nano of early warning...
I once read a description from a Virologist regarding Virus evolution as the following (summarized via my bourbon impacted brain cells): Virus evolution/genetic drift/recombination to eventual pandemic is akin to a slot machine. You drop a coin and pull the lever. Drop and coin and pull the lever. Ad infinitum. And odds are against you that you will hit the winning combination of fruit and dollar signs. But if you drop enough coins and pull the lever enough times, eventually you will hit the winning combination. And virus evolution is much the same. But in this case, there are billions and billions, and maybe trillions and trillions of virus' drifting/evolving/recombining at any given second. That's a lot of fruit and dollar signs. And THAT is why there is a influenza epidemic/pandemic, on average, every 30-40 years. The last minor pandemic was 1968... 40 years ago. Before that, another minor pandemic in the 50's. Before that, the big one in 1918. So, statistically, we are due. Minor or major pandemic, we are due. And, like it or not, statistics or the law of averages must be satisfied. [[[ Sidebar: On a related note, we are statistically due (overdue?) for a PR... ]]] That's just the way of things. Some call my 'Law of Averages' position alarmist. But that's okay. I don't mind being called alarmist... when I'm right. Statistics never lie. I've been watching developments in Pakistan and Egypt closely and things there are growing scary. And doctors are now realizing that applying Tamiflu blankets over infected areas actually blunts the H5N1 tests making positive infections appear as false negatives. When a negative test result patient drowns in their own fluids from pneumonia, doctors begin to doubt their negative test results. And the Tamiflu Conundrum is born. It becomes a stealth pandemic. So when things go pandemic, we won't actually know that there is a problem until the bodies start to pile up. All the while, the WHO will be saying, "What?!!! What bodies?!!! What?!!! Nothing to see here... move along." hehaho. I just really, really hope that things hold off for another year or two... or just long enough for NNVC to build manufacturing capacity. Regardless of being Hawkish or Dovish about a future pandemic, the law of averages demands it's satisfaction.
statistician10x
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..."But the germ, scientists agree, is a time bomb in search of the right fuse. Viruses evolve rapidly, and a few genetic changes in the right places could enable the avian flu to easily infect people and ignite a firestorm of human illness akin to the 1918 global flu epidemic that killed tens of millions. Even more worrisome, scientists fear the pandemic could be well underway before they realize it, unless they can develop an early warning system to detect when the germ has made a lethal change in its genetic clothing."...
