Hmm,
Antivirals can be scary stuff. Some of the approved antiviral agents operate by processes/mechanisms only partially understood by the scientific community, and like any relatively new field of scientific/medical inquiry there are ALWAYS unlooked-for developments when researchers go too far too quickly.
Which is NOT to say I believe in even the most inconceivably remote possibility that Swine Flu or treatments designed to combat it could create zombies. However, a combination of the emergence of an ever-increasing number of pathogens with pandemic causing potential with the substantial increase of pressure upon both governments around the world and the global medical community specifically to find and successfully implement solutions to this problem is extremely unsettling if not downright terrifying. The stress/tension that those responsible for addressing what is arguably the greatest threat humanity faces must be intense to say the very least.
People are afraid, and that fear is only going to increase as the media continues to inform the world of new cases popping up all the time. If some deep-pocketed medical/pharmaceutical comes up with some sort of vaccine or antiviral that's the viral equivalent of broad spectrum antibiotics that wows the FDA, WHO, CDC etc as it's put through its testing paces, it stands to reason that it would be fast-tracked. Those more cautious medical professionals that might choose to urge slower and more in-depth analysis of this hypothetical wonder drug would find their voices muted in the rush to at least get the compound to the Compassionate Use availability during the first human drug trials.
All of that sounds great on so many levels (even to me), but my big worry isn't that in such a scenario bad things happen during the human drug trials. My main concern comes straight out of the plotlines of a host of epidemic genre movies. The drug comes through the trials with flying colors, and gets final approval....
Look at how the US gov't is purchasing huge amounts of Tamiflu and Relenza. If a new anti-viral became available that had strong evidence of being significantly more effective and much more versatile, it would be completely natural for world governments to prioritize acquiring and distributing the anti-viral where needed.
What happens if the new wonder drug in the War On Viruses turns out to be a bomb waiting to go off, and one that has a very long fuse to burn through before detonating?
If a true pandemic began, worrying about consequences that might not begin to appear for 4-5 years (or possibly even longer) would NOT be a high priority. The very lessons that history has taught us about how best to cope with such a threat might very well work against us. Struggling to rapidly contain affected areas/populations, proactively vaccinating populations because a geographically distant area was hit hard and suddenly by the pathogen..all of it could combine to be our undoing if our short and mid-term salvation was actually our long-term damnation, with us tragically unaware that we were being set up for a long fall by the very efforts meant to protect us.
How do you TRULY know what a new and revolutionary anti-viral will do to the future offspring of the population the drug was administered to? Sure, it hypothetically cures 97.5% of those who contract Swine Flu, but in combination with the hypothetical new vaccine meant to immunize against the most recent Bird Flu, it turns out that something about the antibodies passed on to breast-fed newborns from mothers who were both treated for a bad case of Swine Flue: Strain I and vaccinated against Bird Flu: Strain VI creates a "trigger environment" in the toddlers who were breast-fed as babies. When these now four and five year old toddlers get exposed to the good old-fashioned common cold-causing Rhinovirus at their Day Care, voila.
All of the components are unwittingly assembled in the bodies of hundreds of thousands of children across the US over the course of a very few months, triggering an evolutionary leap forward for the virus. It rapidly diverges into 2 or 3 strains as easily transmissable as the common cold, but with the nastier traits of both Bird and Swine Flu, and a near-total immunity to anti-virals, with a complete immunity to the wonder drug Mom was dosed with and all its patent-dodging derivative cousin anti-virals that are now the stockpiled drug of choice for anti-Pandemic contingency plans by all concerned parties.
That's a TAME hypothesis. You could use the same methodology and come up with a nearly infinite number of scenarios, each worse than the last.
The sort of convergence of events that plunges the planet into a 28 Weeks Later scenario. Or give it some real flavor, and go for an epidemic fixated mainly on prepubescents that mixes some TRULY nasty pathogen's traits into the Flu virus family. A pathogen that mimics some of the characteristics of Porphyeria (sp?), including a brain chemistry imbalance in the victim leading to relapsing/recurring psychotic breaks. That'd give you kids as psycho as the freaks from The Hills Have Eyes, with a taste for blood and photosensitivity like the mutants from the book that The Omega Man is based on. With the heartbreaking twist that every so often the kids would come to their senses and react like regular children with disjointed and fragmentary memories of their actions while flipped out.
Likely? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Conceivably possible, and made somewhat more likely by the current climate of fear about potential epidemics? All true.
Couldn't think up a way to get to actual zombies from Swine Flu, but here's my Gallery of Conceivable Potential Horrors linked to the recent pathogens.
For your consideration. Just some late night musing and a few minutes of research.
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Originally Posted by Rancid Carcass
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