Viruses, bacteria, infections, oh my!

I'd like to propose a new rule: if you are on TV, and you have not taken at least one college level biology class, you cannot express any opinions about the H1N1 virus.

If you cannot cogently talk about the difference between viruses, bacteria, anti-virals, anti-biotics, and vaccines, you cannot express opinions about the H1N1 virus.

By the way, the H1N1 virus is the "swine flu".

Reporters on all networks are talking about how prudent it would be to close the border with Mexico. Newflash #1--the virus did not walk across the border, and it is already in the United States. Perhaps they are trying to prevent the U.S. from re-infecting Mexico? Once the virus is in our human population, closing the border with Mexico will not "stem the tide" of infections. It is already pervasive in the U.S. population.

They have said that the virus we have here is clearly different because people in Mexico are dying, and the only death here was a Mexican citizen. Newsflash #2--it is the same virus. It has been "in the wild" longer in Mexico and has infected more people, so more people have died. The flu normally kills people every year, so this is not a mystery. As more people get it in the U.S., more people will die.

Egypt is killing every pig in the country. Newsflash #3 --you do not catch this from pigs. The virus somehow mutated and jumped from pigs to humans, and now you catch it from humans. It would be much more effective to kill all infected humans.

Russia, Cuba, and several other countries have blocked the import of Pork from infected countries. See Newsflash #4 -- see Newsflash #3.

Reporters are having conniptions this morning that VP Joe Biden said to avoid airports, trains, and subways. They are expressing fear that maybe he knows something we don't. Newsflash #5 -- this is a completely reasonable statement. If you do not NEED to be in places of high human-to-human contact, avoid it. This does not mean lock yourself in your house, but wash your hands, cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, and if possible, minimize exposure.

Just is case you got this far, here is a brief education on biology:

A virus is a small piece of genetic code in a little shell. Think of it sort of like a grain of pollen. The virus needs to get from one infected person to another, and this is usually through human-to-human contact (touching directly, or airborne). The genetic code in the virus, like the DNA in your cells, has instructions. This is like a little computer program. The virus stuffs this code into a cell in your body, and the code has one function--to create more copies of the virus. This "code" is read by the cells in your body, and which turns them into little virus building factories.

A virus is not alive. It is just a set of instructions for building a virus.

Bacteria, on the other hand, are very small living organisms. They get inside your body and duplicate themselves. Because they are alive, and because they reproduce themselves, there are a couple of avenues for attacking them with drugs...and killing them. Such drugs are Anti-biotics (just read antibiotic to mean anti-bacterial).

Since a virus is not alive, and anti-biotics have ZERO effect on them. None, zip, nadda.

Your body has a system for detecting foreign entities, and ridding your body of the intruders. This is called your Immune System. Essentially your body has a map of what "belongs". White Blood Cells float around grabbing onto things and matching the appearance of that thing against its database of what "belongs". If it doesn't belong, the body creates a way to destroy it. This is called Building Immunity.

A Vaccine is usually a tiny piece of inactivated virus. Think of it as giving a bloodhound a piece of clothing to smell. The vaccine tells your body how to instantly recognize a foreign intruder, so that if you do get infected by a flu virus, your body immediately knows how to fight it off so you do not get sick.

If you already have the flu, the vaccine does you no good. Your body is already busy recognizing the intruder and trying to kill it. It already knows what the intruder looks like, so the vaccine just tells your body something it already knows.

So, is this "pre-pandemic" scary. Maybe. There is a round of flu cases every year, but the change this year is the human population has never been exposed to this specific variety before. Because of this we do not know how severe it actually is, and, there is not a vaccine for it. Normally our vulnerable populations get vaccinated for the flu strain that is common that year, thus giving them protection. This year, nobody is vaccinated because is has never existed before. The anti-virals do work on this strain, but that will not keep you from getting the flu in the first place, and you may have already spread it before you become noticeably ill.

On the other hand....maybe not. If everybody who got infected was dropping dead, we would have a serious problem. However, there does not seem to be evidence that this strain is unusually deadly. So, probably, the worst-case is that you get the flu...standard deal...no fun, but you'll be over it in a few days.