FBaggins (21,760 posts)
5. No evidence that it's "here we go again"
Things like this pop up all the time and rarely cause problems. No evidence is provided here that it even transmits from one human to another...
... and even if it did and was found to be particularly contagious and also caused serious illness (two very big “and”s), it would still be a flu virus - which means that vaccines could very likely be produced quickly.
1. Crossovers like this have happened in China before, almost frequently. And to date, China has actually prevented spread outside of the affected region. Which indirectly evidences that Covid-19 probably was not a natural crossover.
2. There has been at least one crossover case of this avian flu. The OP article reports this, and it seems to have been a man who tended the chickens or ducks or geese that were infected.
3. "Rarely cause problems"? Well in terms of infected humans, probably not. But I suspect the farmers whose flocks of birds or herds of pigs were wiped out by the disease and health officials might view those losses as "problems".
4. It may be that an existing vaccine works with H10N3. OTOH, traditional weakened/dead virus technology (the technology used in existing influenza vaccines) is not fast in development nor in production, and tend to be variant specific. OTOH, it may be possible to use either viral vector or mRNA technology to develop an influenza vaccine that is effective with multiple variants. Development would be relatively quick, the test process would be much the same as for a new traditional technology vaccine, and production would be much quicker. mRNA technology is new in the vaccine world, and viral vector technology is only a little less new. One of the lasting effects of Covid is and will be a huge leap in vaccine development time and production time.
I doubt
FBaggins had all that in mind, but (s)he seems less stupid and panic-driven than the average DUmmie.