Lethal secrets of 1918 flu virus

[Watchman]

Lethal secrets of 1918 flu virus

Millions were killed by the virus

Scientists who recreated "Spanish flu" - the 1918 virus which killed up to 50m people - have witnessed its remarkable killing power first hand.

The lungs of infected monkeys were destroyed in just days as their immune systems went into overdrive after a Canadian laboratory rebuilt the virus.

The reason for the lethal nature of the 1918 flu was never fully understood.

But the experts behind this test say they have found a human gene which may help explain its unusual virulence.
This research provides an important piece in the puzzle of the 1918 virus
Darwyn Kobasa
Public Health Agency of Canada


They are hoping to help control any future pandemic and believe that the strain may hold clues that will help them.

Despite the large number of casualties at the time, doctors had no way to preserve tissue samples taken from infected patients, so researchers used an ingenious method to overcome this.

Frozen body

The preserved body of a flu victim buried in Arctic permafrost was exhumed, and they painstakingly extracted the genetic material needed to work out the structure of the H1N1 virus.

Then, in a maximum "biosafety" facility at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory they reconstructed a fully functioning virus, and infected macaque monkeys to see what would happen.

Writing in the journal Nature, they reported that the results were startling. Symptoms appeared within 24 hours of exposure to the virus, and the subsequent destruction of lung tissue was so widespread that, had the monkeys not been killed a few days later, they would literally have drowned in their own blood.

The results match those seen when mice were infected in an earlier study and are very similar to those described in human patients at the time the virus was at its height.

Dangerous virus

Darwyn Kobasa, a research scientist with the Public Health Agency of Canada, and lead author of the research, defended the decision to recreate one of the most dangerous viruses in history.

He said: "This research provides an important piece in the puzzle of the 1918 virus, helping us to better understand influenza viruses and their potential to cause pandemics."

However, it is not the virus that is directly causing the damage to the lungs - it is the body's own response to infection.

Immune system proteins that can damage infected tissue were found at much higher levels following H1N1 infection compared with other viral infections.

Analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW) revealed that a key component of the immune system, a gene called RIG-1 appeared to be involved.

Levels of the protein produced by the gene were lower in tissue infected with the 1918 virus, suggesting it had a method of switching it off, causing immune defences to run wild.
Many influenza virologists remain nervous about creating and experimenting with a reconstructed 1918 Spanish flu virus
Dr Jim Robertson
National Institute of Biological Standards and Control


This ability to alter the body's immune response is shared with the most recent candidate for mutation into a pandemic strain, the H5N1 avian flu.

Experts are worried that if the virus changes so that it can infect humans easily, it could again be far more lethal than normal seasonal flu.

"What we see with the 1918 virus in infected monkeys is also what we see with H5N1 viruses," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, who led the analysis at UW.

"Things may be happening at an early time point (in infection), but we may be able to step in and stop that reaction."

Preparing for pandemic

Dr Ronald Cutler, an infectious diseases researcher at the University of East London, said: "Knowing how that over stimulation takes place could lead to the development of new methods to treat these diseases so we are better prepared for any future pandemic."

Dr Jim Robertson from the UK's National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, said the decision to recreate the virus was justified.

"Many influenza virologists remain nervous about creating and experimenting with a reconstructed 1918 Spanish flu virus, an extremely dangerous virus which disappeared from the world long ago.

"However, it cannot be denied that the information that has been derived from this experiment is exciting and represents an important milestone in understanding the severity of these highly pathogenic types of influenza viruses."

 

[Watchman]

Having a look into this further, I suspect that the source material for this 'Virus' came from Tunguska. Check out the BBC link somebody else posted and the dates involved between it's approximate 'impact' and the rise of the so-called "Spanish" Flu pandemic (it WAS a TRUE Pandemic because it crossed national Borders).

Back in those days, it would've taken a Virus MANY years to proliferate from the crash site thru to large, civilised areas of population.

Perhaps samples were taken of the lodestone Virus, kept on Ice and we are experiencing an accidental release.

Alternatively, we are experiencing a release of a genetically modified version (think about it - Genomes are being broken down and recorded EVERY SINGLE DAY) that has broken thru CDC and/or other Countries Govt or Private firewalls.

I think this website is based in the US, I am in the UK, check out the 1970's BBC TV series "Survivors" and all that it tried to extoll.

