I was watching a television show yesterday and the premise of the episode was that a terrorist group had broken into an old abandoned USPHS lab and stole samples of the original strain to use as a biological weapon. It got me thinking, is that particular version of the flu virus still particularly dangerous? I know H1N1 strains are still dangerous and have been responsible for a few more pandemics since the Spanish flu but it seems that we should have some resistance to the strain that caused that pandemic. My reasoning is that it never went away. We didn’t beat the Spanish flu with vaccines and health measures rather it just killed pretty much everyone it could and we eventually developed a level of resistance to it that made its threat more in line with the seasonal flu. If my reasoning is correct then the terrorists releasing the virus in the subway shouldn’t be any more dangerous that someone with the flu taking the subway to work which is a common occurrence during flu season.
So, how does it actually work? Did we develop a resistance like I think or would a release of the original strain start a new pandemic?
The original Spanish Flu would absolutely fuck us up.
The reason it became mild has nothing to do with us building immunity but because a virus killing its host is bad for business (or strictly speaking, reproduction). A lack of viable hosts puts pressure on the virus’s gene pool and in the end, the variant that is most successful at spreading and reproducing will win out.
That means not killing your host and only doing mild, repairable damage to other potential hosts so that humans don’t take an infection so seriously.
We saw this exact pattern with COVID, with successive iterations being less deadly than the last.
I don’t know how much of a threat the original strain is at this point, but if anything I would be concerned about H5N1, what’s usually known as avian flu. The only thing currently holding it back from being a pandemic is that it’s not efficient at infecting humans yet. But it is extremely deadly, killing 50-60% of those who get infected.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1
And as more of a hot take, people need to reckon with the zoonotic origins of so many of these diseases. If it weren’t for humankind’s addictions to consuming animal flesh and their secretions - and the animal agriculture, loss of habitat for wildlife, and all the conditions these things create for the incubation of deadly diseases - we might never have had a covid pandemic. Likewise, an h5n1 pandemic may be a matter of when, not if, because the vast majority of people still refuse to let go of their gluttony for consuming animals.
If you think of all the hate there is for antivaccers, and the harms they caused in 2020 - and deservedly so - omnivores deserve every bit as much, if not more, for the roles they play in the outbreaks of these diseases.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52960876-how-to-survive-a-pandemic
That virus isn’t surviving getting cooked in an oven. Stop talking nonsense.
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
Sorry you’re getting downvoted. I don’t know if I agree with you, but back in the golden ages of Reddit the rule was don’t downvote because you disagree, downvote because it’s a shit comment. I don’t think your comment was shit… I think we’ve brought way too much of modern reddit to lemmy.
It’s why I put it in a separate comment. It’s been scientifically shown that people often feel threatened and angry at the mere presence of vegans. What it comes down to is that most people want to believe that they’re at least mostly pretty good, but veganism challenges those narratives and highlights that the vast majority of people are very much doing things every day that are very wrong, and that they’re not living by their own standards.
I’ve only been vegan for two years, and have been learning very quickly that I need thick skin for it, and that it means every statement I make on the topic will get scrutinized by the highest standards of skepticism while every carnist can just chime in with all the same tired lies about veganism that have already been thoroughly debunked for years now.
