An Essay on the Principle of Population
Thomas MALTHUS
This page was initiated in Hong Kong in year 2000, when blogs did not exist yet, at the HKU-Pasteur Research Centre Ltd, a joint venture between the University of Hong Kong and the Institut Pasteur, established by Antoine Danchin. It does not compete with information provided by news agencies such as Agence France Presse or Reuters but selects information occasionally not discovered by the mainstream media. It also provides some information on the History of Science and the creation of concepts used by modern biology. Access to the very nature of Science is discussed in a lecture given at Zhong Shan University (中山大學) in Guangzhou (广州). You can also follow our E-seminar for ongoing open discussions. Finally, the importance of China is stressed as an often enigmatic actor of the world development.
Unlike 10 years ago, when little information was available, there are now a multitude of data sources. Crawford Kilian's blog, which has expanded to include all sorts of other diseases and which keeps track of the Web, is highly recommended. The Center for Infectious Disease Research Policy (CIDRAP), University of Minnesota and the World Health Organization (WHO) sites are major sources of information. Many sites provide interesting information on seasonal flu (especially type A H3N2), avian flu (H5N1) and swine flu A (H1N1). For H7N7, H7N9, H3N8 and H9N2 influenza, see the Hong Kong Health Authorities alerts. In general, new emerging pathogens are mainly viruses. Note that among the possible outbreaks that would have negative consequences (much more than the COVID-19 episode, which may be relatively mild, but would have negative consequences as it progresses) are influenza outbreaks, especially those related to the H2N2 serotype, which could be much more deadly. Hopefully, unlike SARS, the current outbreak will have served as a lesson.
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2024
23 January 2024. Catastrophic
death score of elephant seal pups in South Argentina. The
new influenza virus strain H5N1 is creating havoc in the
Argentina's Valdés Peninsula: more than 17,000 elephant seal
pups died suddently from the disease with corpses everywhere
on shores. The most concerning observation is that contagion
seems to have happen from pup to pup, and not from contact
with other dead animals. Until recently the virus did not
transmit within mammalian species but from infected birds to
mammals. This new development should be closely monitored as
the scope of infection might reach man. |
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21 January 2024. A
Chinese researcher uploaded a genetic sequence of the
SARS-CoV-2 virus to a database linked to the
INSDC on December 28, 2019, 2 weeks before the Chinese
government formally released the sequence. The
sequence was quickly deleted from the database (January 16,
2020), about one week after the China CDC entered an almost
identical sequence on January 10, 2020 in a database
associated to GenBank, an INSDC partner, on January 12. This
information, previously mentioned, reinforces the mystery
surrounding the origin of the pandemic. |
|
16 January 2024. We
are not out of the woods yet: Laboratory experiments in China
test a highly lethal coronavirus. In
virology accidents are the rule, not the exception. How can we
perceive the fact that at a high security laboratory of the
chinese People Liberation Army, a group of "humanized" mice
were administered with SARS-CoV-2-related pangolin coronavirus
GX_P2V to test its effect. All mice died, after the disease
had spread from the lungs to the brain. Notably, the virus had
been adapted to mice cells through serial cell culture
passages. The
study is published in bioRxiv. |
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1 January 2024. Anti-COVID-19
vaccines and emerging diseases.
The USA-based project NextGen for a life-long vaccine against
COVID-19 will begin large scale human experiments. Three
vaccines have been chosen for phase 2b trials (10,000
participants): |
Go to COVID-19 turning point
Go to COVID-19 in April 2020
Go to COVID-19 in March 2020
Go to start of COVID-19