China or Russia probably reinfected people with influenza. That sounds like the ravings of a conspiracy theorist. But it’s not and he explains to us why in this YouTube video. Fortunately we have a vaccine to protect us against the common strains of flu.
At about 4 minutes before the end during the Q & A session, Michael Worobey said
(quote)
“In 1957 the Spanish flu like H1N1 went extinct when H2N2 emerged. In 1968 H3N2 kicked out H2N2. But in 1977, there was a kind of minipandemic and H1N1 re-emerged. Ah, and bottom line is, if you look at the molecular clocks it was frozen in time, not even since 1957 but it was a 1950s H1N1 strain. Ah, and it is virtually certain that it was an accidental escape, probably from an experimental strain, ah, from China or Russia. And so yes, the worst pathogen in human history was accidentally rereleased, ah and not too many people know about it until you guys.”
So you now know that the conspiracy theory about the Chinese or Russians releasing a virus is probably true, but it happened almost 70 years ago. His lecture is worth watching, just to see that he knows what he is talking about, he does this virus research as his profession and he’s not a conspiracy theorist.
The following screenshot was from his slides. These approximately ten thousand nucleotides make up the genome of the Spanish Flu. This simple six page description of the molecules that make up the virus, which can each be read (on a full sized photo), are what killed 50 million or more people – about 3% of the world’s population – in the 1918 flu pandemic, and millions of people since. It’s so simple it’s not considered to be alive, but it is horribly contagious, invasive and deadly – not just to humans, but to birds, hogs, horses and other animals.
The H part is the ‘Key’ that unlocks the cell so that the virus can go inside. The N is the scalpel that opens the cell membrane up to let out all the replicated viruses inside the cell, to invade the rest of the body.