Only then will you understand how easy it would be for One Single Person, who is infected, to travel the Globe and infect the GLOBAL population.

The US CDC needs to quarantine Mexico ASAP.

John Crichton.

 

[HTOLAS]

Mr Crichton seems have forgot that there was mass movements of people just before 1918, probably almost as much as today. People went from the US, Asia and Africa to Europe in large numbers and in cramped conditions. Why? Soldiers were being brought to European fronts to fight WW1!

It was this that probably brought vector US hog farmers enlisted into the army into contact with unprotected Europeans, Africans and Asians. And of course, conditions of war are rarely hygienic.

Having a look into this further, I suspect that the source material for this 'Virus' came from Tunguska. Check out the BBC link somebody else posted and the dates involved between it's approximate 'impact' and the rise of the so-called "Spanish" Flu pandemic (it WAS a TRUE Pandemic because it crossed national Borders).

Back in those days, it would've taken a Virus MANY years to proliferate from the crash site thru to large, civilised areas of population.

Perhaps samples were taken of the lodestone Virus, kept on Ice and we are experiencing an accidental release.

Alternatively, we are experiencing a release of a genetically modified version (think about it - Genomes are being broken down and recorded EVERY SINGLE DAY) that has broken thru CDC and/or other Countries Govt or Private firewalls.

I think this website is based in the US, I am in the UK, check out the 1970's BBC TV series "Survivors" and all that it tried to extoll.

Only then will you understand how easy it would be for One Single Person, who is infected, to travel the Globe and infect the GLOBAL population.

The US CDC needs to quarantine Mexico ASAP.

John Crichton.

 

[pia]

From Wiki:

The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world. It was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly Influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin of the virus.[1] Most of its victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks which predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or otherwise weakened patients. The pandemic lasted from March 1918 to June 1920,[2] spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. It is estimated that anywhere from 20 to 100 million people were killed worldwide,[3] or the approximate equivalent of one third of the population of Europe,[4][5][6] more than double the number killed in World War I.[7] This extraordinary toll resulted from the extremely high illness rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms. The pandemic is estimated to have affected up to one billion people: more than half the world's population at the time.[8]

Scientists have used tissue samples from frozen victims to reproduce the virus for study. Given the strain's extreme virulence there has been controversy regarding the wisdom of such research. Among the conclusions of this research is that the virus kills via a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body's immune system) which explains its unusually severe nature and the concentrated age profile of its victims. The strong immune systems of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults caused fewer deaths.

The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but is estimated at 2.5 to 5% of those who were infected died. Note this does not mean that 2.5-5% of the human population died; with 20% or more of the world population suffering from the disease to some extent, a case-fatality ratio this high would mean that about 0.5-1% ( ≈50 million) of the whole population died.[11] Influenza may have killed as many as 25 million in its first 25 weeks. Older estimates say it killed 40–50 million people[3] while current estimates say 50 million to 100 million people worldwide were killed.[12] This pandemic has been described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed more people than the Black Death.[13]

As many as 17 million died in India, about 5% of India's population at the time.[14] In Japan, 23 million persons were affected, and 390,000 died.[15] In the U.S., about 28% of the population suffered, and 500,000 to 675,000 died.[16] In Britain as many as 250,000 died; in France more than 400,000.[17] In Canada approximately 50,000 died.[18] Entire villages perished in Alaska and southern Africa.[which?] Ras Tafari (the future Haile Selassie) was one of the first Ethiopians who contracted influenza but survived,[19] although many of his subjects did not; estimates for the fatalities in the capital city, Addis Ababa, range from 5,000 to 10,000, with some experts opining that the number was even higher,[20] while in British Somaliland one official there estimated that 7% of the native population died from influenza.[21] In Australia an estimated 12,000 people died and in the Fiji Islands, 14% of the population died during only two weeks, and in Western Samoa 22%.

This huge death toll was caused by an extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms.[3] Indeed, symptoms in 1918 were so unusual that initially influenza was misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid. One observer wrote, "One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred."[12] The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung.[9]

The unusually severe disease killed between 2 and 20% of those infected, as opposed to the more usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1%.[9][clarification needed][12] Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old.[22] This is unusual since influenza is normally most deadly to the very young (under age 2) and the very old (over age 70), and may have been due to partial protection caused by exposure to a previous Russian flu pandemic of 1889.[23]

Even in Indo, understood that substantial portion of population wiped out in Bali.