Nature news article on the BC bird flu infection

[RonO]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03805-4

The teen patient is in critical condition. The Canadian patient is not
infected by the dairy virus, but an H5N1 strain circulating in migratory
fowl. The troubling thing is that this infection may be so severe for
the patient because the virus has two mutations that may facilitate
human respiratory infection. The wild avian virus does not have these
two mutations, and the proposal is that the virus may have mutated
during the infection of the teen and turned the virus into something
more of a problem for human infection. Essentially, the patient's cells
selected for these new mutations and allowed rapid amplification. It
sounds like they are hoping that this variant is not circulating out in
the wild, and that it evolved in this patient.

The dairy virus is a recombinant with a North American strain of avian
influenza. It retains the H5N1 genes of the Asian H5N1 virus, but half
of it's genome is from another virus. The virus that infected this teen
may not be a recombinant. I can't find anywhere that defines what this
version of the virus is. The Asian H5N1 influenza virus had a 50%
mortality rate when infecting humans. The Dairy virus only exhibits
mild symptoms, so far, but this patient is in critical condition. If
the Canadian variant is circulating among wild birds with the two
facilitating mutations it may be worse news than the dairy virus.

Ron Okimoto

[jojo]

Post by RonO
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03805-4
The teen patient is in critical condition.  The Canadian patient
is not infected by the dairy virus, but an H5N1 strain
circulating in migratory fowl.  The troubling thing is that this
infection may be so severe for the patient because the virus has
two mutations that may facilitate human respiratory infection.
The wild avian virus does not have these two mutations, and the
proposal is that the virus may have mutated during the infection
of the teen and turned the virus into something more of a problem
for human infection.  Essentially, the patient's cells selected
for these new mutations and allowed rapid amplification.  It
sounds like they are hoping that this variant is not circulating
out in the wild, and that it evolved in this patient.
The dairy virus is a recombinant with a North American strain of
avian influenza.  It retains the H5N1 genes of the Asian H5N1
virus, but half of it's genome is from another virus.  The virus
that infected this teen may not be a recombinant.  I can't find
anywhere that defines what this version of the virus is.  The
Asian H5N1 influenza virus had a 50% mortality rate when
infecting humans.  The Dairy virus only exhibits mild symptoms,
so far, but this patient is in critical condition.  If the
Canadian variant is circulating among wild birds with the two
facilitating mutations it may be worse news than the dairy virus.
Ron Okimoto

h5n1 has been around for so long yet no proper contagious jump,
why is it so lethargic?