NJ5 said:
Torillian said:
megaman79 said:
"The issue is that if you don't have a vaccine you really can't get rid of the virus, all you can do is use anti-viral drugs to slow down the virus until your immune system is able to put it into remission. "
@Torrillian, Ok so that explains why kids and old people die, weak immune systems. What about these people then? Theyre generally young adults.
Will it take 6 months to make a vaccine for this particular strain? Thats what someone said on the news.
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It could take that long to make the vaccine for a particular strain in large enough quantities. I don't know the logistics of the large scale production.
Onto why young people may be killed, it's hard to say. all we deal with is chances, there is a greater chance to live through the flu if you are younger, but young people often don't get flu vaccines, so they might not have as "prepared" an immune system. That's all just theory off the top of my head though.
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From what I read, in the 1918 flu young adults with strong immune systems were most likely to die due to the immune system going into overdrive and attacking the body itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm
Ironically the cure is to make the immune system weaker.
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yeah, but that was due to the specific virality of that strain, which doesn't have to do with the H1N1 designation. All the H1N1 means is that the Hemagglutinin (sp) and Neuraminidase are of a certain kind, which is how the virus gets into the cell and how it detaches from the cell. Those really aren't why the spanish flu was so deadly, it has to do with other mechanisms within the virus, so just because this flu has the same H1N1 doesn't mean that it will have the same deadliness as the Spanish Flu.
