A Quote by Carl Zimmer

We may be sucking in all sorts of viruses and we really don't know the full range of them. Maybe we've got flu virus inside of us. That's a possibility. Maybe we're part flu.
When you get sick with the flu you get infected with flu viruses and they make lots of new flu viruses, but those new viruses are not exact copies of the old ones. They have mutations in them. A lot of those mutations are harmful.
With the absence of a flu vaccination last year, I did not take a flu shot; but there is still some immunity that carries over from year to year; but about every 30 years, there is a major change in the genetics of the flu virus.
Swine flu is not an anomaly. We know that swine flu - like the vast majority of new outbreaks - comes from animals. We should be monitoring those animals and the humans that come into contact with them, so we can catch these viruses early, before they infect major cities and spread throughout the world.
As variable as flu is, HIV makes flu look like the Rock of Gibraltar. The virus that causes AIDS is the trickiest pathogen scientists have ever confronted.
Those people who get the flu shot not only protect themselves from getting the flu or reducing their likelihood of developing the flu, but those around them.
With 30,000 deaths and 200,000 hospitalizations from the seasonal flu, those numbers are certainly higher than what we've seen of the swine flu. Protecting yourself from both viruses is very important.
The reason that viruses are so hard to fight, the reason for example we need a flu virus every year is that they evolve very fast.
If an employee told you he had the flu, you'd send him home. If an employee told you he was feeling anxious, you'd probably tell him to get back to work. But the emotion is just as contagious as a flu virus.
A local pharmacy is a great place to get a safe and effective COVID vaccine as well as a flu shot. It's critical that people get these vaccines to protect themselves and slow the spread of the COVID virus as well as the flu.
I'm really an alarmist when it comes to epidemics. Swine flu now; when SARS was big, I was all freaked out about that, bird flu. That terrifies me.
There is some research that suggests that viruses like the flu are really actually kind of at the razor's edge when it comes to mutation. They're mutating so fast that if they mutated much faster they would actually develop a lot of harmful mutations that could slow them down and cripple them and eventually literally drive them extinct.
If there were 'intelligence flu', there would be so many people walking around in the damn cold weather, hoping to be contaminated by that flu!
We have Borna virus genes. We're part Borna virus, which is weird, but apparently our cells and our genomes in a weird way might actually be grabbing these viruses, grabbing genetic material from the viruses that are infecting it and pulling them into their own genome.
From a population point of view, it's actually very important that as few people as possible get the flu. People getting the flu is not a private matter. The risk for healthy people is really about your friends and neighbors and fellow travelers.
Think about old people; think about young people, those with immune system problems. They can't really protect themselves well against the flu, so by you limiting the spread of the flu and getting vaccinated, you're helping protect them as well.
Now, you might think of flu as just a really bad cold, but it can be a death sentence. Every year, 36,000 people in the United States die of seasonal flu. In the developing world, the data is much sketchier, but the death toll is almost certainly higher.
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