains so that public health officials could plan a response and drug companies could get a head start on making vaccines.

He was among the first to suggest that pigs might act as mixing vessels for new combinations of viruses. And the swine flu, now spreading from Mexico, "fits into the mixing vessel hypothesis," he says.

Analysis of flu specimens by Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg and at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, have found that the virus is made up of pieces of human, swine, and avian viruses from North America, Europe, and Asia. The mixture "gives an order of complexity we really don't understand at this point," Shortridge says.

In particular, he says he is concerned that this patched-together virus might not be stable and could easily reassort with other viruses encountered in a human or animal host. The virus has now spread to Asia, where the H5N1 virus is circulating. Shortridge says there are strains of human H1N1 in circulation in many areas that are resistant to Tamiflu, the drug of choice for treating the disease in humans. He speculates that swapping one or more genes among these viruses could result in a virus that is more pathogenic or more easily passed from person to person or both.

As a precaution, Shortridge suggests sequencing as many viral samples as quickly as possible to watch for any telltale changes in the virus--a massive job requiring worldwide cooperation. He says such cooperation seems to be off to a good start, thanks to the experience of dealing with the 2003 SARS crisis and recent efforts to prepare for an influenza pandemic. "There is a success story in this in that the world is alert" to the possibility of a pandemic, he says. Still, he adds, even better collaboration and communication will be required in the face of a threat that could change overnight.
---------------
[link to www.physorg.com]
H5N1 mutations could help predict pandemics
November 15th, 2006 An international research team has identified genetic mutations in the H5N1 birdflu virus enabling it to infect human cells, according to Thursday's edition of the science journal Nature.

The change is thought to occur when human patients are exposed at the same time to a human flu virus and an avian flu virus. Most viruses, including influenza, readily swap genes with one another.

Last Edited by Beingsouthern on 05/03/2009 11:36 AM

This is chilling!

[link to www.youtube.com]

So far Extreme Events have Exhibited a propensity to Emphasize 4/6 via an Earthquake and the current Epidemic Emerging on that day.

H5N1 would continue that trend in accordance with the TToD.

5-1=4
5+1=6

What you fear you attract to you so you'll learn to get over it... Enjoy this... Scientists are ego driven, we know this already...why do people listen to those driven by their ego???

Their egos EFFECT our reality.

Additionaly there were 6 very strange Crop Circles in April, and Avians user number starts with 46.

LATER