I was reading in New Scientist recently that the WHO is worried about people contracting a human flu at the same time as having avian flu, this is because the human and avian flu strains can combine and produce a virus which can transmit from human to human, while only bird to human and bird to bird transmission is possible at the moment.

 

I was wondering, why aren't they also worried about a bird catching human flu while it is infected with avian flu, couldn't the same thing happen??

could you catch it if you walked around in a gas mask and goggles?

Why would it matter if a bird got the flu...?

They are worried that the avian form of this strain will mutate again and become a human pathogen. After that, the worry is that it will become airborn. Basically, the human population hasn't seen this strain before (H5N1), so the immune system will offer little protection from it in terms of the adaptive immune response. This is why I believe the fatality rate of this strain was somewhere in the neighbohood of 60-70%. The flu pandemic of the 20's was also caused by the introduction of a new HN strain.

Cross jumping between species is common for bird flu and other virus example sars, hanta virus have been killers too.

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what if the strains mix and become milder .in the sense what if they loose their pathogenic nature. is that possible.

Why would it matter if a bird got the flu...?

 

The bird could give the virus to a human, and it can spread throughout the entire world.

 

what if the strains mix and become milder .in the sense what if they loose their pathogenic nature. is that possible.

Yes. As viruses try to survive, they begin to reproduce a lot more. To do this, they need to become a lot less dangerous.

could you catch it if you walked around in a gas mask and goggles?

 

Loads of people tried to protect themselves like this in 1918 and it didn't help. There's a great book on the 1918 pandemic called "Catching Cold". If anyone is in any doubt about the hype over bird flu I'd advise them to read it.

When bird flu was propagating, I decided to buy SYMMETREL to be protected, as I heard that it destroys the bacteria found in human flu and it also has the capacity to form a shield, which makes you immune to other viruses..