zoonoses
-
What Is Marburg Virus (and How Much Should I Worry About It)?
The World Health Organisation recently met to discuss an outbreak of Marburg virus in Equatorial Guinea, in Africa. The virus is related to Ebola and has no known cure. So far the outbreak is small, and scientists are rushing to deploy experimental vaccines and medicines. Here’s what you should know about it.
-
Why You Shouldn’t Panic About ‘Deltacron’ Yet
Last week it was flurona. This week it’s something called “deltacron.” We’re primed to go “oh shit” when we hear about a new variant, because we’ve been burned by quite a few of them by now. But the scary names outnumber the things we actually need to be scared of.
-
Why Is Everyone Suddenly Talking About COVID-19 Escaping From a Lab?
There’s been a pretty broad consensus among scientists who study viruses that the one that causes COVID-19 arose naturally and passed from animals to humans sometime in late 2019, in or near Wuhan, China. But an alternate hypothesis — that it escaped from a lab in that city — has been tossed around like a…
-
How Bad Are All These New COVID Variants?
Viruses mutate; so does everything, really. But experts are now concerned about a few of the thousands of coronavirus variants that have turned up around the world. We wrote about the UK variant last month; now there are more, including one in Los Angeles. You do not need to panic. But it’s good to be…