A Search for Evidence of Interplanetary and Atmospheric Microbial Delivery Systems 14 February 2002 - United States. "On February 6, 2002, WHO and the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) in the United Kingdom reported the recent identification of a new influenza virus strain, influenza A(H1N2), isolated from humans in England, Israel, and Egypt. In addition to the viruses reported by PHLS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified influenza A(H1N2) viruses from patient specimens collected during July, September, and December 2001 in Texas, Nevada, and Wisconsin, respectively." Source: CDC - National Center for Infectious Diseases - Influenza Summary Update - Week ending February 9, 2002-Week 6. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/flu/weeklyarchives/weekly06.htm 8 March 2002 - Global. Influenza A(H1N2) viruses (update) "Between September 2001 and February 2002 reassortant influenza A(H1N2) viruses have been isolated from outbreaks or sporadic cases in Canada, Egypt, France, India, Israel, Latvia, Malaysia, Oman, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States." Source: Weekly Epidemiological Record - 2002, 77, 77-80 - World Health Organization - PDF http://www.who.int/wer/pdf/2002/wer7710.pdf 2 May 2002 - Wisconsin USA Influenza A(H1N2) Viruses in Wisconsin - The initial Wisconsin isolate was recovered from a specimen collected December 7, 2001 from a six month old child [in Outagamie county]. Eight additional A(H1N2) isolates were detected between January 11 and February 11, 2002 from patients aged 9 through 31 years. Seven of these came from St. Vincent Hospital in Green Bay [Brown county]. All of the Wisconsin H1N2 isolates to date have been from [the] two adjacent counties. [Names of counties added.] Source: Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, Madison, WI. http://www.virology.org/Newsletter/May02/May0205.html Was the Influenza A(H1N2) of 2001-2002 Derived from Terrestrial Reassortment? From http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/vel/1918h1n2.htm Most, if not all, of the summaries about the new influenza strain, A(H1N2), state that it has arisen as a result of reassortment. In this case it means that a victim gets attacked by two different strains of influenza A, which mix and match parts to produce a new strain. For the new strain A(H1N2) the requisite originals are said to have been A(H1N1) and A(H3N2). (There is usually the unstated implication that the process took place in Earth's biosphere .) The following graphs show the relative abundances of influenza strains during the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 flu seasons. It can be seen that in the 2000-2001 flu season there was a relative abundance of A(H1N1) (blue bars) but very little A(H3N2) (red bars). In 2001-2002 the situation was reversed. On 30 August 2002 the Canada National Microbiology Laboratory published its 2001-2002 seasonal summary for influenza. They reported antigenically characterizing the following influenza subtypes: 333 A(H3N2); 72 (H1N2) (the new strain); and one case of A(H1N1). On 22 May 2001 the U.S. National Center for Infectious Diseases published its final report for the United States 2001-2002 flu season. They reported the following influenza A sub-types: 3,996 H3 viruses and 83 H1 viruses. What these numbers don't tell, is that at the time the first H1N2 case in Wisconsin was detected (on 7 December 2001) there had been approximately 175 H3N2 cases detected antigenically throughout the United States but only one H1N1 case, and that case had occurred five weeks earlier at an undisclosed location. From 11 January to 11 February, when the remaining eight Wisconsin H1N2 cases were detected, there were approximately 2251 H3N2 cases detected nationwide, but only 15 of the H1N1 strain. NCID has not published where these cases occurred or how many of them (if any) were in Wisconsin. Top Asian Influenza B Leaves Home This phenomenon was overlooked by this investigator during the 2001-2002 flu season. The attitude was, "Who cares about influenza B?" 24 April 2002 - WorldWide Influenza B viruses currently circulating worldwide can be divided into two antigenically distinct lineages: B/Yamagata/16/88 and B/Victoria/2/87. B/Yamagata viruses have circulated widely since 1990, and the B component of the current influenza vaccine belongs to this lineage. Since 1991, B/Victoria viruses have not