tamiflu v other two

Hi JoJo & Miso

What do you make of this?
7.30 report April 30 with 'highly decorated' NY science journalist, Laurie Garrett

KERRY O'BRIEN: So what is now known about this virus?

LAURIE GARRETT: Well, we know that it is a triple reassortment virus, which is fancy way of saying this is a virus that was at sometime in humans, it's sometime in birds and it's sometime in pigs, and picked up bits of genetic material from all three.

So it's a triple whammy, if you will. It's capable of getting into cells of all three types or categories of animals, so, in fact, humans can give it to pigs, not just pigs to humans. And it seems to, at this time, fortunately, be vulnerable to treatment with Tamiflu, one of the three key drugs used to treat flu, but it is resistant to the other two.

And unfortunately here in North America we have another strain of a very, very similar virus, also of what's called H1N1 type A influenza that is completely resistant to Tamiflu. So the real fearsome event would be if the two recombined and shared that genetic capacity, so then we would have a pandemic strain with capacity to infect three different species categories, with resistance to treatment, and with some virulence. We're just not sure how virulent, because as we've said before, we don't really know the denominator in Mexico.

Cheers
mj