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Unfortunately we are not safe today. If you
look at what was happening in 1918 and you look at all
the information we've developed, our ability to isolate
the influenza, to create influenza vaccine, we still only have
a vaccine that is partially protective and its effect is only
good for like five months. It's not the world's greatest vaccine,
even knowing how to make it. We don't have an effective treatment to cure,
we have an antiviral agent that can be used and it modifies the infection,
but it doesn't cure it, and it doesn't stop its spread. So we, even at
this decades later, if we had the same thing that happened with
influenza in 1918 happening again, we probably would have a devastating effect.
We have more people, we have more crowded cities, we have more instant
communication, we have airplane travel which will get people from one side of
the globe to the other, so the worldwide spread would be more rapid.
If it were as virulent as it was before, it would be an awful situation and the
tools that we have are just one predictability we're able to track viruses.
If we're lucky enough that the first virus is isolated on the other
side of the globe six months before our season, we may have an opportunity
to make some vaccine and save a few people that way, but it's too little,
too late, in general.
We need to understand that influenza virus is a virus that has a great potential
for changing its biologic nature, for exchanging genetic material
with a similar virus and coming up with a mutant strain. Now we know, by
chance alone, mutations can go in different directions, but there is nothing
that assures us that we cannot have a bad virus that has the potential
to spread fast, as I've described, and we have no way to develop immunity
except by having the disease. If it's a virulent virus, you may not have
a chance to develop immunity if it kills you first, obviously. It takes
about two weeks after the infection to develop significant immunity. So,
there's no reassurance that this same thing cannot happen again.
In fact, it appeared to us that the major changes in the virus occur
approximately every ten to twelve years and then - boom, the last 20
years we haven't had a major change in the influenza virus. So you just wait for
- which year is it going to happen - and that major change, is it going to be a
not so bad change or is it going to be a very bad change. We do not have
the armamentarium to put us much farther ahead than they were in 1918 in dealing
with this virus.
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