From Newsgroup: talk.origins
https://www.science.org/content/article/little-known-flu-virus-sickening-cattle-around-world-are-humans-next
The D genera of influenza wasn't identified until 2011, but it has been
around for a long time. It is more distantly related than C is from A
and C is more distantly related from A as B. A and B (commonly infect
humans) are the most closely related. A includes Avian influenza.
Influenza D may be more common in the environment than previously
thought. It isn't detected by the current influenza PCR tests, and the science article notes that a Chinese study that determined that it could
be an airbourne infection among ferrets found that 73% of humans in
urban and rural areas of Northern China tested positive for D antigens.
A US researcher thinks that they must have been scoring a lot of false positives because it hasn't been detected by sequence in China.
They find it a lot in cattle and the fear is that it will reassort and
start infecting humans. Apparently the first D virus to be identified
in 2011 was a reassorted virus with half the genome coming from influenza C.
Ron Okimoto
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