i’ve been waiting for this strain of bird flu to reach human-to-human transmission. once that happens we are truly fucked. we didn’t handle COVID and the pandemic is still ongoing. people complained about “shut downs” in the US and there was no such thing lol. name a single state that shut down. name a small town! nobody was prevented from traveling, there were merely recommendations and advisories. anyway, bird flu is gonna be bad. i’m very worried.
this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Man... 2025 has been a rough year so far.
Captain, it’s January
Fuck
Well small farms all got turned into developments near me.
I learned a lot about bird flu by reading this overview. Did you know that every time a major bird flu pandemic occurs, that strain takes over as the new yearly seasonal flu, dethroning the previous?
While this isn't incorrect, it's also not the full story. Influenza is an intricate virus, with mutations and obfuscation built into it's reproduction cycle. A virus that kills it's host is not a good virus, as a virus relies on it's host to reproduce. This is why the flu is the most deadly when it initially gains a new host species. But over time, it will mutate to become less deadly for the host, allowing it to spread more effectively. Additionally, whenever an organism is infected with two different flu viruses, they can conduct reassortment and generate novel flu variations. So overtime, the flu will become less lethal via mutations, making it different from the orginal. Most flu variations stem from bird flu's due to the migratory patterns of birds. But they then mutate substantially, otherwise they'll be unable to infect more host. Meaning, it's not the same flu, but more so the jumping off point of new variations which can combine with others or mutate by themselves just depending on the specific environment.
That is interesting information, but I think what I said was correct though. I don't mean to say that the strain takes over and doesn't mutate thereafter.
That’s a great info dump, thanks for posting.