Disease

Monday

Chris Smith

How dangerous is the cruise ship hantavirus?

Virologists, the imaginative bunch that we are, often name new viruses after the places they were first found. Zika virus was initially described in Uganda’s Zika forest, while the Ebola river, flowing through what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, needs no explanation for the dread disease documented there. There are existing case reports of human outbreaks in South America stemming from gatherings and parties. That said, the documented efficiency of the transmission under these circumstances is extremely low Hantaviruses are chips off the same block.

Friday

Teresa Mull

It’s not that hard to not be overweight

Being overweight, unless you’re a sixteenth-century Rubens model, ain’t the thing. But looking at America, where more than two-thirds of people are obese or overweight, you’d think thin is definitely not in. It’s well known extra pounds increase a person’s chance of heart disease, stroke and diabetes, along with the general discomfort of carrying around extra heft for which your frame wasn’t designed. Being overweight is also linked to increased cancer risk, and the New York Post reports: “In all, thirteen types of [cancer] were previously known to be associated with overweight body types — but now, that number has climbed to eighteen different cancers. And the risk of developing cancer begins when people are young — between the ages eighteen and forty.

overweight

Wednesday

John Lee

Could the lockdown have side-effects no one has considered?

‘Nothing makes sense in biology, except in the light of evolution,’ the splendidly named biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote in 1973. It’s a good rule of thumb. Despite near-miraculous advances in medical science we remain biological beings, subject to biological laws. None is more central to our understanding of disease than evolution. Yet this theory remains poorly understood and poorly utilized in medicine. And an evolutionary perspective raises important questions about the drastic action we have been taking to confront COVID-19.Most doctors are too busy dealing with the day-to-day deluge of cases to have much time for what they may consider abstruse academic ideas.

effects

Monday

Patrick Allitt

COVID-19 vs the American spirit of resistance

If the coronavirus were as deadly as the bubonic plague, which killed about a third of the population of Europe in the 1340s, there would be no doubt about the need for extreme measures. But this virus spares far more people than it kills, and is sometimes mild to the point of invisibility, even as it proves lethal to others. It’s almost as though nature had calibrated the virus exactly to the point where risk-avoiders saw the lockdown as vital for survival while risk-accepters saw it as so economically destructive as to be worse than the disease itself. America is polarized not just politically but in its attitude to risk.

resistance

Friday

Amber Duke

What have we learned since the swine flu outbreak?

Donald Trump declared a national emergency on Friday over the spread of COVID-19, promising to dedicate $50 billion in funding for states to fight the virus. The order is the latest in a line of actions taken by the administration to try to stem the spread of the virus: major restrictions on travel from China and the European Union, convincing insurance companies to waive copayments on Coronavirus testing, and loosening FDA restrictions on testing, among others. 'We will overcome the threat of the virus,' President Trump said during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.

Barack Obama swine flu

Tuesday

Alex Colville

In coronavirus quarantine

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. I’ve been quarantined, like millions of others in China. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I traveled all the way from Beijing to the third-tier city of Jining in Shandong province, where anyone arriving from another region must be detained for 14 days. There’s no kind way to deliver the news, so a Chinese colleague broke it to me over WeChat in a gentle but firm tone. It felt like being fired or dumped. It could be worse. I’m free to leave my building, but not the walled housing compound surrounding it.

coronavirus

Saturday

James Adams

Is China hiding how bad the coronavirus is?

The Chinese government would have the world believe that the coronavirus is under control and the risks of it spreading to the rest of us is minimal. But foreign governments and intelligence agencies believe that China has been lying about the extent of the epidemic and continues to deny the truth about the numbers of dead and infected.Judging by leaked videos on social media that purpotedly show the dead lying untended in the street, bodies wrapped in sheets lying on benches and crematoriums working 24/7 with bodies unceremoniously stuffed into ovens with no burial rites, millions of Chinese people appear to agree with the foreign assessments.

coronavirus