H7N9
tsmith | June 19, 2013Student guest post by Julia Wiederholt
I don’t think there is a single person that can claim to have never had the joyous experience (sarcasm intended) of suffering from the influenza. We all recognize the common symptoms that accompany this infectious little virus taking up residence in our bodies: the chills accompanying a fever, the total body ache, the nausea, and overall feeling of malaise. Typically this virus comes and goes within a week without serious side effects. When novel strains of the influenza pop up however, there can be more serious complications as your body lacks a…
lborkowski | April 25, 2013A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Mike Elk in the Washington Post: The Texas fertilizer plant explosion cannot be forgotten
Laurie Garrett in Foreign Policy: The Big One? Is China covering up another flu pandemic -- or getting it right this time? (About the H7N9 flu, which has been confirmed in 108 patients in China)
Kari Lyderson at Reporting on Health: 'That Feeling Doesn't Go Away': Mental Health and Undocumented Children
David Schultz in Kaiser Health News: Nurses Fighting State by State for Minimum Staffing Laws
Emily Badger at Atlantic Cities: New Chicago Plan: Pedestrians Come…
tsmith | April 10, 2013I have a new article up today at Slate, examining the emergent H7N9 avian influenzas, and a bit of a review of "bird flu" in general:
While we were carefully watching H5N1 in Asia and Europe, another influenza virus—2009 H1N1—appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Ultimately traced back to swine, this virus was easily spread between people, but unlike H5N1, it wasn’t any more deadly than our normal yearly influenza viruses (which, it should be noted, still kill on the order of 36,000 Americans each year). And now, while we’re still working on understanding how H5N1 and H1N1 have jumped between…
gregladen | April 9, 2013There is a new outbreak of a bird flu in eastern China, referred to as H7N9. The first thing you need to know is that human populations have not been previously exposed (to any degree) to H7 or N9 type virus, so if this virus were to mutate in such as way as to spread human to human, the result could be very serious. Moreover, the "H" component of the virus is thought to have a genetic sequence that is known to readily mutate into form that would be target (bind to) human rather than bird cells.
The virus has been found in chickens, pigeons, and ducks in markets where live birds are sold…