Tag: covid-19

Not The Last One

“From winter, plague and pestilence, good lord, deliver us!”
– From the play, “Songs from ‘Summer’s Last Will and Testament” by Tom Nashe
Sooner or later, the world will gain control over the COVID-19 outbreak. It will be through containment, effective treatment, a vaccine, or a combination of the three. History teaches that. Even the Black Death ended. Even the incurable HIV/AIDS has been controlled.
History also tells us that sooner or later, human behavior will lead to another epidemic or even pandemic. How is that?
Disease outbreaks occur through uncleanliness, vectors, lack of prevention (Anti-Vaxxers, etc), and zoonotic spillovers.
There are areas of the world that still lack clean drinking water and these areas still have outbreaks of cholera and typhoid.
The mosquito still transmits yellow fever and other viral diseases that are endemic in areas in the Tropics and flare up into epidemics every now and then. Even the bubonic plague broke out not too long ago in Madagascar!
Then is the fact that viruses are spilling over from other mammals to humans causing events like the COVID-19 and SARS outbreaks.
Lastly, refusal by some to get vaccinated means that occasionally, we are going to see diseases like measles and polio break out.
Human behavior does not only lead to the direct breakout of diseases. What we do after these diseases break out will ensure that we will forever see epidemics or even pandemics.
Since time immemorial, the attitude of those in power towards the outbreak of diseases has worsened these events. One can almost predict these reactions and the Chinese authorities epitomized it wonderfully during the initial weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak in December 2019. Instead of appreciating the observations of Li Wenliang and his colleagues that there was a new cluster of patients presenting with SARS-like pneumonia, they censored them.
When a disease breaks out, there are always those, often healthcare workers, who notice the initial cluster of cases and sound the alarm.
Those in power will often deny these reports. Then as the cases mount, they’ll seek to suppress the scientific or observational findings of those who are seeing this cluster swell.
When that does not work, they try to argue that things are not so bad.
By the time leaders realize things are bad, the initial outbreak is beyond containment.
We can forgive the lack of scientific knowledge for the reasons leaders in the Antiquity and Middle Ages gave for the epidemics that afflicted them. The Antonine plaque of 165 AD in the Roman Empire was blamed on an angry Jupiter. It was smallpox. The Church claimed The Black Death was due to bad miasma. Others said it was caused by the Jews and slaughtered them for that. It was bubonic plague.
(Looking at how Copernicus and Galileo were treated, I doubt the Church would have listened.)
However, to deny outbreaks, seek to suppress their reporting or make light of their severity has to be unforgivable in our present times. This is especially egregious since early action can contain disease outbreaks. And yet those in power do it.
We saw President Woodrow Wilson and other allied leaders do it during the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 leading to 50 million people dying worldwide. They suppressed information about the epidemic so as not to depress morale during the 1st World War.
It happened during the outbreaks of bubonic plague in San Francisco in the early 1900s. 190 people ended up dying.
We saw President Reagan avoid the issue of HIV/AIDs until 1985.
We saw several African Heads of States, like Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, refuse to accept the fact that HIV/AIDs was killing their people in the 1990s and 2000s.
We have seen the Chinese reactions to SARs and COVID-19.
It is not only leaders who misbehave when diseases break out. Among the general population, denial abounds too. That is often compounded by crazy conspiracy theories. This is followed by a period of panic and hysteria. When these reactions do not work, fear sets in. Deep crippling fear. Finally, people learn to accept the new reality and a rational response ensues.
In that regard, we of the present day are no different than the Flagellants in Europe of the 14th century, who whipped themselves bloody to get God to stop the plague during the Black Death.
Another factor that adds to the possibility is the unwillingness of governments to spend the money necessary to prevent these diseases from breaking out. Preventive programs in the hotspots of the world are often underfunded. Even developed nations are cutting back. The US recently axed its Pandemic Team as well as the PREDICT Program – a program made of scientists working around the world to hunt down the viruses, like COVID-19, that could lead to the next epidemic or pandemic.
So yes, human behavior being what it is plus economic policy that often short changes public health, we will continue to see epidemics and pandemics. Even in spite of all the scientific advancements, yes, we will continue to see these events.

If it Walks Like A Duck

There is a saying that goes, “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, it is a duck!!! “
It is not a camel, it is not a cat…it is a duck!
We have a novel respiratory virus breaking out in a part of a country where the people are known for capturing, trafficking in, and eating all manner of wild animals, a country with a huge bat population and responsible for two other recent breakouts of respiratory viruses. The previous epidemics were found to be caused by viruses that spilled over from bats, were incubated in rodents, and then jumped over to humans.
Would it not be smart to suspect that this recent outbreak may have followed the same path since the behaviors in that population have not changed?
Walk like a duck, quack like duck!!!
And thus scientists who know and understand the phenomenon of zoonotic spillovers have sequenced the genome of this virus and found it to have 96% similarity to a coronavirus from a bat. 96%!
To the men reading this, if a DNA test had that level of similarity, that child whose paternity you refute would be yours!!!
Yet, in spite of all the evidence, some insist on calling it a zebra instead of a duck. Instead of looking at the science, some insist on wallowing in mind-boggling conspiracy theories.
Look, the COVD-19 is not a lab construct. It spilled over from a bat, going first through another mammal and the earlier we accept that, the sooner we start finding ways to prevent more zoonotic spillovers.
Learn the term: ZOONOTIC SPILLOVER!!!
A team of researchers has taken an intellectual shot at rumors that COVID-19 was engineered. In a paper posted on Monday on the scientific online forum Virological, the scientists – who include top epidemiologists like W. Ian Lipkin from Columbia University; Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney; and Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research – said very important genetic clues indicate that COVID-19 was not created in a laboratory.
The paper states:
“It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus. As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for human ACE2 receptor binding with an efficient binding solution different from that which would have been predicted. Further, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one would expect that one of the several reverse genetic systems available for beta coronaviruses would have been used. However, this is not the case as the genetic data shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone.”
In other words, the researchers found that the way the virus binds to humans cells is way more efficient than any computer program would have produced.
Also, the “spikes” the virus uses to attach to human cells is based on a structure yet unseen in any lab. If the virus had been engineered, the makers would have used an available backbone used by scientists.
This means that there are two possibilities for COVD-19 origin:
– natural selection in a non-human animal host prior to zoonotic transfer, or
– natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer.
So in short, COVID-19 IS HIGHLY LIKELY THE RESULT OF A ZOONOTIC SPILLOVER NOT A LAB-MANUFACTURED ORGANISM!!!
No amount of conspiracy theorizing will change that. No novels written in 1981 with predictive passages about Chinese scientists will change that. No statements by irresponsible politicians, nefarious state agents, and clueless media members will change that.
Thus, instead of wasting our time on hollow theories, the world should bring pressure to bear on China to get its people to change their ways.
Historically, the areas around the world’s rainforests have been seen as the hotspots for zoonotic spillovers and two of the deadliest – Ebola and Marburg – came from Africa. Yet, when a group of people actively hunt and capture wild animals from an area of the world with huge bat populations, traffic, sell, and slaughter them on open markets without any control, is the risk in this area not much greater than round the areas around rainforests?
In fact, all of humanity needs to be wary about encroaching on the habitats of these bats and/or hunting and eating all manner of wild animals nilly-willy.
Imagine the COVID-19 virus had not been a respiratory virus but one that causes hemorrhagic fever like Ebola? Just imagine!
Don’t think it can happen?
Well, we have had SARS, MERS, Ebola, Marburg, Nipah, Hendra spillover in just the last 50 years from bats and they have 60+ other viruses they are willing to share!!!
Let’s wise up!!!