Flu pandemic warning: Mutant virus killing 300 million people could strike TOMORROW

Dr Jonathan Quick, chair of the Global Health Council, warns the influenza virus is the most “diabolical, hardest-to-control and fastest-spreading potential viral killer”.

At its most extreme, a flu pandemic without the proper medicine and food supply could cause “the global economy to collapse” as millions are people are crippled by the influenza virus.

If an outbreak was to spread, 33 million people could be killed in the first 200 days of an outbreak, he said.

Dr Quick said: “Within the ensuing two years, more than 300 million people could perish worldwide.

“The most likely culprit will be a new and unprecedentedly deadly mutation of the influenza virus. The conditions are right. It could happen tomorrow.”

Humans are just as vulnerable to the flu as they were when the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic infected a third of the world’s population and wiped out up to 100 million people, according to Dr Quick.

He added: “A century on, the history and biology of the influenza virus tells us that we should expect another major global pandemic soon.

“Experts say it is already overdue.

“Somewhere out there, a flu virus is boiling up in the bloodstream of a bird, bat, monkey or pig, preparing to jump to a human being.

“When that combination from birds and beasts finds its way into a person, the resulting new human strain can kill us more easily because it is unknown to us and our bodies have zero immunity to it.

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Flu pandemic warning: Dr Jonathan Quick warns an outbreak could kill 33million in its first 200 days

Dr Quick, who has worked with the World Health Organisation (WHO), warned our everyday lifestyle and food choices have also “inadvertently developed a powerful way of helping influenza to kill us”.

He said that cheap chicken, pork and the “factory farm industry” could very “likely be the birthplace of the next killer pandemic”.

Writing for the MailOnline, Dr Quick added: “These giant industrial farms were the birthplace of H1N1 swine flu that emerged in 2009 and killed up to an estimated 575,400 people worldwide.

“Scientists traced the virus’s genes to a massive North Carolina pig farm in 1998. Originally, the virus contained three human flu genes. Within a few months at the farm, it had acquired segments of two bird flu genes as well.

A new and unprecedentedly deadly mutation of the influenza virus….it could happen tomorrow

Dr Jonathan Quick


“The most frightening type of infectious flu we know of today — the H5N1 strain of the virus – known popularly as ‘bird flu’ — also came from an animal.

“Meanwhile, swine flu still mutates in the blood of pigs and remains a threat to humans.”

“Reducing the risk posed by farm animals requires us all to fight factory farming.

“If we eat meat or dairy products, we can eat them less often, choose meat labelled organic and buy from places that don’t rely on factory farm sources.

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Flu pandemic warning: Experts warn a deadly outbreak is overdue

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Flu pandemic warning: Dr Quick advices getting the flu vaccine

“If a new and highly contagious strain of H5N1 were to evolve and hitchhike with an unwitting passenger on to a cruise ship or an aeroplane, the pandemic situation would quickly assume disaster movie proportions.”

Dr Quick, who is an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, also advises getting a flu vaccine and to heed to the Public Health England’s ‘Catch It, Bin It, Kill It’ campaign.

He continued: “This encourages people to adopt good respiratory and hand hygiene, such as using a tissue and washing hands thoroughly. It really is an effective line of defence.”