According to Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection, one living organism must be able to pass its offspring successfully and continuously for it to thrive and place its footing on Earth. If we trace the natural history of this new strain Influenza A H1N1 virus, it is astonishing to find out how fast the virus mutates and adapts itself. In the original country of outbreak in Mexico, we got many deaths reported from the infected victims initially.
It might look how almighty the virus was but in actual fact once the infected victims died the chain of transmission and thus the propagation of virus stopped there. A dead person, who soon be buried or cremated, is far less likely to spread the ‘offspring’ of the deadly virus than a not-so-healthy but mobile living beings.
The mutation is evident from the switch of high mortality rate among the healthy young adult at the beginning of the outbreak in Mexico, to the few reported cases of death mainly confined to those complicated by concomitant illnesses worldwide. The swiftness and smartness of its mutation is unprecedented. The SARS’s virus pales in this context.
It may soon infect whole human race. By that time those infected will have natural antibody to ward off the virus from infecting the host again. It may give another incentive for the ‘friendly’ but spooky virus to mutate again. This time, it may decide to make itself friendlier to other animals but more deadly to human, at the expense of human lives.
Simply put, it may become easily transmitted among other animals like birds, but deadly to human once human gets infected; something like the new deadly bird flu but in this case human-to-human transmission may be expedited because it has already learnt the way of transmission and it may be fine for the virus to wipe out human this time around as its main target is in animals.
This fear is echoed by the Indonesian health authority recently when two new cases of Influenza A H1N1 were reported in Indonesia, where bird flu has already claimed many lives.
Are we fast enough to avert the calamity? Or are we still keeping ourselves busy with whether we should name it Swine Flu or Influenza A H1N1?
Let’s rustle up some aggressive steps to prevent the continuous spread of the virus into our country by limiting the movement of people from the endemic countries. I will not surprise this would have long implemented by the developed countries if the developing countries are the one which are severely affected and endemic.
