Complicated

May 4, 2009

Damn swine Flu
Stupid influenza A
Make our lifes so complicated... Now getting into SP is like getting through the custom! Im very sure tomorrow 740 to 820am is going to be really crowded.
Monday blues again.. I wore purple shirt to school.. Haha. First time nia. First lesson is really hard to catch up.. i really DON'T LIKE this module. So technical.. and im like a pig using the computer... Later after that i met zhijuan at T3.. she wore purple too. Then.. after lunch, yunling left her bottle on the table. How blur she could be. Haha! Last lesson then gave to her.. for the whole lesson i can't control giggling away.. Good lucks everyone tmr!

Some quick info for swine flu

What caused the 2009 swine flu?

It was caused by a virus that originated in pigs (swine) but has changed itself to be infective to humans. Swine flu is a virus that originally infected only pigs and they spread it from one infected hog to other hogs. Because pigs are physiologically very similar to humans, when they have been living closely with humans, some microbes that can infect them are able to be changed or mutated into strains that people can catch. These types of diseases that we can get from animals are called zoonotic diseases. Pigs contract swine flu from other infected swine, particularly in pigpens and herding areas. Flu viruses from birds and people may also infect pigs. Swine influenza passes quickly among pigs, and can cause major losses for pig farmers because of the rate of illness. It is now also possible for infected people to pass swine flu back to other pigs. Usually viruses that infect one species do not often infect others. However, if the species are kept very closely together, it is more likely that mutations can occur that allow new strains to develop with the ability to cross from one type of animal to another. Viruses can mutate very rapidly. Since they are non-living microscopic organisms (microbes) and not actually living animal or plant organisms (like bacteria and microscopic fungi), they can combine with the cells of host animals and change the genetic material in those host cells to reproduce themselves. Sometimes that assimilation can also change the makeup to a new strain of microbe which is then replicated by the damaged cells as well. This cross-species type of mutation of viruses has happened in the past when pigs and ducks or other birds were kept very closely together. That is how the Avian (bird) flu became a problem for people. First bird flu was mutated to a strain that could be caught by the pigs they were closely around. Once infecting the pigs, other mutations occurred that allowed their bird flu-swine viruses to mutate to viruses that people who were in close contact with pigs could catch. The cross-contamination, through mutations of the viruses infecting the physiologically similar pigs, allows new strains to develop to which people have no immunity passed down from generation to generation. The 2009 Swine Flu is doubly difficult for us to create effective vaccines (which would help to teach our immune systems how to fight the virus). This is because the new strain of virus mutated within the pigs where it could merge genetic materials of the bird viruses and swine viruses that the pigs had been exposed to. The 2009 Swine Flu virus contains material that is from the bird flu as well as from the swine flu viruses. We would have an easier time developing our vaccine for this flu virus if it had been formed from one or the other, and not both animal viruses. As it is, we must start more "from scratch". The whole process of inter-species infections can also work back the other way. So now we can get swine flu from each other, from infected pigs, and we can give it to pigs who can infect each other. Because aspects of human viral strains are incorporated into the animal viral strains using the pig as a "middle man", newer viruses are developed that are able to cross the species boundaries. Crowding, of people with each other and with pigs, and pigs with each other and with other animals, is one of the major reasons these inter-species viruses can occur.

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jinn winks
at |7:38 PM|