THE PROBLEM WITH NEW (NOVEL) VIRUSES [thread]

"... is this absolutely phenomenal disruption of the immune system that is the key to why people die of this virus. And I would just add - we saw the same thing with SARS. So what& #39;s going on here is your body says, your immune system

sends out all its sentinels and says, "I don& #39;t know what the heck this is. We& #39;ve never seen anything even remotely like this before. It won& #39;t do any good to bring in the sharpshooters because those antibodies aren& #39;t here. And it won& #39;t do any good to bring in the tanks and

all our artillery because those T-cells don& #39;t recognize it either. So we& #39;re going to have to go all-out thermonuclear response, stimulate the total cytokine cascade. The whole immune system swarms into the lungs and, yes, they die, drowning in their own fluids, of pneumonia. But

it& #39;s not bacterial pneumonia and it& #39;s not a pneumonia that would respond to a vaccine."

Laurie Garrett, author of "The Coming Plague"
2007 TEDtalk: What can we learn from the 1918 flu? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lJvr5UL2pQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch...