Pandora's Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk by Alison Young
This fearless, deeply reported book about laboratory accidents asks the haunting question some elite scientists don’t want the public to entertain: Did the COVID-19 pandemic start with a lab leak in Wuhan, China?
Though commonly overlooked, seemingly familiar viruses, even influenza, can leave some with debilitating, long-lasting symptoms, as highlighted by a recent Lancet Infectious Diseases study on "Long flu".
> The Royal College Of Paediatrics And Child Health said many doctors would not have previously seen symptoms associated with measles in their careers.
Music to my ears: "We need multipronged and imaginative basic scientific and epidemiological research to expand our understanding of what we can do to prevent or mitigate the next influenza pandemic."
Many potential pathways to future pandemic #influenza
"...researchers thought that chain-terminating antiviral drugs were strictly a product of human ingenuity, developed from advances in scientific understanding of viral replication. However, the discovery that a protein in your cells named viperin synthesizes a natural chain-terminating antiviral has revealed a new side of your immune system."
Your immune system makes its own antiviral drug—and it’s likely one of the most ancient
"A major barrier for testing alternative antibiotics for #syphilis was the inability to culture the causative agent of the disease [however] it is now possible to test T pallidum susceptibility to antimicrobial agents to determine the [MICs] associated with each compound."
Antimicrobial susceptibility of #Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum: an in-vitro study