timezero

How Are Avian Flu Concerns Affecting Chinese Airline Stocks? (CEA, ZNH)

First of all, I am an illiterate on medical stuff. I did some research on this bird flu thing. As its name suggested, the genesis of the disease is a sort of virus carried by birds. Migratory birds have carried the virus for thousands of years. In the history, the virus had been transferred to poultry. The scientists have divided the virus into two categories. One of them is causing mild symtoms while the other is lethal even to the orginal host, migratory birds. In some rare occasions, the virus can be transferred to human and pigs and cause death. But, the historical statistics shows that possibility is very low although there were small-scale outbreaks. In one word, most people are immune to it like to many virus carried by animals.

The curent concern about it is whether and when this virus will mutate to a form that can be easily transferrable among people. My question is why this smart bird flu choose to mutate to massively infect human now? Why in thousands of years during which they have only caused minor trouble to human then suddenly WHO expects it will kill millions of us? Does someone push this process of mutation? I do feel that way. Imagine there are tons of virus that normally infect animal and we can believe they are all on the way of mutation to kill people.

When people are panic about the mutaion of bird flu virus, they should also do some research on why, in the God's name, will this virus mutate now after waiting for thousand of years and who is the next on the queue to mutate and scare the hell out of us?

If the virus does mutate to kill people now, I suspect the mutation must be aided by someone who has an interest to see an outbreak during his lifespan.