A very strange feature of the swine flu is that this is more serious among the healthy and young people unlike influenza that can prove to be fatal in the elders and babies. Many scientists say that this is a very common characteristic of pandemic viruses. Researches in the Hong Kong say that the swine flu is a result of the cytokine storm that they discovered, occurring with the avian flu. The cytokine storm takes place when the lung cells provide various pro inflammatory molecules known as the cytokines than the regular influenza Type A do. In short, it is the response of the host’s immune system to virus that actually causes the overreaction to virus which can result in death, and not replication of virus itself.
Although the very first death in US took place in an infant, the scientist suggests that elderly people as well as babies are featured with weak immune systems which do not react strongly to the viral infections. On other hand, the powerful immune system found in young and healthy people are actually primed to be responding and more susceptible to the cytokine storms. The swine flu’s strain sweeping all across the globe is an exclusive strain that blends together the genetic material from birds, humans and pigs in the way that the researchers have not basically observed before. It has the bird flu of North America, the swine flu of Europe and Asia. And the human beings do not possess a natural immunity system to such a strain.
Currently, alert levels for this flu are at its fourth phase. with more and more nations experiencing the cases of this virus, the World Health Organization has planned to increase the alert even to the fifth phase that is the very first level at which the pandemic is seen. The phase six is a complete pandemic outbreak level.