H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

Don't give your true love a partridge, turtledoves, or (especially) French hens

What is the H5N1 bird flu? Will it cause the next big pandemic? If so, how bad would that pandemic be? Flu is a disease caused by a family of related influenza viruses. Pandemic flu is always caused by the influenza A virus. Influenza A has two surface antigen proteins, hemagglutinin (18 flavors) and neuraminidase (11 flavors). A particular flu strain is named after which flavors of these two proteins it has - for example, H3N2, or H5N1. Influenza A evolved in birds, and stayed there for at least thousands of years. It crossed to humans later, maybe during historic times - different…

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• Victor Chang

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