been identified outside of Asia. However, since March 2001, B/Victoria lineage viruses have been identified in many countries, including the United States. Of the 96 U.S. influenza B viruses characterized antigenically this season, 53 were of the B/Yamagata lineage, and 43 were of the B/Victoria lineage. Source: CDC MMWR 2002;51:276-279 (Reprinted in the Journal of the American Medical Association [PDF] JAMA April 24, 2002 -- Volume 287, No. 16, page 2068. Results, Discussion, and Recommendations The 13 April 2001 arrival of the Asian dust storm in the mid-west of the United States and the coincident onset of gastrointestinal flu-like symptoms in northeast Mississippi may be related. (Data from other areas visited by the dust cloud are needed to beef up the picture.) It is speculated that the early April Pacific Dust Express delivered the B/Victoria viruses to U.S. doorsteps. The dust, albeit greatly thinned out, traveled on to Europe as well. The mid-may 2001 outbreak of a new strain of avian influenza in Hong Kong and the unidentified influenza that swept through in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, fell right in the middle of the non-prediction prediction window. No report, seen to date by this investigator, has suggested a migration from one geographical region to another of the new influenza A(H1N2) strain. Its distribution pattern seems to have been a global non-spreading sporadic affair. The sporadic global nature and the timing of the outbreaks of the influenza A(H1N2) strain are considered to be consistent with the idea of an extraterrestrial source. (Timing, as used here, includes a month (or less) to penetrate Earth's atmosphere plus a two-month-or-so recuperation period, inside 98.6°F surface dwellers, to repair space radiation damage incurred en route.) There is apparently no clinical evidence from Canada or the United States of terrestrial (Earth's surface) reassortment of influenza A(H1N1) and A(H3N2) to produce A(H1N2). Real world conditions matched the non-prediction prediction very well. That doesn't prove that the new flu strains were from an extraterrestrial source, but it does strengthen the idea that there may be something to the hypothesis. Further study is warranted. The World Health Organization (WHO), through the offices of their Global Agenda on Influenza, and appropriate space agencies may need to join forces to examine possible connections between wide area aerosol movements and the arrivals of airborne pathogens If no convincing clinical evidence comes to be found for terrestrial reassortment, which produced the new influenza A(H1N2) strain, and if no compelling geographical spreading pattern is established for the new strains, then epidemiologists should think about "getting outside the box." With a possible outer space connection in mind, the WHO should perhaps think about setting up a space-borne monitoring capability to obtain previews of what's coming our way. * * * The full study is available online at http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/vel/1918.htm References (1) Gina Kolata, Flu, The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It, Simon & Schuster, Touchstone, New York, (1999). (2) Velikovsky, Immanuel, Worlds in Collision, The Macmillan Company (1950), Double Day (1950). (3) Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Diseases from Space, J.M. Dent & Sons, London, 1979. (4) Jayant Narlikar, Chandra Wickramasinghe, et al., Dramatic new evidence of living bacteria coming from space. Presented at the Astrobiology session of the 46th Annual SPIE meeting in San Diego, CA, July 29, 2001. See an online summary at http://www.cf.ac.uk/news/releases/0107/010729.html (5) Donald Barber, Perspective, Focal Press, London, Vol. 5, pp. 201-208, (1963). For a recent thumbnail sketch of Barber's report, see the online article: Living Micro-Organisms From Space : Real or Apparent? - Norman Lockyer Observatory News 01/1997. http://www.ex.ac.uk/nlo/news/nlonews/1997-01/9701-14.htm - [Link no longer works.] (6) Dale W. Griffin, Virginia H. Garrison, Jay R. Herman and Eugene A. Shinn, Aerobiologia, 17:203-213 (2001). End of document Recent news bearing on the possibility of life in the atmosphere of Venus Life on Venus may be microbe clouds, Houston Chronicle - October 14, 2002. Related Links (Added 19 May 2005) Hong Kong Flu - Hong Kong HQ - [Subscription required.] Flu In China - Flu News and Statistics