by Janet Wednesday, April 29, 2009
In the past weeks, this infectious and epidemic disease spreading from Mexico to the other countries in the world. Since the first death outside Mexico is in the U.S. Many people still have confusions and doubts about Swine flu. So here we will list the questions that people ask about the most to help them to distinguish what the factors sprang the swine flu.
Q: How safe is eating pork?
A: As safe as it ever was.
When you deal and consume animil products, for instance pork, can carry some viruses. But this is not how swine flu is spreading,said Christine Layton, a public health policy analyst with the North Carolina-based nonprofit research institute RTI International.
Swine flu is a respiratory virus,spread from one person to another.In other words: A sneezing chef is a threat, not the spare ribs he’s basting.
As a matter of fact, if the swine flu were mainly being transmitted from pigs to people, public health officials probably wouldn’t be so worried. that kind of transmission leans to limit a virus’s humena spread to farmers and meat workers like butcher—people who are likely come into touch with animal’s bodily fluids.
Q. Can those face masks really protect me from swine flu?
A. Yes and no.
The blue surgical masks you’ve seen being given out to Mexican pedestrians are better than nothing but probably only minimally useful, said Andrew Pekosz, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.
When the mask block the large, virus-carrying droplets sneezed out by contagious people, the viruses are much smaller and could easily pass through. Specially masks, designed by N-95 or N-99, are better filters but they are still imperfect.
For better protection, Pekosz suggests combining a mask with regular hand washing and keeping 3 to 4 feet (90 to 120 centimeters) away from other people.
Q. Is this just another media health scare? How worried should we be?
A. The truth lies somewhere in between panic and eye-rolling.
Making the jump from animal-to-person to person-to-person transmission is a extraordinary skill for a flu virus to “learn.” This ability makes H1N1 swine flu potentially dangerous—and makes the concern a bit different from the worries over bird flu which has not to make such a transition yet.
Human-to human transmission is a big part of why public health officials are putting resources into swine flu and why they want you to be aware of the virus.
Even though,the expert like John Hopskins’s Pekosz and RTI’s Layton say there’s no reason to confine yourself in the house.
At present, no one is sure why that is. and while the severity of the symptoms could increase more, Pekosz said there’s not really an immediate, severe threat to indivisual within the United States.
“However, it definitely deserves the public paying attention, and it guarantee the public health efforts that have been going on in terms of observing and research.” he said.
Q. How does a pig-bird-human mash-up swine flu virus happen, anyway?
A. Blame the pigs, and the virus.
Flu viruses are “very messy reproducers,” RTI’s Layton said.
All eight flu genes reproduce indivisually. If a cell is contacted with three different flu viruses, reproduction can mean a rearrange of genetic material from multiple parents, thrown together randomly into the “baby” flu virus.
Mostly, those cut-and-paste viruses don’t turn out very well, Johns Hopkins’s Pekosz said. This natural reassortment will come up with a new flu virus that has some kind of advantage over its competitors.
H1N1 swine flu is one of those, but we’ve certainly seen others in the past 30 years, he said. Pigs are part of the problem because they can become infected with flu viruses from birds and humans.
