It is not often that we see an article so well written , passionate and scintillating that you HAVE to read it. Yet such is the case of Dr Richard Horton (editor of The Lancet) who writes in today’s Guardian. See link below.

It is not our place to agree or disagree with every point which Dr Horton makes. But every concerned citizen should think about these points that he makes.

Were repeated warnings ignored? (1994, 1998, 2004(Sars), 2013, 2014(Ebola)

Was the famous policy of Austerity to blame for fatally undermining the public realm?

Did UK Government Committee Nervtag make a fatal wrong call on 21st February 2020?

Have NHS workers been pushed too far, both physically and psychologically?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/09/deadly-virus-britain-failed-prepare-mers-sars-ebola-coronavirus

#coronavirus #sars #RichardHorton #Lancet

we wish all tigers who have caught corona virus a speedy recovery

#tiger #coronavirus

For technical reasons the link we provided to Graham’s superb article didn’t seem to work. here it is again

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/09/how-did-the-coronavirus-start-where-did-it-come-from-how-did-it-spread-humans-was-it-really-bats-pangolins-wuhan-animal-market

apologies to him and all our readers

#wuhanwetmarket #bats #origins corona virus #pangolin

It’s really important to know about the origins of the SARS Coronavirus 2. If only to predict the next one, and avoid another crash. Zoonoses(diseases that jump from animals to humans) have been occurring for thousands of years. We will be returning to this theme in future blogs. To get the ball rolling, here is an excellent article from the Guardian by Graham Redfearn. Excellent for the clarity of writing. Excellent for the questions it asks

Was it the Wuhan Animal Market?

What is the role of bats? And pangolins?

How easily does it jump species?

Will it hit cats? Pigeons? Sheep? What else?

Is it still evolving? And where?

Graham gives a superb kick off for anyone who wants to follow these questions

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/09/how-did-the-coronavirus-start-where-did-it-come-from-how-did-it-spread-humans-was-it-really-bats-pangolins-wuhan-animal-market-how-did-it-spread-humans-was-it-really-bats-pangolins-

#Coronavirus #Pangolins #WuhanWetMarket #OriginsCoronavirus

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Spoiler alert: my IT people have asked me to run this again

The stunning advances in antibiotic research of the nineteen forties and fifties were followed by stagnation as resistance developed, and funding dried up. Now we have to look desperately for new ones. There is some hope of this. However, is there a chance that we could also recycle some from our existing stocks? AntibioticResearch UK seem to think so. Below is a summary of their work, beautifully presented.

#Antibiotics #AntibioticResearch #ResistanceBreakers

Antibiotic Resistance Breakers (ARBs)

The breakthroughs on new antibiotics, like penicillin were spectacular. All too soon, however, resistance kicked in, funding dried up, and here we are in a fine old mess. But-can we reuse any of those old antibiotics? The people at antibiotic research UK seem to think so. Here is a summary of their work on resistance breakers. See what you think.

#Antibiotics #AntibioticResistance #AntibioticResearch

Antibiotic Resistance Breakers (ARBs)

Recently, friend of mine bought a house near London which has quite a tidy sized stream running through the garden. Being possessed of a number of children, this friend is anxious to do something about climate change wherever and whenever he can. Being furthermore a rather gifted engineer and mathematician, he began to make the measurements and plans necessary to create his own hydroelectric power station in his own back garden-a noble aim indeed. He estimated a potential yield of 7000 kw per year- a useful contribution to running an electric car, to say the least.

Just like a government building a dam, he called in consulting engineers. And here come the problems. Installation costs-£50 000. Licence to proceed-£1500. And much, much more. Enough to make the eyes water of all but the richest, And however, ever, ever would you extract enough power to pay back the investment?

At this point, an unreflective person would throw up their hands, decry a brutal, inflexible bureaucracy, and perhaps turn to the comforts of alcohol.

If we are going to cure global warming, we must get everyone onside, welcome their new ideas, and help them to decentralise power production. Surely? Huh? Common sense, guvnor?

But as our man dug down, he realised the true explanation is deeper, and actually more problematic. The power grid systems of advanced countries were designed long ago, when electricity was pulsed out from huge central generating systems. The poor old cables will let you bleed off power, but they cannot cope when we are all feeding in from our little solar , hydro and biomass schemes. If local power is going to work, we shall have to dig out all those old cables, and put in new ones. And that will mean big bucks.

Developing countries who are still putting in their systems, should be able to avoid the worse of these sunk costs. Which means Britain will have to find the money from somewhere. Or fall behind.

