Swine Flu

[jsarno]

Originally Posted by saden1

This post is dedicated to 70Chip.

I gotta say, I was reading the posts on this, and they were getting annoying...I wasn't even going to post, but I saw this and it made me laugh. Seriously laughed out loud.

1st- This is NOT Obama's fault, and keep in mind how much I didn't like the idea of Obama in office. This is not a political issue. I'll throw dirt on Obama when he deserves to have dirt thrown on him, this is not one of those times. It's annoying to try to discuss something and politics are always thrown in. Let's move on.

2nd- there was a school out here, Mira Mesa, closed because of this. I guess there was a case and everyone freaked out. Just out of curiousity, how did this happen? Is it from the people eating infected pigs? I really don't know much about it, and to be honest, not going to do a whole lot of research on it when I have a lot of other things to do.

[FRPLG]

Originally Posted by jsarno

2nd- there was a school out here, Mira Mesa, closed because of this. I guess there was a case and everyone freaked out. Just out of curiousity, how did this happen? Is it from the people eating infected pigs? I really don't know much about it, and to be honest, not going to do a whole lot of research on it when I have a lot of other things to do.

Long story short(as possible).

Every living mammal has it's own version of the flu. For these species their version affects them like ours generally affects us.

In Mexico a guy with a mild case of human flu worked with pigs. A pig had swine flu. That flu-ridden worker contracted the swine flu. Tis rarely happens but isn't impossible. Usually this is no big deal beyond the orginal affected. He/she may die but the disease rarely transfers from pigs so it's almost impossible for it to pass from the affected human to another. In this particular case because the worker already had the human flu the swine interacted with the swine flu to create a more virulent human flu that is passable. This is called reassortment. The viruses pass DNA back and forth and create new strains. This is why every year they have to come up with new flu shots...because every year there is a new flu virus that came from two or more flus reassorting in a host and then passed along.

[jsarno]

Originally Posted by FRPLG

Long story short(as possible).

Every living mammal has it's own version of the flu. For these species their version affects them like ours generally affects us.

In Mexico a guy with a mild case of human flu worked with pigs. A pig had swine flu. That flu-ridden worker contracted the swine flu. Tis rarely happens but isn't impossible. Usually this is no big deal beyond the orginal affected. He/she may die but the disease rarely transfers from pigs so it's almost impossible for it to pass from the affected human to another. In this particular case because the worker already had the human flu the swine interacted with the swine flu to create a more virulent human flu that is passable. This is called reassortment. The viruses pass DNA back and forth and create new strains. This is why every year they have to come up with new flu shots...because every year there is a new flu virus that came from two or more flus reassorting in a host and then passed along.

Nice explanation...thanks. I didn't think it was possible for those things to happen, but I guess they can.