and this 2018 flu season is particularly
deadly up to date it’s been accountable
for 93 deaths and children doesn’t it
seem that with each season the virus
finds yet another way to infect more
people while I was researching how the
flu virus has changed over time
one thing I was amazed to learn is that
one sneaky trick that the flu virus has
up its sleeve is this ability to change
how sociable you are you see unlike more
stable diseases the flu virus is unique
in the way that it’s constantly morphing
into ever so slightly different forms in
order to avoid our annual vaccine after
all that’s the reason why we need an
annual vaccine in the first place to
meet the challenges and changes that
each new strain of the flu virus
presents now if you really thought about
it if it sort of makes says that the
ultimate goal of the flu virus is to
plan itself into as many human bodies as
possible indeed the multiple studies
have shown that in order to do this the
flu virus will actually manipulate
immune responses in the human brain in
order to spread itself so put in more
simple terms the flu virus can actually
influence how social how sociable you
are so what did these social and
interactions even look like well just
imagine how you feel when you’re a
little more talkative than usual you
feel buzzing happy that’s exactly how
you would feel upon first being exposed
to the flu virus you feel more of this
desire to go out and hang out with your
friends on a Friday night when you
normally wouldn’t have or you feel like
you would probably go to a party when
again you normally wouldn’t have and
that’s what the flu virus is doing to
you now in a study conducted by
biologists at UC Berkeley they try to
see the effects of parasites on the
social behavior of mice
and now before you guys stop me I just
want to say that I do recognize that flu
viruses are different from parasites but
at the same time they’re not too
different
both parasites and flu viruses use a
human or animal host in order to spread
itself so with that being said this is
how the lab setup kind of looked like
one end of the enclosure we have a mouse
it was kind of a shoebox kind of deal
and then on the other end of the
enclosure you will have a sample of
Bobcat urine so a normal Mouse sensing
the presence of cat urine will story to
the far end of the enclosure but a mouse
infected with this brain parasite will
actually dally dangerously close near
the target area suggesting that
something have fundamentally changed
within the brain chemistry of the mice
making them somehow lose their inherent
fear of cats now the reason why I bring
up this last example of parasites and
mice is because there are parallels
between parasites and mice and then flu
viruses and people in a study published
in the analysis of Epidemiology by a
team of researchers they collected data
from 36 normal perfectly healthy adults
and these participants had just walked
into the doctor’s office received a flu
vaccination and had agreed to simply
participate in this study making it a
perfect setup for this experiment given
that it would be sort of unethical to
just give someone influenza for the sake
of this lab experiment but anyway is
given this perfect lab setup the
researchers asked each participant to
record the number of social interactions
that they had in the first two days
before receiving the flu vaccination and
then compare that number to the number
of social interactions they had
following the flu vaccination the
results were astonishing during the two
day period before the vaccination the 36
participants averaged a total number of
54 social interactions that number
nearly doubled to
99 social interactions suggesting that
something had totally changed within the
humans instilling in them a desire to go
out more to talk more all going back to
that idea that tiny little exposure of
the flu virus within them now just to
clarify as I close off the science on
the flu virus and the sociality
connection is still in its very early
stages we’re not quite assured the exact
mechanisms of how this occurs within our
body but nonetheless it points to very
important questions regarding the
relationships between health disease and
social behavior and if you think about
it it’s pretty amazing that the little
things inside of us could have such big
effects on the outside and how we
interact with the world with all this
being said make sure that you guys take
preventative measures during this deadly
flu season like call for sneeze into
your elbow
wash your hands under hot water and
avoid all social interactions if you
think that you’ve been exposed to any
bit of the flu virus stay healthy and thank you