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I’m going to make an effort to steer this blog back to science related issues.

If you have had access to any type of media source lately you will probably be able to guess the inspiration of this post.  It comes in three parts: (A) flu overview, (B) the medics of our pandemics, and (C) the little bird that is spreading “swine flu” to millions and millions every minute of every day!!!!!!!11!1!!

Flu overview-  Flu stands for influenza which is an infectious disease caused by the influenza viron. Symptoms of this disease was described as far back as 400 BC by the Greek physician Hippocrates of C(K)os.  It belongs to a family of  RNA viruses called Orthomyxoviridae. As a side note, a biological system that relies on RNA for genomic storage is very prone to mutation because it lacks DNA polymerases which fixes genomic mess-ups during and after transcription (when the genome is copied). The influenza virus will normally invade the epithilial (outer) cells of your respiratory systems (nose, throat, lungs). You can think of your cells as factories with machines which produce products that benefit the overall economy of your body. The influenza virus breaks into these cell factory and hacks into the nucleus of the cell by plugging in it’s RNA code. The RNA reprograms the mainframe of your cell factory to stop producing products for your body and start producing the materials needed to make more influenza virus. These virus materials will then congregate at the inside surface of the infected cell and bud out using a piece of your cell membrane to contain the parts needed to hack into another one of your cells (fhe functions of viruses are incredibly fascinating).As this happens, your body is reacting by producing cytokines and chemokines in attempt to launch an immune response against the influenza hackers. Although there is some cell damage, the brunt of the symptoms you feel (aches, fever, chills, fatigue, vomiting, pneumonia, death, ect) are the result of inflammatory responses caused by your own immune system. There are three types of influenza: A, B, and C.  Let’s just talk about A because currently it is the relevant one. It is the villain of the Spanish flue of 1918, Asian flue 1957, Hong Kong flu 1968 pandemics, and the current North American 2009 pandemic. Wild aquatic birds are the natural reservoir for type A, but all viruses will jump ship given an opportunity. When it does “jump ship” it will often swap components with other influenza viruses it finds in the new host. This “swapping” leads to antigenic shift which can possibly lead to new highly pathogenic strains that our immune system has never seen before.  Type A can be broken down to several serotypes which are used to categorize particular outbreak. The most well known and devastating influenza pandemic was the Spanish flue of 1918 (estimated to have affected one half of the worlds population at that time with a body count of up to 100 million) which had the H1N1 ser0type. While this recent “swine flu” out break also has the H1N1 serotype it is a very different strain than the one found in 1918. This strain is actually a mongalized combination of strains found in North American pigs, Eurasian pigs, birds, and humans and has an  outer protein that has only been seen in pigs and never in humans. Interestingly, this new strain has never been found in swine and thus can not be contracted by being near, eating, or french kissing pigs. You might start a new pandemic with somthing else but you will not contract the 2009 N1H1 virus.

The medics of our pandemics – Who is in charge here? Who is. What? WHO!! (sorry, had to do it). The World Health Organization is, and I quote directly from their website, “the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system.” These guys compile what the world knows about health, organizes it, and then tells the world what it needs to know…about health. You can think of WHO as the “head” of the health body. The rest of the health body includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who are all over the world doing most of the arm and leg work of health, and then there are national agencies like the United States Food and Drug Association that point here and there with the fingers of health. These organizations do lots of good work in different areas. One of the things they do is determine what influenza vaccine should be produced. This vaccine is actually a cocktail of three different influenza strains that have been killed or attenuated. What some people don’t realize is that there are many many influenza strains in the world and these strains are changing all the time. It is the job of WHO to try to predict what three strains out of the whole bunch poses a the highest risk for the upcoming flu season. Thus, there are many strains that people are not vaccinated for, so getting a flu shot does not totally eliminate the possibility of getting influenza. In fact, just in the U.S. there are around 30,000-40,000 (~100/day) influenza related deaths each year. So why does this new “swine flu” have the WHO worried? If you read or watch what the CDC has to say about it you will notice that they always mention that the symptoms of the ”swine flu” are no different than seasonal flu, and that you probably won’t need to go to the emergency room. What has WHO worried is that there are just a couple orange flags. One is that this virus has never been seen before and it contains animal components. Like I said before, influenza is constantly mutating making it a moving target, but when a new target appears people get a little worried. Second yellow flag is the rate of geographical spread. This is why we are in pandemic 5 alert; it is just protocol when a single strain is detected in two or more countries.  That is it. What we know is that this “swine flu” has some characteristics of previous devastating strains but so far is no more deadly than other influenza virus, and it is spreading to different countries because people move around alot. What has the WHO excited is that they have an excuse run their preventative strategies on a relatively new strain of influenza and watch how it impacts the spread.  I think the WHO and CDC have done a very good job so far in implementing sound instruction, but to tell you the truth, I think they are kinda indulging in the media/public spot light. Just look at the smirk on Dr. Joe Bresee when he says “swine flu”.

The little bird that is spreading “swine flu” to millions and millions every minute of every day!!!!!!!11!1!! – Oh news media, why do you sell us so much fear? Oh that’s right, because we love to buy it. News coverages always tend to embellish emphasize the catchy aspects of their stories so they can keep people watching and boost their ratings above the competition. Then people start to talk, and where do people talk now a days? The internet. Specifically in online social networks. Facebook is one of those social networks, but it is a thing of the past now. You actually need a computer to check it. The new hot thing is a micro-bloging site called twitter. If you’re unfamiliar, twitter asks the question “what are you doing” and lets you give an answer in 140 characters or less that all your friends can see. What makes this popular is the simplicity and ability to use your phone to update it on the go. A hot topic can spread very fast on this site and “swine flu” was no exception. Trendrr is graphing the  ”swine flu” tags on twitter at ~10,000 per hour and ~140,000 per day. We all know that bad news travels first and that a person is smart but people are stupid, so that is a lot of people blurting out their “swine flu” fears in 140 characters or less. Well, not all are fears, some are pretty funny “swine flu” jokes. The interesting thing is that the news of this outbreak, though in misinformed hysteria,  spread faster than ever before. The WHO and CDC probably dropped their jaws. Getting the word out quickly is one of the best preventive actions you can take concerning health issues, and they realized that  this technology could be used to inform and connect with people very quickly. The CDC is now tweeting reliable information about the “swine flu” pandemic every 2-5 hours. In fact, the last tweet I got from CDC was this link telling me about new social media they are using.

Now I’m going to go tweet that I just made a blog post about “swine flu”