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H5N1 virus isolated from infected dairy worker is 100% lethal in ferrets
- jjtheblunt 2y agoVery first paragraph: A sample of the virus taken from the worker was 100% lethal in ferrets, though it spread inefficiently and does not appear to be continuing to spread.
- andrewxdiamond 2y agoIn my understanding, a high rate of lethality is very counter-productive for viruses. If you kill the host, it can’t really spread.
- seanthemon 2y agoYep, an incredibly bad plague inc strategy, best to have it dormant and spread like wildfire.
- EarlKing 2y agoMadagascar has closed its ports.
- burnt-resistor 2y agoAlways start in Madagascar or Greenland, and stick to infectivity upgrades before lethality ones.
- EarlKing 2y agoEven then it seems like a crapshoot whether or not it works, because somehow if you become highly infective but otherwise are flying under the radar you'll still be detected and suddenly all governments start closing up shop... or at least that was the case in Pandemic II. I can't speak to any of the clones.
- eru 2y agoIt's a bit of a shame that Plague Inc does not support re-infection. Once someone had the disease, they are immune for life. And the only goal the game really supports is killing everyone, instead of eg going for the largest sustainable population of your organism. (Think more like one of the bugs that cause the common cold, and less like the black death.)
- bee_rider 2y agoIt also doesn’t seem very realistic that the virus can infect everybody and then evolve to start killing them, and somehow the past infections all get the updated orders to kill, haha. Gameplay concessions I guess.
- eru 2y agoI can live with that particular lack of realism. :) See https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AcceptableBreaksFromReality https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AcceptableBreaks...
- shiroiushi 2y agoOne of these days, someone's going to genetically engineer a virus that spreads easily to infect as many people as possible, but stay dormant for a few years while in this phase, then suddenly it'll turn lethal. Someone from the future might use a time machine to try to come back and gain information about the virus, and then even try to stop its spread once he finds the rogue researcher releasing it at airports, but then will tragically find out that you can't change the timeline, even if you can travel back in time.
- redundantly 2y agoHaha I love that movie!
- kijin 2y agoIt also depends on the density and mobility of your host population. Ebola kills too quickly for hosts to move around and spread it, but that's in small villages in the jungle. What if there's just enough time for the host to take a crowded train and attend a Presidential campaign rally with tens of thousands of other people before feeling too sick? This might be a better strategy for an ambitious virus in the post-Covid world than a slowly escalating illness that just makes people call in sick and stay home.
- jjtheblunt 2y ago> Ebola kills too quickly for hosts to move around and spread it too quickly for _human_ hosts to spread it, but maybe that's where multi-species hosts comes into play. perhaps it lingers nonlethal in some related species? (like rabies in bats, for example)
- nabla9 2y agoA long combined incubation period can counteract the effects of high lethality. Madagaskar staying safe is not good enough IRL.
- colechristensen 2y ago>A long combined incubation period can counteract the effects of high lethality. Reduce, not counteract. Viruses evolve to spread, not to kill. There just _is_ evolutionary pressure against high lethality.
- emeraldd 2y agoI’m sorry for the ferrets, but can someone explain the significance of that lethality to humans? Other than those with pet ferrets? Are they a good proxy to humans that I wasn’t aware of?
- nordsieck 2y agoFrom the article: > Ferrets are a common model for studying how influenza viruses that primarily affect birds are able to adapt to mammals, a topic that Kawaoka and his colleagues at UW–Madison’s Influenza Research Institute investigate since such a jump could trigger an influenza pandemic.
- tptacek 2y agothe dairy worker experienced mild symptoms and fully recovered
- freen 2y agoIf it’s communicable, that means they probably infected many others. Several million similar infections can easily mutate into something worse. What is bad is its novelty to our immune system, not necessarily its initial mortality rate.
- lolinder 2y agoBut this headline is getting clicks because of the initial mortality rate number, which is in ferrets and obviously not applicable to humans since the human who got it had only mild symptoms. It was a series of overreactions in the media to studies like this one that led me to be skeptical of the news reporting about COVID in its early days. I came around, but a lot of others didn't. Overblown health scare headlines cause real harm for science communication.
- noduerme 2y agoDosage and location of infection matter. The ferrets were given a high dose of virus and went on to pass it to others through the air. The farmworkers so far have gotten small droplets in the eye, and still this shows that the virus has mutated at least somewhat in humans since the bovine iteration, as only the human-mediated version was able to effectively attack mammalian lung cells. We are the pigs in this scenario. If you read the article, you'll see that was the point of testing on ferrets, not to see whether ferrets would die from it, nor to perform any kind of gain-of-function research. What this shows is that the virus is able to jump the barrier to mammalian lung cells with a few iterations, and already has by way of some human exposure. There is no particular reason to think that a lung infection in humans wouldn't be 100% lethal as it is in ferrets or sea lions. So far, the only infections in humans in the US that we know of have been essentially relegated to the eyes. But it appears that the virus is primed for more than that now. I'm not suggesting that the media go crazy causing a panic, or that the media do anything at all, since they only seem to inflame every situation. But looking at the data from this report, I think it is reasonable to assess that we're on a tragectory toward a highly lethal airborne H5 virus, and take appropriate steps to shore up vaccines and antiviral stocks.
- phendrenad2 2y ago[flagged]
- ls612 2y agoThe human worker experienced only mild symptoms and recovered, from tfa.
- fuckyah 2y ago[dead]
- analog31 2y agoNext, emergency approval for an at-home H5N1 test.
- ctoth 2y agoApologies for the headline, but I've been tracking H5N1's evolution closely (see my submission history for ongoing coverage). What makes this notable is the speed and scope of adaptation: In January this was just another bird virus. By March it was in cows, then infected a dairy worker, and now we're seeing it maintain airborne transmission in ferrets while being 100% lethal to them. Yet the human case was mild. This ties directly to what we're seeing now with 8 poultry workers infected in Washington and 15 dairy workers in California. In less than a year, H5N1 has gone from a bird problem to widespread mammalian spread with increasing human spillover. When one of the leading researchers calls it 'one of the most pathogenic viruses' he's seen in ferrets, while it remains relatively mild in humans, it's a clear sign of ... something Worth watching where this Bird Flu thing goes if nothing else. I expect not to hear much about it until after the election though.
- gremlinsinc 2y agoNot to be political at all, and start a flame war, it would be ironic if Trump won, and got stuck with another pandemic right out of the gate.
- jpk 2y agoWhy was this flagged?
- mieses 2y agoi'm afraid