Why is the bird flu that has us all so worried not transmitted human to human (yet)? The virus doesn’t bind to receptors in the upper respitory tract (i.e. nose and throat) and instead binds to receptors deep in the respitory tract (think lung, specifically alveoli). So scientists will now start monitoring for any changes in the virus’s ability to latch on and invade upper respitory tract cells, which would mean easy human to human transmission. Whether such a shift is detected in the lab before people start dropping like, well, birds, is more than an academic question.
Posts Tagged Avian Flu
Avian Flu Transmission
Mar 23
Trust The Experts
Apr 13
When I read the story in the paper this morning (Yes Virginia, I still stain my hands with soy based ink in the morning skimming an old timey product I don’t trust), I was surprised by the revelation that in instead of waiting for air travel to disperse a deadly new flu virus around the world, researchers were speeding up the process by shipping 50 year old deadly flu virus around the world. A company included it as part of a test kit used in routine quality control for labs.
What were they thinking? They weren’t.
The good news is that people born before 1968 may have some immunity, so the funWife and I are OK. The bad news is my kids were born after then.
