Originally posted by: Meuge
Originally posted by: purepolly
Originally posted by: smack Down
It kills people 20-40 because those are the people taking care of chickens in those countries.
No, it kills these people because they tend to have the healthiest immune systems
Purepolly is right.
The inflammatory response elicited by massive lung infection appears to be far more damaging than the viral-mediated cell killing itself. That's why early treatment with antivirals (preferably after suspected exposure, and before symptoms appear) is crucial.
The catch-22 is that while normally such an immune reaction would be treated with aggressive immunosuppressants and anti-inflammatories, doing that will provide an avenue for the virus to escape destruction, and will result in the virus becoming the primary mediator of damage, as opposed to the host immune system. So either way, the victim is (forgive the bluntness) monumentally screwed.
That being said, considering that this virus has been circulating in the poultry for a couple of decades now, it is unlikely that it will gain the capability for human-to-human transmission without major changes. Furthermore, historically, when a flu virus crossed from xenobiotic to endemic, it has usually become significantly attenuated, so even if H5N1 does become transmissible among the population, the consensus is that it will lose much of its dreaded lethality in doing so.
Panic has never solved any problem, nor has it ever been helpful in formulating rational strategy (see the Nuclear Power thread for a demonstration of the power and stupidity of scaremongering). Is there a chance that there will arise a strain of influenza that will wipe out a significant part of the human race? Absolutely... Is that likely to happen within our lifetimes? Not at all. So get your FluMist vaccines, and enjoy the global warming.
