The picture above is Avian Influenza. Hard to believe that something so small and docile looking could be so threatening. Based on the genetic makeup and host of choice, a strain is termed as swine, avian, or human.

You may have heard by now that there's a swine flu strain circulating in Mexico that has reached California and Texas. The World Health Organization (WHO) is warning that if precautions aren't taken immediately, it could be a pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed at least 8 U.S. cases but no deaths, while more than 1,000 have been sickened in Mexico with 68 confirmed deaths.

I've been following this on Twitter @CDCEmergency and there is this MSNBC article that's pretty in depth about the situation.

The dangerous part about this influenza strain isn't that it's swine flu, per se, it's because it's a mix of swine, human, and avian - that unpredictable combination researchers have been worried about.  And it's symptoms aren't like regular flu - you have the sore throat, runny nose, coughing, fever, and fatigue plus vomiting and diarrhea. It does not sound pleasant. Once bright spot though is that it is not a drug-resistant strain...yet. It responds to the popular antiviral Tamiflu. Early and responsible treatment will keep it that way, but researchers needs to find different drugs for treating the infection as well as a faster vaccination development protocol. It will take months to come up with a vaccine against this particular strain - in that time the pandemic would be over.

So far it seems that the chimeric virus didn't gain a punch from the extra genes, but there's still time for it to evolve among its human hosts. There's also a good possibility of asymptomatic infections, it's what they're pinpointing as the spread between San Antonio and San Diego. This would indicate a low infection to disease ratio - if we could figure out how many infections are asymptomatic - it only takes one to spread. The death toll in Mexico would indicate there's a 6-7% mortality rate, but the rate of unreported infections is unknown and the health care system (particularly their slow and apathetic response to the surge in flu cases until this week when the U.S. announced theirs) may be partly responsible for a high mortality rate.

So this may or may not be the pandemic virus everyone's worried about, but it does indicate that it's possible, which is scary enough.