The days of medical masks at airports and widespread panic may be coming back—that's because at least 12 humans are believed to have been infected with a new strain of swine flu that's not covered by this season's vaccine.
The new swine flu strain, H3N2v, has shown at least some potential for human-to-human transmission in those 12 individuals, which makes it especially dangerous. Between 2009 and mid-2010, more than 17,000 people died worldwide from the highly contagious H1N1 swine flu strain, leading the World Health Organization to call the strain a pandemic.
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The flu season hasn’t kicked in yet, but infectious disease experts are on the alert for new strains of the virus, including another swine flu that’s popped up in parts of the United States and a drug-resistant flu circulating in the Southern Hemisphere.
Since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, public health and infectious disease experts have upped their surveillance of new flu strains, and they’re paying close attention to what’s happening worldwide in hopes of being better prepared for the type of flu season that will hit here.
“We haven’t seen the emergence of, say, a new pandemic strain of influenza,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, head of the viral diagnostics laboratory at University of California, San Francisco. “But we’ve been getting these worrisome trickles of reports,” which “are all reminders that influenza still poses a big threat.”
Most people who get the flu suffer from fever, joint and muscle pain, coughing and fatigue before recovering without medical attention. But the flu can be deadly in older people, babies and people with weak immune systems.
New strains of flu could infect larger groups of people if humans have no natural resistance. A new, more virulent strain could be devastating — more people could be infected and with a deadlier disease.
My friend had H1N1, her nervous system was completely ****ed up. but that's because her immune system is horrible
Same with one of my friend's. Her immune system got so ****ed up, at the beginning of the 2010-11 school year, she was sick for literally the whole first semester. (September through January)
It's strange that you say their immune systems were so messed up. Generally, H1N1 is supposed to be similar to or slightly worse than the flu with a shorter duration.
I had a respiratory issue at the same time, so it took me about 10 days to 2 weeks to fully recover, though.
