Bird Flu Update

Unfortunately two more people have died in Indonesia, and it looks like the H5N1 virus is developing resistance to the only known drug to have any effect on the virus itself, Tamiflu:

The latest news comes as researchers reported two cases of patients in Vietnam who died after failing to respond to the drug Tamiflu.

The drug, which governments around the world have been stockpiling in case of a pandemic, is the most effective yet found in combating the virus.

The Vietnam cases, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, suggested the H5N1 virus which causes bird flu is mutating and becoming resistant to the drug.
[...]
The lead researcher into the Vietnam cases described the latest findings on Tamiflu as "very worrying" - but said they were not surprising.

Dr Jeremy Farrar said all microbes, whether parasites, bacteria or viruses, eventually started to develop drug resistance.
[...]
However, Dr Farrar said there was some evidence to suggest viruses that developed drug resistance were also less likely to gain the ability to jump from person to person.

Let's just hope the evidence holds true this time too, even though this virus has already shown several unpredictable behaviors.