😬😬😬😬😬😬
Man… 2025 has been a rough year so far.
Captain, it’s January
Fuck
i’ve been waiting for this strain of bird flu to reach human-to-human transmission. once that happens we are truly fucked. we didn’t handle COVID and the pandemic is still ongoing. people complained about “shut downs” in the US and there was no such thing lol. name a single state that shut down. name a small town! nobody was prevented from traveling, there were merely recommendations and advisories. anyway, bird flu is gonna be bad. i’m very worried.
Well small farms all got turned into developments near me.
I learned a lot about bird flu by reading this overview. Did you know that every time a major bird flu pandemic occurs, that strain takes over as the new yearly seasonal flu, dethroning the previous?
While this isn’t incorrect, it’s also not the full story. Influenza is an intricate virus, with mutations and obfuscation built into it’s reproduction cycle. A virus that kills it’s host is not a good virus, as a virus relies on it’s host to reproduce. This is why the flu is the most deadly when it initially gains a new host species. But over time, it will mutate to become less deadly for the host, allowing it to spread more effectively. Additionally, whenever an organism is infected with two different flu viruses, they can conduct reassortment and generate novel flu variations. So overtime, the flu will become less lethal via mutations, making it different from the orginal. Most flu variations stem from bird flu’s due to the migratory patterns of birds. But they then mutate substantially, otherwise they’ll be unable to infect more host. Meaning, it’s not the same flu, but more so the jumping off point of new variations which can combine with others or mutate by themselves just depending on the specific environment.
That is interesting information, but I think what I said was correct though. I don’t mean to say that the strain takes over and doesn’t mutate thereafter.
For sure, that’s what I said off the rip. But the flu variant which takes over isn’t the initial variant, as the high mortality rate coincides with low transmissibility. It’s the result of various point mutations and genetic reassortments to the first version which humans were susceptible to. But ya, potato potatoe, I’m just a nerd when it comes micro.
Okay I see what you mean. I suppose I meant, “if the pandemic is H5N1, then the seasonal flu becomes H5N1. If it’s H3N2, etc…” – what would be the right noun for this? strain? variant?
When I did 4+ months of research into avian influenza a year ago, most the literature I sourced used variants as the term, but I don’t see why strain wouldn’t work as well. Also, you’re comment about if H5N1 or H3N2 doesn’t cover the fact that the H5N1 variant would likely uptake aspects of H3N2 genome (or whatever was the prior most common variant) into it’s genetic makeup.
Virology is an insanely intricate field as no two viral families have much in common at all. Viruses are fascinating as while they are truly as simplistic as it gets, they still have highly specific task they each evolve to ensure their future reproduction.
Fun fact about viral infections, both the human placenta and myelin sheath are results of an ancient ancestor of ours having a retroviral infection!
That’s a great info dump, thanks for posting.
