Working at a lab with a relatively low level-two biosafety rating, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka has created a strain of flu that can completely escape the human immune system. The new genetically-engineered virus is based on H1N1, which may have killed 500,000 people just five years ago.
Remember the H1N1 flu that spread across the planet in 2009? It was the same flu strain that was predominant during this winter's flu season. Now it's turned up in sea otters living off the coast of Washington state, and researchers don't know how it got there.
The H1N1 flu pandemic killed 17,000 people across the globe between 2009 and 2010. Pretty terrifying. To prevent that from ever happening again, scientists have created a super-detailed computer model of the killer virus.
University of Texas Southwestern's scientists have created a new flu vaccine that can protect us against any kind of flu, not just one type. Unlike the current type of vaccines, this can even protect us if the virus mutates.
In 2009, swine flu created a minor pandemic, only killing about 15,000 people but infecting millions more. The avian flu H9N2 is ravaging bird populations throughout Asia. They're bad enough on their own...but what if they joined forces?
The swine flu pandemic of 2009 was one of the worst flu scares in recent memory, even if its actual effects ended up being relatively moderate. Now something unambiguously good could come of all this: a universal flu vaccine.
To be more specific, people's immune response killed them. The virus was especially deadly to young and middle-aged adults because their immune systems were primed to kick into a fatal, antiviral overdrive.
A new day, a new H1N1 conspiracy theory! But this one is special. Ken Welch says on his blog, before treating us to an extremely detailed analysis:
The Vioguard keyboard might be the first keyboard to specifically target the swines, using two 25-watt UV lights to kill 99.99% of viruses and bacteria in about 90 seconds.
Scientists now have an idea of just how the H1N1 virus may be so deadly, and what makes it different from earlier viruses from the same family. Hint: It's where it goes inside your body that counts.
Two mutations in the H1N1 avian flu virus were responsible for killing 50 million people all over the world during the 1918 outbreak of so-called Spanish Flu. Now researchers at MIT have analyzed 90-year-old blood samples from people who survived the flu, and the blood still contains antibodies that react to H1N1…
