(Reuters) – The new H1N1 virus, which has caused the first pandemic of the 21st century, appears to have been circulating undetected among pigs for years, researchers reported on Thursday.
Although health officials have been watching for new influenza viruses in humans, animal health regulators have missed the opportunity to check swine, the researchers reported.
Britons Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh and Oliver Pybus of Oxford University, and Yi Guan of the University of Hong Kong examined the genetic sequence of the new H1N1 swine flu virus.
Like others who have done the same, they show it is a mixture of other viruses that had been circulating in pigs, one of which was itself a mixture including swine, human and avian-like genetic sequences.
“We show that it was derived from several viruses circulating in swine, and that the initial transmission to humans occurred several months before recognition of the outbreak,” they wrote.
“Movement of live pigs between Eurasia and North America seems to have facilitated the mixing of diverse swine influenza viruses, leading to the multiple reassortment events associated with the genesis of the (new H1N1) strain,” they added.
“Yet despite widespread influenza surveillance in humans, the lack of systematic swine surveillance allowed for the undetected persistence and evolution of this potentially pandemic strain for many years.”
They said this new pandemic “provides further evidence of the role of domestic pigs in the ecosystem of influenza A.”
The new virus, which was first reported in two U.S. children in March, apparently infected people as early as last January in Mexico, health officials have said. The World Health Organization declared it a full pandemic on Thursday, meaning it is circulating globally and cannot be stopped.
MOLECULAR CLOCK
The international team also used a “molecular clock” method to compare the current virus to its relatives and estimate its age based on the mutations. This gives a rough idea of when the new virus is likely to have emerged.
“We found that the common ancestor of the (new H1N1) outbreak and the closest related swine viruses existed between 9.2 and 17.2 years ago, depending on the genomic segment, hence the ancestors of the epidemic have been circulating undetected for about a decade,” they wrote.
“Thus, this genomic structure may have been circulating in pigs for several years before emergence in humans,” they added.
The pork industry has been vociferously protesting use of the term “swine flu” to describe the virus.
Fears that the pandemic would affect pork prices caused World Health Organization officials to use the generic designation of “influenza A(H1N1)” — which also refers to one of the current seasonal flu strains. Continued…
Last week the U.S. Agriculture Department said it would launch a pilot surveillance project to look for new strains of flu virus in pigs.
Also last week, Gerardo Nava of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and colleagues reported that their genetic analysis also pointed to North American swine as a potential source of the new virus.
Cooked pork is no threat but live pigs can get influenza as easily as people do and people and pigs can sometimes pass viruses back and forth.
Source:
dprogram.wordpress.com 
quote: “We found that the common ancestor of the (new H1N1) outbreak and the closest related swine viruses existed between 9.2 and 17.2 years ago, depending on the genomic segment, hence the ancestors of the epidemic have been circulating undetected for about a decade,” they wrote.
According the the governments OWN propaganda “swine flu” has been around OVER 30 years. I was taught growing up that if you lie to much, you will forget your OWN LIES, and therefore, get caught in them. Here is a prime example of the government forgetting their own lies. The whole world did not die of the swine flu in 1976, and we are not all going to die from it now. More people will die from pharmacutical related deaths in a year than will die through the whole swine flu epidemic. Check out the liars own commerical for the swine flu…
have you read that the idiots in power want to now put the swine flu vaccine in the corn the pigs eat, so they won’t get and spread swine flu? and then when we eat that pork, we’ll also get a dose of prevention. hey, i can go without pork. this is insanity.
Well said, Lulu. What irks me is this Newspeak sloganization of the word “pandemic,” which is defined medically as “epidemic over a wide geographic area,” and generally as “widespread; general.” In its turn, “epidemic” means “spreading rapidly and extensively and affecting many individuals at the same time; widely prevalent.” Neither of these words mean deadly, fatal, or even dangerous. Chicken pox can be both epidemic and pandemic, and still be fairly benign.
Moreover, this flu cannot even be a “pandemic” in its most basic medical sense, because it does not even fulfill the requirement of being an “epidemic,” since it has not produced “many” cases where it has appeared. While it can, however, be considered “pandemic” in the general sense, since it is dispersed over a wide geographical area, it is not particularly deadly, like the AIDS or Ebola breakouts were. So why is it not treated like so many other inconvenient epidemics and pandemics that harry us day to day, instead of the term “pandemic” being used as a synonym for mass scourge, breeding mass paranoia?
I don’t see the government going all “martial law” over all the epidemic/pandemic heart disease, Diabetes, cancer, starvation, and constant warfare that really chews up the world’s population-not to mention all the mass murder through medical fraud that Lulu mentioned in her comment.
I am not claiming that I know why Big Pharma and Big Biz are having Big Media terrorize all of us with this Newspeak “pandemic,” but I suspect they are not up to anything good. The “ollies” are so dastardly it could mean so many numbers of things, so it is impossible to second guess them:
*Are we being distracted through typical sleight of hand tactics?
*Are the owners just wedging their foot farther in through the door to our free will, the better to kick it all the way open, in order to train us for compliance with whatever they demand?
*Are the oligarchs planning to weaken, sicken, or even poison everybody with mandatory vaccines that even the Mayo Clinic has determined makes people three times more likely to get the flu?
*Are Big Pharma just out to make a tidy fortune off another one of their useless nostrums for ersatz ailments?
*Are the masters just using “reverse psychology” to make all of the less sheep-like so suspicious that we refuse to comply with the scheme, so they can release a real deadly form of flu “this fall,” with the result that anybody who has the ability to penetrate the transparent Newspeak, due to having contracted that new mental “illness” invented by Big Psych called Oppositional Defiant Disorder, will be conveniently eliminated?
*Or are Big Medical just sincerely concerned for our well-being, and I just can’t see it through the cloud of all the other unanswered questions?
Since I fell down that rabbit hole, anything became possible.
Thanks as usual, sakerfa, for more food for thought.