Influenza A H1N1

INITIATING QUESTIONS
1. What is an epidemic?
A widespread outbreak of an infectious disease.
2. What is a pandemic?
An epidemic of infectious disease that spreads through populations across a large region.
3. What is an infectious disease?
Infectious diseases are diseases caused by pathogenic microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, parasites or fungi, and it can be spread, directly or indirectly, from one person to another.
4. What is a virus?
Is an infectious agent that is unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell, and they infect all types of cellular life.
5. What makes the H1N1 virus a "novel" or "new" virus?
It was never seen before. Because this is a new virus, most people will not have immunity to it, and illness may be more severe and widespread as a result. In addition, currently there is no vaccine to protect against this novel H1N1 virus.
6. How do viruses mutate?
Influenza viruses replicate by using the host cell to replicate their RNA without ever using a DNA intermediary. This distinguishes them from retroviruses; instead, they are called RNA viruses or riboviruses.
Once inside the cell, the virus replicates its genome to positive-sense mRNA, which is used to make more virus proteins, and positive-sense cRNA, which serves as a template for replicating the genome. The cRNA is then replicated again to produce complementary negative-sense RNA strands that will become the genome of the daughter viruses.
7. What does it mean that this virus has "parts" from other known swine flus, human flus and American bird flus?
In the 2009 swine flu outbreak, the virus isolated from patients in the United States was found to be made up of genetic elements from four different flu viruses – North American Mexican influenza, North American avian influenza, human influenza, and swine influenza virus typically found in Asia and Europe – "an unusually mongrelised mix of genetic sequences."
8. How does that process happen?
This new strain appears to be a result of reassortment of human influenza and swine influenza viruses, in all four different strains of subtype H1N1.
9. How is the flu vaccine created?
Flu vaccine is usually grown in fertilized chicken eggs. A DNA-based vaccination, which is hoped to be even faster to manufacture, is currently in clinical trials, but has not yet been proven safe and effective. Research continues into the idea of a "universal" influenza vaccine (but no vaccine candidates have been announced) which would not need to be tailored to work on particular strains, but would be effective against a broad variety of influenza viruses.
10. Why are some viruses transmittable from human to human while others are not (avian flu)?
Generally, avian flu viruses infect birds, and human viruses infect humans. Because their immune systems "remember" what the viruses look like from previous exposures, humans and birds tend to have some level of immunity to their respective viruses. Though avian flu viruses do sometimes infect humans and cause severe illness, these viruses do not transmit easily from human to human so the spread is rare.
A problem arises when an intermediary species that can host both avian and human-like viruses, such as a pig, is infected with both types of virus. In cases like this, the viruses can combine in the host to make hybrid avian-human viruses. These viruses can infect humans but escape the immune response because their surface proteins are foreign to the immune system.
11. How does Tamiflu work?
It is an antiviral that has shown to have some efficacy against this strain of swine flu. Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) is a neuraminidase inhibitor, serving as a competitive inhibitor towards sialic acid, found on the surface proteins of normal host cells. By blocking the activity of the neuraminidase, Oseltamivir prevents new viral particles from being released by infected cells. It prevents progeny virions from emerging from infected cells.
12. Scientists worry that H1N1 might become resistant to Tamiflu. How might that happen?
As with other antivirals, resistance to the agent was expected with widespread use of oseltamivir, though the emergence of resistant viruses was expected to be less frequent than with amantadine or rimantadine. The resistance rate reported during clinical trials up to July 2004 was 0.33% in adults, 4.0% in children, and 1.26% overall. Mutations conferring resistance are single amino acid residue substitutions in the neuraminidase enzyme.

READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
1. What is the most predictable thing about influenza?
The unpredictable nature of the viruses that cause it.
2. How many people have died in Mexico? (based on the article as well as on latest news)
66.
3. Name 3 countries where swine flu has been confirmed in the last three days.
India, Malaysia and Turkey. (May 17th)
4. What are the symptoms of the swine flu?
Symptoms are similar to that of the seasonal flu: fever, cough, sore throat, headache, and nausea and can range from mild to deadly.
5. When was the outbreak of the Spanish flu?
1918
6. What percentage of the world population died of influenza then?
1%
7. Why was there an emergency vaccination program in 1976?
Because there was an outbreak of Swine Flu.
8. Name a few actions the Mexican government has done to curb the spread of swine flu.
All schools were closed throughout Mexico until May 6th.
Mexico City closed many public spaces like movie theaters, bars, clubs, and churches.
9. What were the consequences for Mexico and Mexicans due to the actions taken by the government?
The Mexican tourist economy, which had already suffered this year from the crisis and the drug violence, has been further beaten down by the threat of swine flu. Many Mexicans that were forced to close their businesses also lost a lot of incomes.
10. What industries were particularly hard hit?
Restaurants, cinemas, theaters, bars, clubs, hotels, and of course everything that has to do with tourism.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Mexico has shut down schools and other public spaces; do you think that was the correct thing to do? Why or why not?
I think it was a good decision, because even though it was very drastic, in Mexico we do not have the resources to face a huge epidemic, and I think that it was the correct thing to do because of the unpredictability of this virus.
2. More people die from the regular flu then from swine flu, why do you think this became a big news story?
Because regular flu has been existing like forever, and this one is a new virus, so the scientist are not sure about the consequences or about how is this virus going to behave.
3. Why did people stop visiting Mexico? Why have Mexicans been discriminated? Do you think the fear of the disease is justified?
People stopped visiting Mexico and started discriminating Mexicans because they are afraid that the epidemic will expand to their country or that they will get sick. I think that in some ways it is justified because something like this damages the economy, but cases like China’s are just exaggerations and they acted misleadingly.
4. What questions about individual and human rights does preventing the spread of flu raise?
That many rights have been violated such as going to school, having a business, and human rights of persons that were isolated in China.

THE RESCUE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abm6wHNlsXk