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This is so scary. I am always wary when China says, "Don't worry everything is under control". China was criticized during the SARS outbreak for failing to release information. If bird flu ever gains the ability to spread from human to human, we have a very bad situation.

Genetic sequencing of the current H7N9 outbreak in China has revealed the ability of the virus to adapt to a human host

This is so scary. It is only a matter of time before bird flu is able to spread to humans....

H7N9 strain that is capable of spreading quicker than the H5N1 strain. 100 people in China have been affected and killed more than 20. Doesn't immediately cause the noticeable symptoms like most flu strains would, making it difficult to monitor. 

Viruses are smarter then we ever imagined!! Researchers have realized that virus have their own time-clock. Virus's take about 8 hours to sufficiently make copies and overtake our bodies. They slowly build in our bodies, before the body actually realizes what is happening - by that time it is too late. Researchers are now tricking viruses into changing the time needed to overtake the body - making the body react quicker and kill the virus. The flu vaccine is still the best way, however, if we can fool the time it takes for a virus to overthrow the body - can we stop it in general? 

Although this article does not come from the most scholarly source, my dad and I were talking and he mentioned that if you slice an onion and place it in the corner of the room, it will "absorb" any flu virus present. This is not true.

The article shows a new strain of bird flu H7N9.  The virus has a hard time infecting humans, but for every one human infected there are thousands of birds infected.  This strain is less harmful than H5N1, but still one death has been reported.

The flu virus carries about 300 to 400 of these hooks and virologists had known that several are needed to fuse the membranes. 4 hooks has recently been identified as the number of hooks required to pull the two membranes together. Without the attachment of 4 hooks the virus is vulnerable to inhibitors which will prevent fusion.

I thought it was interesting that antiviral medications should be administered within two days of infection in order to be effective. This really outlines the need for more effective treatments since this is a very short time frame and there is an increasing resistance to these antiviral therapies in general.

This is the last thing we need! Another strain of bird-to-human transmitted virus, and researcher believe this could be the worst one yet. While research on this virus is still being conducted in China, there is already strong evidence that this could be the next big flu outbreak.

It is amazing that in less than a month this new strain has spread to over 100. So far it has only effected China, but I wonder when another country will report a case.

It is amazing that twitter is becoming a way for the WHO to inform people if it starts tweeting accurate information. Most time flu's seem to be either over exaggerated by media and many people do not know how to interpret a lot of the information that is being given out by places like the CDC and WHO, causing people to panic.