The Funky Chicken

Oh Goody, It’s time to play ‘Contagion.’

H7N9 (‘you’ve sunk my Battleship’) is the newest Influenza A virus brought to us by China. You know, the country that holds most of our US Debt and also eats anything that moves.

As of April 18 this avian variety seems to have jumped into our Species courtesy of the live poultry markets of six different provinces and cities in China (Shanghai, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Beijing, and Henan). Hard to imagine, isn’t it? (Note to self: Look closely at the person sitting next to you in aisle 4B.)

In an effort to contain the spread of this illness there has been a mass culling of thousands of chickens–however, the gurus at the WHO seem to agree that while there is no human to human link currently noted it is pretty much a matter of time. (Read that: it’s already happened, but they don’t want to frighten us since they can’t really do anything about it anyway.)

Kenji Fukuda (福田 敬二) assistant director-general for health (and probably a very sexy J-guy), security and the environment, identified H7N9 as “…an unusually dangerous virus for humans.

Of course, there are no present vaccines for this flu (SURPRISE)—but the use of antiviral drugs known as neuraminidase inhibitors in cases of early infection may be effective.***

**Translated—NOT from Japanese as Mr. Fukuda is completely capable of speaking more eloquent English than most U.S./British Natives–but from W.H.O. “speak”:…….Oh, Crap, it’s time to throw some Tamiflu at this thing and see what happens.

Replikins Ltd, from Boston, USA, is working on two completely synthetic vaccine candidates, one of which targets H7N9 alone.

But, on the bright side–Perhaps a 2014 Sequel for director Steven Soderbergh that again features Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow–in this case: risen from the dead (–Hey, Poetic license) in reprised roles.

Comments
  1. Kevin W.

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