SARS
The Mysterious Disappearance Of The First SARS Virus, And Why We Need A Vaccine For The Current One But Didn’t For The Other
Some people question why the current coronavirus has brought the world to standstill while a previous deadly coronavirus, SARS, did not. Others have questioned why a vaccine is so urgently needed now to stop the spread of the current coronavirus when a vaccine was never developed for SARS. I study viruses and am so fascinated …
How Big Will The Coronavirus Epidemic Be? An Epidemiologist Updates His Concerns
The Harvard historian Jill Lepore recounted recently in The New Yorker magazine that when democracies sink into crisis, the question “where are we going?” leaps to everyone’s mind, as if we were waiting for a weather forecast to tell us how healthy our democracy was going to be tomorrow. Quoting Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, Lepore …
Plans To Fight Coronavirus Must Pay Attention To The Environment
The rapid onset and spread of coronavirus is proving to be a huge challenge for public health officials across the world. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses. Some cause illness in people and others only infect animals. Very rarely have animal coronaviruses infected and spread between people. This is what’s suspected to have happened …
What Are Viruses Anyway, And Why Do They Make Us So Sick? 5 Questions Answered
You may sometimes have felt like you “have come down with a virus,” meaning that you became sick from being exposed to something that could have been a virus. In fact, you have a virus – actually, many – all the time. Some viruses cause the common cold, and some are crucial to human survival. …
Coronavirus: We Need To Start Preparing For The Next Viral Outbreak Now
The coronavirus outbreak is officially a crisis – let’s not waste it. Undeniably, the international community is taking the matter very seriously, as it should given that the death total from the COVID-19 epidemic already well surpasses that from SARS in the early 2000s. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency …
How SARS Impacted Global Economies
With the death toll due to the COVID 2019 disease outbreak surpassing that of the 2003 SARS outbreak and with the number of confirmed cases increasing, — not only in China but the entire world in each passing day — it is important to assess the impact of this outbreak on our economy. One way …
Here’s Why The WHO Says A Coronavirus Vaccine Is 18 Months Away
The World Health Organisation said this week it may be 18 months before a vaccine against the coronavirus is publicly available. Let’s explore why, even with global efforts, it might take this long. China shared publicly the full RNA sequence of the virus – now known as SARS-CoV-2 rather than COVID-19, which refers to the …
Coronavirus: The Latest Disease To Fuel Mistrust, Fear And Racism
With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan, China, stories of courage and strength have captured our collective attention as the disease spreads. We have also seen large-scale efforts in China to combat coronavirus, including the construction of new hospitals and facilities in provincial areas as well as the massive quarantine of millions …
A Clue To Stopping Coronavirus: Knowing How Viruses Adapt From Animals To Humans
As the novel coronavirus death toll mounts, it is natural to worry. How far will this virus travel through humanity, and could another such virus arise seemingly from nowhere? As microbial ecologists who study the origins of new microbial species, we would like to give some perspective. As a result of continuing deforestation, “bushmeat” hunting …
The Simple Reason Why We Are Seeing More New Infectious Diseases Today
One would think that our world, compared to the past centuries where pandemics have killed millions of people is better equipped when it comes to fending off diseases thanks to medical breakthroughs and innovations. Intuitively, we expect less infectious diseases to pop out and spread today. Confusing truth However, we know that this is not …