Showing posts with label virus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label virus. Show all posts

Sunday 13 December 2020

When a virus is the cure

‘As bacteria grow more resistant to antibiotics, bacteriophage therapy is making a comeback...

‘Phages, or bacteriophages, are viruses that infect only bacteria. Each kingdom of life—plants, animals, bacteria, and so on—has its own distinct complement of viruses. Animal and plant viruses have always received most of our scientific attention, because they pose a direct threat to our health, and that of our livestock and crops. The well-being of bacteria has, understandably, been of less concern, yet the battle between viruses and bacteria is brutal: scientists estimate that phages cause a trillion trillion infections per second, destroying half the world’s bacteria every forty-eight hours. As we are now all too aware, animal-specific viruses can mutate enough to infect a different animal species. But they will not attack bacteria, and bacteriophage viruses are similarly harmless to animals, humans included. Phage therapy operates on the principle that the enemy of our enemy could be our friend.’

Read here (The New Yorker, Dec 14, 2020) 

Thursday 26 November 2020

WHO to look at controversial Italian samples in search for origins

‘The World Health Organization is looking into controversial research suggesting the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was circulating in Italy months before it was first detected in China, the health body said on Friday, while cautioning against using such data to speculate about the disease’s origins.

‘The WHO plans to run tests with the Italian researchers who made waves earlier this month for their peer-reviewed findings based on tests of blood samples from a cancer screening carried out starting before the pathogen was detected in China.’

Read here (South China Morning Post, Nov 27, 2020) 

Sunday 15 November 2020

Covid-19 was present in Italy as early as SEPTEMBER 2019, study of lung cancer screenings shows

‘The Covid-19 virus had been active in Italy months before it was first officially detected, new research has found, raising further questions about the true origins, extent and actual duration of the ongoing pandemic. The new groundbreaking study, conducted by scientists with Milan Institute of Cancer and the University of Siena, was published this week by the Tumori Journal. The research is based on the analysis of blood samples from 959 people, collected during lung cancer screening tests conducted between September 2019 and March 2020.

‘More than 11 percent of the tested – 111 people – turned out to have had coronavirus-specific antibodies. All the tested people were asymptomatic and were not showing any signs of the disease. Some 23 of the positive results date back to September 2019, suggesting that the virus was actually present in the country as early as during last summer – some six months before the pandemic ‘began’ and ‘reached’ Italy.

‘The new research is poking new holes in the already well-battered belief that the novel coronavirus emerged from the Chinese city of Wuhan around December 2019 and that it turned into pandemic in January 2020. The data from Italian researchers is particularly valuable, as it’s based on actual blood samples, as compared to the earlier, less conclusive findings that also suggested that the established pandemic timeline could be wrong.’

Read here (RT, Nov 15, 2020)

Wednesday 4 November 2020

China seeks to flip the script on Covid blame game

‘Chinese state media is advancing a possible alternative explanation for the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, one that claims that the contagion may have first arrived in China from abroad in imported frozen foods. Chinese officials quoted in the reports suggest  “cold chain food contamination” could debunk the widely held belief that the novel coronavirus first emerged from a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, from where it reputedly made its lethal global spread.’  

Read here (Asia Times, Nov 4, 2020) 

Monday 2 November 2020

The wisdom of pandemics

‘Viruses are active agents, existing within rich lifeworlds. A safe future depends on understanding this evolutionary story...

‘Researchers since then have uncovered evidence that pathogens exert ‘the strongest selective pressure to drive the evolution of modern humans’. Among the drivers, look to evidence that prehistoric pandemics played a role in selecting for ancestral traits and behaviours that we recognise as human today. Scientists following another thread in this evolutionary narrative describe viral nucleic acids insinuating themselves into our genetic codes. The biologist David Enard at Stanford University in California and colleagues have concluded that ‘viruses are one of the most dominant drivers of evolutionary change across mammalian and human proteomes’...

‘As we become more deft at exploring the nested, dynamically complex relationships among viruses, bacteria, fungi and ourselves, we’ll come closer to grasping how pandemics emerge from a rupturing and rearranging of these relationships. From this deep linking of Aion with Chronos, we can already see the outlines of the wisdom that pandemics offer us. What we’re beginning to faintly understand is this: if we wish to survive as a species, we must gather all of our knowledge from multiple perspectives – however fragmented and partial – and actively engage in conversations with the world we inhabit and that gives us life. Only then will we begin to understand ourselves, and live up to our name, the wise ones, Homo sapiens sapiens.’

Read here (Aeon, Nov 3, 2020)

Thursday 17 September 2020

Coronavirus: Constantly surprising virus found to be heat tolerant, self-healing and very resilient in lab tests

‘Hungarian team finds virus particle withstands being probed by a nano needle 100 times, possibly making it the most physically elastic virus known. French scientists find it can replicate in animal cells after being exposed to temperatures of 60 degrees Celsius for an hour.’

Read here (South China Morning Post, Sept 18, 2020)

Friday 21 August 2020

How viruses shape the world

‘Viruses are unimaginably varied and ubiquitous. And it is becoming clear just how much they have shaped the evolution of all organisms since the very beginnings of life. In this, they demonstrate the blind, pitiless power of natural selection at its most dramatic. And—for one group of brainy bipedal mammals that viruses helped create—they also present a heady mix of threat and opportunity.’

Read here (The Economist, August 22, 2020)

Thursday 9 April 2020

Does coronavirus survive even longer in your fridge or freezer?

  • Viruses similar to the novel coronavirus have demonstrated an ability to live for extended periods of time in cooler temperatures.
  • Past studies have shown that these viruses can live up to a month in temperatures similar to that of a household refrigerator.
  • The virus is also believed to be capable of surviving after being frozen, which means it could also persist in the environment of a household freezer.

Read here (BGR, April 10, 2020)

Worst ever Covid variant? Omicron

John Campbell shares his findings on Omicron.  View here (Youtube, Nov 27, 2021)