by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: May 06, 2009

Every bit of genetic material that is available for testing is now being tested and reviewed so that a vaccine can be built to withstand the onslaught of next season's flu arrival. This will be around the first of October here in the Northern Hemisphere. The sub-strain here is H1N1 and is from animal to human strain. The reporters keep saying this swine flu virus is a new strain yet the swine flu of 1918 was also of this strain.

What's new each flu season is not one isolated bit of genetic material such as the swine flue or the avian flu or human type flu but the combinations and the particular arrangement of the virus strain, or it's DNA. It's much like a new baby, little bits and pieces of genetic material from parents that make it into a whole new never to be seen before human being. (I apologize for using this analogy but I could not think of a better one.) All life seeks to replicate itself and flu viruses are no different.

Accounting for the differences and the unexpected is that viruses, as far as I know, have no moms and pops and have to make do with whatever strands of almost like material they come across. It tries to make a copy of itself but the medium in which it grows is different and it makes use of whatever it drifts into. The initial infection is stronger since the person will be having no antibodies against it, but as it moves along from person to person it weakens. Each contact that has built up a resistant to it will make it that less likely to be out in full force the time it gets things bubbling in its new host.

And too, the genetic material has less chance of 'going hog wild' (no pun intended) if the victim is in good health and has an immune system that can wield its mighty sword against the unwelcome villain. Most who succumb to any kind of influenza virus are not in good health. These are infants or small children and the already ill from some other source, and old people. This has always been that way and in each flu season this is usually the case. A pandemic is different and when healthy younger people are succumbing to the illness then the flu investigators know that there's something new in flu land.

Essentially the genetics of a flu, its constitutional makeup, means how pathogenic - strong disease causing potential - the offending microorganism is. This epidemic that started April 23 or shortly before in Veracruz Mexico was virile indeed. Up to now, May 4, 2007, there have been nineteen deaths in Mexico. The puzzling and heart breaking part is that the victims were between the ages twenty one and thirty nine.

Learn more about this author, Effie Moore Salem.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.