non-gravity on 26 April 2009
| Torillian said: I'm not really worried, but then again I haven't looked much into it. Has the virus been able to spread person to person or is it just a Swine virus that has a high propensity for going from pig to human? Also, I thought that H1N1 was a strain that we already had dealt with and have vaccination for since it was the cause of the Spanish Flu in 1918-1919. |
From wikipedia: For humans there are six strains important H1-3 combined with N1-2. These numbers stand for different proteines. But every now and then the strain of amino acids can change which leads to vaccins not recognizing them.
So vaccins may not be effective. But in some other news article I read that it looks like this strain is still curable with other medicines (Tamiflu, Relenza)
Something else on wikipedia mentioned that a pandemic virus needs a new H protein to be succesfull (e.g. H5N1), in adition to a large amount of people without sufficient immunity and that is transferable for man to man.
