My take on the swine flu that's affecting our world today...
As per wikipedia and substantiated by press releases, it appears :
The 2009 flu outbreak in humans that is widely known as "swine flu" technically is not swine flu. It is due to a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 that derives from one strain of human influenza, one strain of avian influenza, and two separate strains of swine influenza. The origins of this new strain are unknown, and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reports that this strain has not been isolated in swine. It passes with apparent ease from human to human, an ability attributed to an as-yet unidentified mutation. The strain in most cases causes only mild symptoms and the infected person makes a full recovery without requiring medical attention and without the use of antiviral medicines.
So it seems even if you get this flu, its probably just another new strain, maybe just more powerful than those before, but certainly not as life-threatening as the previous SARS outbreak. It seems that pigs don't have it, that means this may have been a strain that came about either on a farm that had a farmer, a pig and a chicken, or maybe it was engineered by some curious microbiologist in Mexico!
So whilst having dinner today, I suggested that we have had mad cow's disease, the avian flu, now swine flu, maybe next in line would be sheep or goat flu. Well I just got over a bad bacterial cold, cross my fingers this flu doesn't come to Malaysia!
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