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#172715 - 05/04/09 08:45 PM Swine Flu recombined with HIV
clearwater Offline
Old Hand

Registered: 03/19/05
Posts: 1177
Loc: Channeled Scablands
Had not heard this mentioned yet. Appologize if it has been.

"Health authorities are particularly worried that the capability to mutate already exhibited by the virus could eventually let it combine with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS."

http://www.upi.com/news/issueoftheday/20...43071241461493/

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#172718 - 05/04/09 08:53 PM Re: Swine Flu recombined with HIV [Re: clearwater]
JohnE Offline
Addict

Registered: 06/10/08
Posts: 601
Loc: Southern Cal
I'm sure that some "Lifecaps" vitamins will take care of that problem if it should occur...;^)

JohnE
_________________________
JohnE

"and all the lousy little poets
comin round
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson"

The Future/Leonard Cohen


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#172719 - 05/04/09 08:58 PM Re: Swine Flu recombined with HIV [Re: clearwater]
Arney Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/15/05
Posts: 2485
Loc: California
What??? That sounds really off-the-wall to me. I read the article but my first reaction is that maybe the reporter misheard something. I have never heard of the possibility of flu and HIV recombining.

I wonder if maybe what was actually being said was related to a possible scenario where regions with large numbers of HIV/AIDS patients, like Africa, could see very high mortality numbers because they are particularly susceptible to a novel flu bug. I'll have to wait for more press articles to confirm this statement.

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#172721 - 05/04/09 09:13 PM Re: Swine Flu recombined with HIV [Re: Arney]
Susan Offline
Geezer

Registered: 01/21/04
Posts: 5163
Loc: W. WA
Swine Flu could combine with leprosy.

Leprosy could combine with malaria.

Malaria could combine with leptospirosis.

Leptospirosis could combine with althlete's foot.

So, what's going in in D.C. that we aren't paying attention to?

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#172724 - 05/04/09 09:57 PM Re: Swine Flu recombined with HIV [Re: Susan]
Am_Fear_Liath_Mor Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 08/03/07
Posts: 3078
Quote:
Swine Flu could combine with leprosy.

Leprosy could combine with malaria.

Malaria could combine with leptospirosis.

Leptospirosis could combine with althlete's foot.

So, what's going in in D.C. that we aren't paying attention to?


You haven't been down to Donald Rumsfeld's potting shed recently have you? whistle



Edited by Am_Fear_Liath_Mor (05/04/09 09:58 PM)

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#172726 - 05/04/09 10:18 PM Re: Swine Flu recombined with HIV [Re: Susan]
Art_in_FL Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/01/07
Posts: 2432
Let's see ... Combine swine flue, bird flu, Ebola, Necrotizing fasciitis, and yellow fever ... we could get a disease that lives in birds, is transmitted by mosquitoes and human to human contact, the first symptom is when your eyes begin to bleed and then you get diarrhea and a debilitating fever, your skin dissolves. Then cough up a lung and die of pneumonia.

It is interesting game to dream up a combination but, seeing as that all of these diseases have been around in some form for thousands of years and they haven't recombined yet tells me that the odds are low. The worrying aspect of this is that humans are invading environments that we haven't had much experience and getting exposed to diseases which were once isolated to small populations of animals in remote locations.

HIV is thought to have originated as a virus that had adapted to monkeys and was benign withing that population. That war, and famine drove populations to go deeper into the forests to hunt monkeys for meat. That during skinning or processing the infected monkey blood got into an open wound. That this got into the local human population where it spread.

The combination of pressures for scarce resources forcing people into remote locations as the human population grows and our use of rapid world-wide travel combine to dig up previously unknown diseases and rapidly stir them into the pot.

As I understand it exchange of genetic information between diseases is possible but fairly rare. The much more common event is exchange between strains of rapidly resorting diseases. Influenza has one of the fastest resort rate of any disease. It routinely changes every few months and exchanges information between strains as a matter of course.

The good news is that these modifications are not directed. They are a random process. The latest swine flu looks to be a result of recent interactions of two strains of swine flu and this is very communicable but not very deadly.

The bad news is that if this swine flu recombines with the existing, and still present bird flu, and the random recombination results in a virus that is as communicable as the present swine flu and as deadly as the existing bird flu, which kills about half of the people who get it, we could be in for a rough time. Being a random process this may never happen. Or it may have happened yesterday.

In the end everyone dies.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39236

The bright spot is that even give everything going wrong the human race is not going to be wiped out. Because, like the various diseases, our immune defense systems are adapting, learning.

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#172728 - 05/04/09 10:38 PM Re: Swine Flu recombined with HIV [Re: Susan]
Grouch Offline
Enthusiast

Registered: 07/02/08
Posts: 395
Loc: Ohio
Originally Posted By: Susan
So, what's going in in D.C. that we aren't paying attention to?

That's what I've been wondering ever since the hype started about this flu bug.

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#172729 - 05/04/09 11:14 PM Re: Swine Flu recombined with HIV [Re: Arney]
Arney Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/15/05
Posts: 2485
Loc: California
I think my hunch was correct. I think a reporter read a WHO document and misinterpreted what it says. I couldn't really find any more articles mentioning that possibility, which is a tip off. This other article pointed me to the apparent source of the flu + HIV mutating idea. Then I went and found the original WHO document here .

There's one sentence in the short document that apparently led to this surprising news report:

"Although there are inadequate data to predict the impact of a possible human influenza pandemic on HIV-affected populations, interactions between HIV/AIDS and A(H1N1) influenza could be significant."

However, "interaction" in this context is not referring to flu and HIV mixing genetically, creating some new super virus. It is simply referring (if you read the whole document, it's quite clear) to the possible additional complications of HIV-infected people also getting infected with the H1N1 flu and being more susceptible because of their weakened immune systems.

Anyway, that's my take on it.

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#172746 - 05/05/09 01:57 AM Re: Swine Flu recombined with HIV [Re: ]
ki4buc Offline
Old Hand

Registered: 11/10/03
Posts: 710
Loc: Augusta, GA
There is a nice article in the April 2009 article of Scientific American about predicting the next pandemic. I had previously posted to the other flu thread about the 6 phases of a pandemic. This one does a similar thing but makes it a little clearer that the CDC site.

(summarized)
Stage 5 - exists in both animals and humans. Can progress through multiple "generation" of victims in both animals and humans.

Stage 6. "Pathogen has become exclusive to humans."

The article also refers to the HIV virus as being at a "pandemic state".

Wolfe, Nathan (2009). Preventing the Next Pandemic. Scientific American, 300-4. pg. 76 - 81.

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#172748 - 05/05/09 02:16 AM Re: Swine Flu recombined with HIV [Re: ki4buc]
Grouch Offline
Enthusiast

Registered: 07/02/08
Posts: 395
Loc: Ohio
Disclaimer: I haven't read any of the material on this so maybe my questions are just plain ignorance.

Why is the term "recombined" being used? Were swine flu and HIV combined at some point in the past?

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