Does too much stress make us ill? Intuitively, most of us would say yes. (confession: most of my nineteen nineties, trying to run two jobs were just cold after fever after cold!) Now I am no medical man, but the team at the top-The Prime, Minister, Messrs Cummings, Gove et al have all been working incredibly long hours under appalling conditions of stress, and we cannot be surprised they have succumbed (see news media). However, if you are reading this, you are probably the curious sort who wants a proper scientific explanation of what’s going on. If you don’t, you have just wasted sixteen years in school and University.

Now a team ay Nagoya University led by Kazuhiro Nakamura, have come up with a well defined link which seems to bear how and why our suspicions are true (Marta Pulido Salgad Investigacion y Ciencia– How Stress can provoke Fever see English ref. below and article)

They have found that, in rats, stress stimulates the sympathetic nervous system ,which affects both cardiac function and body temperature. They have even identified a key area of the neuronal cortex, called the Dorsal peduncular cortex and the Dorsal tenia tecta( I bet you suspected they were going to be in there somewhere) According to Nakamura, they link directly to parts of the hypothalamus that control the functioning of brown fat-the one you use to control temperature. And their tests in stressed rats showed higher temperatures in regions like the back and the abdomen-where we mammals keep a lot of our brown fat.

It’s always good to have guessing knowledge confirmed. The team have given us an important new piece of the jigsaw puzzle. This way we may be able to better control stress, design it out, or treat it with drugs, if we really have to. And how much money could that save the Health Service in the long run?

A central master driver of psychosocial stress responses in the rat N Takoaka et al Science 367 (6482) 1105-1112 6 3 2020

https://www.investigacionyciencia.es/noticias/cmo-el-estrs-puede-provocar-fiebre-18502

The news that Cath Kidston are in trouble(see various news media) is disturbing. This was quite a successful business, with strong growth, a distinctive brand, and a nicely targeted market- adult women. OK, not my bag-but if you saw inside their shops, it was well designed, and the whole seemed more that the sum of the individual parts.

The issue here is not whether they survive or not, but that they and so many other brands and stores are in trouble. What happens next?

Any retail brand emerging from the corona virus crisis will need money. The trouble is that investors may look at the successful new parts of retail-distribution, storage and on line marketing. Many retail companies trade from premises owned by someone else, and so it’s hard to see where the collateral for big loans will emerge from. Certainly, funds will have to be competed for.

Which brings us to the second point of angst- investor portfolios may well look shy of retail property, and even parts of commercial property altogether. It is no exaggeration to state that retail shop clusters (that’s High Street to you and me) have been at the centre of our lives for at least eleven hundred years. They provide the very focus for communities, where things like charities, politics and just simple social networks thrived. For a very, very long time.

Of course all societies change. But the sheer size of such a change in such a very, very short time, may be very hard to manage indeed. Ideas, anyone?

Some of the most intelligent people on the planet are making heroic efforts to develop a vaccine for the SARS-Cov-2 virus. You can find good coverage of their efforts in all the best media, New Scientist, Guardian, Mail…you name it. We know they are doing their best, but safe manufacture and production take time, and there’s no point offering an easy target for antivaxxers. Eighteen months seems a pretty good estimate, and anything that comes in ahead of that would be good indeed.

But there’s one thing that worries and concerns: could this virus mutate, and jump away from the vaccine? I am not a virologist. but here’s my scenario, for what it’s worth.

I start with that excellent site Live Science http://www.livescience.com/coronavirus. Way way back in February (seems a lifetime now, doesn’t it?) they reported how Chinese scientists in Wuhan had identified two strains of SARS-Cov 19, which they called S and L. Other experts criticised the extent to which these variations were significant, and assert that virus mutation rates are quite slow. Slow enough to ensure that a vaccine will protect a very large number of people for a very long time.

It’s certainly true that some viruses never seem to overcome our vaccine defences. As the article points out, measles , mumps and yellow fever have stayed largely under control, where a vaccine is deployed.

However, and this is where my speculation takes over, some don’t. We all have to get a new flu virus every winter. Partly this is due to a slight decline in the efficacy of our immune system. But, it’s also due to mutations in proteins in the outer coat of the flu virus, due to a process called antigenic drift. Your immune system no longer recognises the slight change in the virus, and -bingo-you either get a new vaccine or you get the flu.

Most people will object that the influenza virus belongs to the family orthomyxoviridae, whereas our friend SARS Cov 19 is in the coronaviridae family. (see Wikipedia).

Well………. The Devil whispers in my ear, thus. Both viruses have a an RNA core. They both have glycoprotein coats. The transmission mechanisms are eerily similar. So why would one mutate, and not the other? Watch this space, gentle readers. Watch this space.

en.//Wikipedia.org/wiki/coronavirus