Tldr: in the short term, no. It isn’t transmitted human to human. Those at risk are people the work with poultry and cows and have preexisting health conditions.
In the long term, a little, as this isn’t being managed well, compliance is low, and there is always a chance the virus can mutate and spread person to person. We already have a vaccine for this strain of the flu but do not have capasity to vaccinate the whole world within a year. Covid was extremely contagious, R value as high as 6 or 7. The Flu is usually between 1 and 2 so for a point of comparison, it should be easier to control if there was a human outbreak.
Augustus-- on
The fun thing about flu is that it mutates radically differently to anything else thanks to it’s segmented genome. Flu has an 8 piece genome, and the virus just grabs pieces 1 through 8 when assembling a viral particle.
But if two different flu strains infect a single cell, the virus can grab piece 1-4 from one strain and 5-8 from the other and assemble a particle that way. This lets variants be made unbelievably fast, this kind of genetic drift is more rapid than anything else and could mean a strain which only infects one host suddenly gains the proteins that let it infect a new one.
Thankfully the Democrats are better on pandemic preparedness so nipped this one in the bud, right?
wettestsalamander76 on
I understand the logic of things will be ok in the near short term. The virus has not mutated to spread via human to human transmission. But I have this lingering feeling that I had before COVID shut down the world.
I quite literally remember sitting in my dorm room in December 2019 watching a video about some mysterious illness spreading through China while getting ready for winter break and finals. I chalked it up to being bullshit and reactionary but still somewhat alarming. Next thing you know my friends have military vehicles driving up and down their streets in Westchester, a confirmed case on campus, and the world quite literally changed overnight.
This time there are no guide rails to the Trump admin and god forbid if it does rapidly mutate to spread human to human it will the darkest days of COVID all over again with beyond piss poor government response.
rulesneverapply on
We are a bound to fuck things up again. That’s my feeling
5 Comments
The Trump Bug strikes again!
Tldr: in the short term, no. It isn’t transmitted human to human. Those at risk are people the work with poultry and cows and have preexisting health conditions.
In the long term, a little, as this isn’t being managed well, compliance is low, and there is always a chance the virus can mutate and spread person to person. We already have a vaccine for this strain of the flu but do not have capasity to vaccinate the whole world within a year. Covid was extremely contagious, R value as high as 6 or 7. The Flu is usually between 1 and 2 so for a point of comparison, it should be easier to control if there was a human outbreak.
The fun thing about flu is that it mutates radically differently to anything else thanks to it’s segmented genome. Flu has an 8 piece genome, and the virus just grabs pieces 1 through 8 when assembling a viral particle.
But if two different flu strains infect a single cell, the virus can grab piece 1-4 from one strain and 5-8 from the other and assemble a particle that way. This lets variants be made unbelievably fast, this kind of genetic drift is more rapid than anything else and could mean a strain which only infects one host suddenly gains the proteins that let it infect a new one.
Thankfully the Democrats are better on pandemic preparedness so nipped this one in the bud, right?
I understand the logic of things will be ok in the near short term. The virus has not mutated to spread via human to human transmission. But I have this lingering feeling that I had before COVID shut down the world.
I quite literally remember sitting in my dorm room in December 2019 watching a video about some mysterious illness spreading through China while getting ready for winter break and finals. I chalked it up to being bullshit and reactionary but still somewhat alarming. Next thing you know my friends have military vehicles driving up and down their streets in Westchester, a confirmed case on campus, and the world quite literally changed overnight.
This time there are no guide rails to the Trump admin and god forbid if it does rapidly mutate to spread human to human it will the darkest days of COVID all over again with beyond piss poor government response.
We are a bound to fuck things up again. That’s my feeling