Lets talk about the Swine flu...

Interesting BC-Axeman....

In my field of work I have to gather large amounts of information from many fields and then, based on a number of "short-cut" approaches, evaluate and implement that information. This system usually works quite well, but that is largely due to a safety-net built into my method. That safety-net just means delving deeper into the research when need be, to a variable level.

I had formed a fairly useful opinion on the H1N1. It was that "the virus is no more deadly now, but it could get more deadly, it is reasonable to protect from it". The minimal genetic drift concept was given to me by an internist and it seemed to work within my set opinion. Your challenge made me look deeper and I am having a hard time justifying that viewpoint.

Most interesting at this point is a review of the genetic sequence of the swine flu virus that shows that a particular virulence factor, protein PB1-F2, believed by some to play an important role in determining illness severity and risk of complications (secondary bacterial pneumonia), is blocked by maybe two stop-codons and then a mutation from serine to asparagine. So, a whole lot of genetic rearrangement would be needed to cause that to happen.

Of course, this would be to assume that the PB1-F2 protein is important in prospective pandemic versions of human infecting virus (as opposed to animal model research or retrospective analysis), and that PB1-F2 is (a)/(the only) important determiner of illness severity (which is severely near-sighted viewpoint).

None the less, thank you....it would seem that you may have helped me find a weakness in my information at a crucial time, helping me correct that deficiency. What is your background?

All that said, I trust in vaccines. Vaccines and the birth control pill; arguably the biggest and best medical discoveries of all time. Every illness I can prevent, is a battle won before it ever started.

Cheers

John