I pictured myself as a virus or a cancer cell and tried to sense what it would be like.
Language is a virus from outer space.
An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.
I wanted to be a genetic engineer. That was my goal in college. I wanted to figure out what the codon sequence was that causes replication in a cardio myopathic virus. That was my goal.
Every one of us has a small but critical part to play in the battle against coronavirus. From washing our hands to wearing a face covering on public transport and in shops, every time we take one of these actions, we push the virus further into retreat.
Supporting American technology companies is one of the most patriotic things you can do – the technology industry is the reason our country has such a high-standard of living and why we can afford to spread the democracy virus around the globe.
The more cases of Ebola infection we have, the more chances there are for the virus to mutate in a particular way that adapts it well to living in humans, replicating in humans, and perhaps transmitting from human to human.
I was less successful in my attempts to effect preventive vaccination against typhus by using the virus and in trying to produce large quantities of serum using large animals.
I wanted to play around with the format, really tear it to pieces and shake it up. For example, if Mitch saves someone from drowning, and that person then goes out and releases a virus that kills a million people. Imagine the moral implications of that.
When the AIDS epidemic broke, because I happened to be a science nerd and knew a lot about viruses and a lot about that virus at the time, I felt a moral obligation to go out and try to stem the fear and get out and explain to people what the disease was and how it worked.
The unique nature about the influenza virus is its great potential for changes, for mutation.
I am not opposed to scientists looking at all ways to combat and destroy the Zika virus.
Without effective human intervention, epidemics and pandemics typically end only when the virus or bacteria has infected every available host and all have either died or become immune to the disease.
Then there is my country, the Philippines. President Rodrigo Duterte placed most of the country under a lockdown on the ides of March. Surrounded by men in uniform, he cut public transportation and talked about home quarantine, checkpoints and curfews, but said little about the virus or economic aid for those in need.
I don’t think you should be ashamed of anybody that you know that has AIDS. You should stand as close to them as you can and help them out as much as you can. I’m a strong believer in that and that’s why I try to do that for everyone I know that has the virus.
We don’t know what we don’t know about Ebola. We think we know it’s a virus, but is it mutating? Can it be spread by airborne?
We need to live with this virus. Though it cannot be back to normal pre-COVID-19 days, we need to adapt to the new situation, but resume economic activities.
These days, newish art can be priced between $10,000 and $25,000. When I tell artists that a new painting by a newish artist should go for around $1,200, they look at me like I’m a flesh-eating virus.
The fact is we can’t prevent people from getting the COVID-19 virus.
The whole reason I like these virus movies is because I read ‘The Stand’ when I was in junior high and thought it was the greatest book I’d ever read.
Maybe I should mention it: I was not from the beginning mainly interested in papilloma virus; I was mainly interested in infectious agents in human cancer. So papilloma viruses came up as the most likely candidate from my viewpoint.
Just as the only reservoir for the typhus virus in nature is provided by man, so the only vector of infection is the louse. The bite of the louse is not virulent immediately after the infecting meal. It becomes so only towards the 7th day following infection.
There’s no one place a virus goes to die – but that doesn’t make its demise any less a public health victory. Throughout human history, viral diseases have had their way with us, and for just as long, we have hunted them down and done our best to wipe them out.
Scepticism may be evidence of a healthy and independent mindset; but conspiracism is a virus that feeds off insecurity and bitterness.
As mechanistic biologists, we are hoping that by understanding how the virus works at the molecular level, we will be able to predict with more accuracy how it will evolve.
The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.
