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Is the Influenza Family More Dangerous Than the Bird Flu One?
The genes are on separate pieces. They're all packaged inside that virus particle of influenza virus, but they're in pieces. If two different influenza viruses infect the same cell, the pieces as they reproduce can mix and out can come a virus with a new assortment of pieces. That's why we get pandemics. We have a new flu pandemics is because somewhere in some animal, two viruses have reassorted and made a new virus that we hadn't seen before.