I'm sure most of you have heard of the new flu virus which is quickly spreading throughout the world and could turn into a major pandemic. There have been confirmed cases in Mexico (with more than 60 deaths), USA (Texas, California, Kansas, Ohio, New York), likely cases in New Zealand from students who came from Mexico, and now confirmed cases in Canada:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/04/26/mexico-swine-flu.html

According to someone at USA's Center for Disease Control, the virus is too widespread to contain:

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN25473389

Do you know anyone affected? Are you worried? What will happen?

Read about it. know noone affected.

From Ohio. So that's scary.

As for what will happen.  We'll see.

Hopefully it's just overblown like SARS.

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.

It would be exciting if this became a mass famine, but I'm afraid it's a boring lil virus like Ebola.

What I read was that it was a H1N1 mix of Bird, Swine and Human versions. And it is able to spread from person to person.

Let's go hide under a rock

Well, it has been known for a long time that if a Bird flu was going to become spreadable through humans it would have to come in the swine, which has receptors for human and bird and would be able to mix and match the two virusses inside it.  I'm just trying to figure out if the H1N1 designation is a misnomer or if that really is the correct strain.  If that is the strain, I don't see how it should be a worry since vaccines are made to recognize different H and N combinations, and we should be well prepared since this is the oldest known strain of Influenza.

I have more chance to get cancer and considering I don't worry about getting cancer...

Well I don't know nobody since I'm in Minnesota. Though influenza is so common here.

I'm not worried. Unless this is worse than any other Flu strain, then I don't care as I've never cared about them or gotten a Flu shot. If I've ever gotten the Flu, then it is no worse than any colds I've gotten, so again I don't care.

Generally I put this with west Nile virus and SARS into the category of I don't think I personally have to worry about it. Also, I just looked it up, SARS has a mortality rate of 1% for those 24 and younger, where as the Flu is ~0.6% across all age ranges.

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.