Quote: Original post by Eelco
Are crossover breeds really all that rare, or is this just the first to hit the spotlight?

Dunno. Seasonal flu is human endemic flu (even if it came from other animals, that happened long ago). I'd guess it is not very common for viruses to fully jump from one animal to another. Bird flu of previous year, for example, while realy very dangerous in humans, does not transmit from human to human...

What would be great is ban on antibiotics use in farm animals IMO. On one hand antibiotic is selecting resistant bacteria and on other hand immune deficient pigs that would otherwise die can survive and live for a while, getting god knows how many chronic viral infections at same time.

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Im not saying it couldnt be dangerous. My point is: lots of things 'could'. But is there any data to consolidate this particular suspicion? I havnt seen it. The amount of people that died from this strain is completely meaningless without knowing how many people have been infected. Probably a few orders of magnitude more than the known cases.

That is the problem, there is no good statistical data. Testing is too expensive to test everyone with relevant symptoms; afaik Mexico can't even test all dead properly.