Swine Flu Symptoms

Swine Flu Symptoms and Outbreak, Should You Be Worried?

Swine Flu, Bird flu, or avian flu, is in the news again because of recent deaths attributed to it. The worries surrounding this particular virus come from ignorance about it. This situation sets up propaganda that leads to paranoia. So here are a few facts that provide the basics about what flu viruses are and how the bird flu virus is different.

Brief Details on Swine Flu

The official scientific name for the bird flu virus is H5N1. All flu viruses have an H number and an N number. The H refers to hemagglutinin, which is a protein that is responsible for binding the virus to the cell that is being infected. The name hemagglutinin comes from the protein’s ability to cause red blood cells to clump together. Three distinct hemagglutinins, H1, H2, and H3 are normally found in human infections; 13 others have been found in animal flu viruses, including H5 in bird flu.

Neuraminidase (”N”) is an enzyme that aids in the efficiency of virus release from cells. Neuraminidase promotes the release of newly made viruses from infected cells. Two different neuraminidases (N1 and N2) have been found in human viruses; 7 others in other animals.

If flu viruses seem simple, it is because they are. All viruses are simple. They have just enough genetic and structural machinery to do the only thing that they do: infect and reproduce. Technically, they don’t really reproduce themselves. What they really do is take over the host cell and command it to make more viruses. What this means is that your body is the culprit in spreading the infection, because the virus depends completely on your cells for its own reproduction.

Core Issues About Human Infection by Bird Flu

Bird flu spreads among birds, not humans. People who have contracted bird flu have generally been infected by direct contact with diseased birds. Preventing this infection is why, at the peak of the bird flu scare, the news was full of reports of the destruction of domestic birds (and some wild ones) that were suspected of carrying the virus. Millions of chickens were destroyed overall. However, the spread of the virus among birds was and is to this day continually reinvigorated by migratory birds that carry it around the world.

H5N1 is a bird to bird infection, and very rarely a bird to human one. The source of paranoia about bird flu becoming a human pandemic comes from the fears of scientists who worry about the virus mutating into a human to human infection. This hasn’t happened yet, and nobody knows how likely it is. Swine flu, which mutated into a human to human infection, is always cited as the example for how an animal virus can become a human virus.