Thread: Winnie the Flu
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Old 01-29-2020, 04:34 PM
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LarsMac LarsMac is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2012
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Default Re: Winnie the Flu

So this is going to be a real bugger.
Developing a vaccine is really going to prove the best defense.
Until then, it's going to get a bit ugly.


The Coronavirus Questions That Scientists Are Racing to Answer - Scientific American

Now that the virus appears to be spreading effectively among people, tracking down the initial source has become secondary to trying to contain the outbreak. But both as a scientific curiosity and for possible insights about how to prevent the next outbreak, it’s useful to know when and how the virus started infecting people.

Early in the outbreak, local authorities in Wuhan said that most of the early cases were linked in some way to a large seafood market that also had live animals for meat. This seemed like a logical source for the outbreak; coronaviruses can jump from animals to infect people. These viruses are thought to originate in bats, but can use a middleman as they hopscotch to humans. The 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, for example, was traced to palm civets, while MERS infections come from camels.

But then last week, in some of the first analyses of the initial cases, a team of researchers reported that the first patient in Wuhan hospitalized with pneumonia caused by the virus had no tie to the market. The patient’s symptoms also started a week earlier than later cases who were tied to the market.

That raises several possibilities: Perhaps the virus was spreading among people earlier than first noticed or reported by Wuhan health officials, and that one of these patients brought the virus to the market. Or, perhaps there was a group of infected animals that could have seeded the outbreak at different locations.
Republished with permission from STAT. This article originally appeared on January 28, 2020
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