One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Fuss And Feathers
Pandemic Panic Over The Avian Flu
By Michael Fumento

http://www.fumento.com/disease/flu2005.pdf

http://www.fumento.com/disease/flu2005.html
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest :)

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn;
Wire, briar, limber lock,
Three geese in a flock.
One flew east,
And one flew west,
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

http://www.daanspeak.com/AvianFlu01Eng.html

http://www.portfolio.mvm.ed.ac.uk/studentwebs/session2/group21/replicat.htm

http://www.portfolio.mvm.ed.ac.uk/studentwebs/session2/group21/treatmen.htm

http://www.who.int/csr/don/2004_03_02/en/

http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/full/276/43/40282

History

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol12no01/05-0979.htm
1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics

Jeffery K. Taubenberger*Comments and David M. Morens†
*Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Rockville, Maryland, USA; and †National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

Suggested citation for this article

The "Spanish" influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, which caused ≈50 million deaths worldwide, remains an ominous warning to public health. Many questions about its origins, its unusual epidemiologic features, and the basis of its pathogenicity remain unanswered. The public health implications of the pandemic therefore remain in doubt even as we now grapple with the feared emergence of a pandemic caused by H5N1 or other virus. However, new information about the 1918 virus is emerging, for example, sequencing of the entire genome from archival autopsy tissues. But, the viral genome alone is unlikely to provide answers to some critical questions. Understanding the 1918 pandemic and its implications for future pandemics requires careful experimentation and in-depth historical analysis.

"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

An estimated one third of the world's population (or ≈500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses (1,2) during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. The disease was exceptionally severe. Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to <0.1% in other influenza pandemics (3,4). Total deaths were estimated at ≈50 million (5–7) and were arguably as high as 100 million (7).

The impact of this pandemic was not limited to 1918–1919. All influenza A pandemics since that time, and indeed almost all cases of influenza A worldwide (excepting human infections from avian viruses such as H5N1 and H7N7), have been caused by descendants of the 1918 virus, including "drifted" H1N1 viruses and reassorted H2N2 and H3N2 viruses. The latter are composed of key genes from the 1918 virus, updated by subsequently incorporated avian influenza genes that code for novel surface proteins, making the 1918 virus indeed the "mother" of all pandemics.
In 1918, the cause of human influenza and its links to avian and swine influenza were unknown. Despite clinical and epidemiologic similarities to influenza pandemics of 1889, 1847, and even earlier, many questioned whether such an explosively fatal disease could be influenza at all. That question did not begin to be resolved until the 1930s, when closely related influenza viruses (now known to be H1N1 viruses) were isolated, first from pigs and shortly thereafter from humans. Seroepidemiologic studies soon linked both of these viruses to the 1918 pandemic (8). Subsequent research indicates that descendants of the 1918 virus still persists enzootically in pigs.


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