Swine Flu

[Egapal]

No, actually I did not fail to mention the jumbo jet vector because it is moot to my point. And I contend your definition of "good host", you need to do more than just spread the disease. You need to sustainably spread the disease. If you, as a host, die too fast then the outbreak burns out because it can not spread. I readily admit that it is possible to spread diseases via global travel but it does not change the fact that a dead end host is a dead end host. There is a reason we do not see Ebola making it into LA or DC or NY. It burns up the available host too fast to spread. Dead. End. But it is only things like this strain of flu that are the prime candidates for the jumbo jet vectors to rapidly spread them world wide. Because they are not such horrid, debilitating agents. They make you sick but not enough to stop you from going anywhere. They are highly transmissible but they keep you on your feet spreading the disease around.

You really have a way of not taking into account the mutable nature of a virus strain. I accept your definition of a good host. Diseases that we are good hosts for are not a big deal. We live with them, literally. Diseases we are a bad host for are of great concern. Comparing Ebola to the Flu is like comparing apples to oranges. The Flu is much easier to spread and takes much longer to kill in the rare cases that it does kill. The key point I am trying to make is that strains mutate. I more deadly form of the common flu could kill millions. Its not likely but its possible.

And, as I said above, this flu is not even in the same class as the things that vid clip was describing. This flu was human in origin, NOT animal. Until recently it has only been spread human to human and the data on the infected pigs in Canada is not all in yet so we way be jumping the gun to say it has jumped species (and then we may not, I am waiting for the hard data.)

Again not disputing your point.

Apples to oranges. Agricultural species, being predominantly homogeneous, have little genetic diversity putting them at a reduced fitness on the population scale.

What I was doing is comparing humans to bananas. Clearly you have done your homework. Do a bit more on human genetic diversity. You will find that humans are not genetically diverse when compared to other mammals. So I am sticking with my comparison.