Evolution of Swine Flu: The nightmare scenario is that someone infected with bird flu gets swine flu

Around 30 per cent of respondents believe there is a fifty-fifty chance or greater of increased virulence.
However, Walter Fiers, a molecular biologist at the University of Ghent in Belgium warns that there is still no way of knowing whether the 2009 H1N1 flu virus will mutate, making vaccines under development useless. So he and many of his colleagues are pressing for systematic surveillance of the virus to pick up any changes in behaviour.
A big worry is the possible appearance of a hybrid virus, one that combines the high transmissibility of H1N1 swine flu with the virulence of H5N1 bird flu, where 30 per cent of those infected die. "The nightmare scenario is that someone who is already infected with H5N1 gets swine flu," which would give the two viruses the opportunity to recombine, says John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.

SHOOT: Interesting.

clipped from www.newscientist.com AS THE swine flu pandemic continues to sweep the world, what do public health officials, epidemiologists and flu researchers think will happen in the coming months? When New Scientist asked 60 of them, it turned out that half are concerned enough about the possibility of a virulent swine flu outbreak to take precautions such as acquiring a supply of Tamiflu for their families. Though most do not think it likely that a nastier strain will emerge, many are worried that if it did, their local hospitals and other parts of the health infrastructure could not cope. Since the emergence of H1N1 swine flu in Mexico and the US five months ago, the virus has affected 168 countries in all continents. More than 160,000 infections have been confirmed and the true figure could well be 10 times that if cases have gone undetected. "This flu spreads very well," says Angela McLean, co-director of the Institute for Emerging Infections at the University of Oxford.