Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: dubious
  • Music: Garden Verge, 'Shadow of a Habit.'

In other news, plague.

Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly. Because that's always a good idea. Basically, there's a three-gene sequence which tells the virus go 'you know what? The upper respiratory tract is dull. Let's go have a party in the lungs!' This leads to pneumonia, which leads to death. And since it's viral pneumonia, rather than bacterial pneumonia, it's both droplet-based and unperturbed by silly little things like antibiotics. Whee!

To quote the article: "The three genes -- called PA, PB1, and PB2 -- along with a 1918 version of the nucleoprotein or NP gene, made modern seasonal flu kill ferrets in much the same way as the original 1918 flu, Kawaoka's team found." Now. Maybe I'm being a little silly here, but does building a better flu really sound like a good idea? To anybody? I've read The Stand. I don't feel like moving to Colorado. I love pandemics in history and in theory, but I'd really rather not have 'They Fucked Around With Flu' stamped on mankind's collective tombstone.

In other news, small boys still hold firecrackers in their bare hands, because maybe this time, it's going to go differently.
Tags: mad science, pandemic time
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  • 52 comments

biguglymandoll

January 7 2009, 19:25:48 UTC 8 years ago

Yeah, they'd been working on that for a year or two at least - I was reading about the project a while ago on ProMed. You might enjoy ProMed if you don't subscribe already - http://www.promedmail.org/. ProMED mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (http://www.isid.org/). They send me emails about people and plants getting killed by neat things every day! ;-)

Anyway, there was a quiet broo-ca-ca at the time they started, something about nervous people wanting them to use a nice Level-5 secure facility instead of the level-3 one I think they started in.

And last, concerning the short tale of the small boys holding firecrackers in their bare hands, my friend Bernie told me the most common last words of people from his town: "Hey ya'll, watch this!"

almeda

January 8 2009, 01:27:26 UTC 8 years ago

Followed closely, at least in scientific professions, by, "Huh. THAT's weird ..."

biguglymandoll

January 8 2009, 01:58:46 UTC 8 years ago

LOL, you got it.

seanan_mcguire

January 8 2009, 15:29:22 UTC 8 years ago

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, ProMed.