In 1914 the English army was really weak. On the one hand, still had not recovered from the consequences brought about by the war in Cuba, in the late XIX, on the other, 50,000 English soldiers were exercising a protectorate of Morocco, which, with the onset of World War I, the government had no choice but to declare itself neutral during the conflict. One of the first victims of any war is truth, so with their supposed neutrality, Spain got to be one of the few countries that gave coverage to an epidemic that was occurring at that time and was taking a historical character. While the countries involved in World War I used their media as propaganda items or try to encourage people, English media reported the largest epidemic of flu that the world had known. For this reason, it was known as English flu , although it originated in the United States, and resulted in the death of thirty to one hundred million people around the world.
These days, according to WHO (World Health Organization)-pandemic world-wide epidemic of influenza is about to occur and it is inevitable that the memory go to the English flu, but hardly the consequences will be or similar. The status of existing health systems, lack of global wars and global coordination of the competent authorities in health make the control of the situation allows us to be optimistic.
The current flu outbreak, which is caused by the so-called by the WHO as influenza virus A (H1N1) since last April 30 was detected in Mexico in mid-March and in a month and a half extended to twenty countries in which more than 1,300 confirmed cases. Just ten days after declaring the disease, WHO activated the warning level five or imminent pandemic, which has caused great public alarm, but that by itself does not report the severity of the disease, but only on its degree of expansion.
influenza virus belongs to the Orthomyxoviridae family known as , which is characterized by its genetic material RNA and DNA is not like other viruses such as human T leukemia or AIDS. This makes this type of virus mutation rates much higher than DNA viruses because they lack an enzyme that detects and corrects errors in the genetic material called DNA polymerase. Therefore, although one of the most important features of our immune system's memory, is necessary to be vaccinated against flu each year. And the virus is circulating vary, due in part to this high mutation rate and partly through a process called recombination, whereby two different viruses can exchange genetic material to give rather than a third virus that our immune system would not be able to recognize even if it was vaccinated against the other two.
The WHO terminology used to refer to a particular strain of a virus refers to the two proteins on this membrane are the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. Thus, for the current outbreak of influenza A virus is said to be caused by the H1N1 type, which means that of all the ways in which both the one and another protein can be found, which have been in this strain are both type 1. As to the role these proteins play in the virus, the hemagglutinin is crucial when it comes to link the virus to the infected cell while that neuraminidase so when it comes to facilitating the spread of virions emerging from infected cells to attack healthy cells.
According to health authorities the origin of this virus is to be found in genetic recombination that occurs among different viruses, some of avian origin, other porcine and other human source. For this reason, have decided to stop calling this outbreak "swine flu" as it would be equally inaccurate to call it avian flu or human influenza. Moreover, the fact of associating the pig to the origin of the disease has already caused undue damage to food consumption of the meat of this animal. And it is shown that even eating infected pig meat could not transmit the virus causing the disease as it does not withstand the temperatures used in cooking. However, once again, superstition and fear playing against the view of science.
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