Corona Corrections

ALL WE HAVE IS EACH OTHER, JIM NISBET'S BLOG

By Jim Nisbet
March 31st, 2020

Another friend forwards a more together list of corona bullet points, from Medical News Today, and I’m passing it on to you:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-myths-explored

Despite the entire world learning more about biology and immunology in the past couple of months than they ever learned in highschool, much remains unknown about Corona Virus Disease 2019, aka Covid-19, and there’s a lot of contradictory information floating around in the vacuum of that ignorance, much abetted, unfortunately, by the fecalocracy.  However, an article I read this morning, about a team who tracked the course of Covid-19 infection in a bunch of ferrets, caused me to seek out the original paper, which is to be found in a journal called Cell Host & Microbe.  It’s quite interesting, and I include it here:

https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/cell-host-microbe/PDFs/chom_2285_preproof.pdf

Please note that it’s a pre-pub, which probably means it hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed. 

There’s a summary and discussion of the ferret paper on a pet blog called Worms & Germs:

COVID-19 and ferrets

At the bottom of the Worms & Germs page are several, uh, germane posts, notably one on Novel Corona and Wildlife Markets. 

I hope this further interrogation advances your understanding of the plague, as it has mine, and I wish to thank all the good folks who brought to bear  their healthy skepticism. 

I’m going back to my own lab, at the corner of Corona and Lime, by way of advancing research for an Arm’s Length Negroni.

Yours in peace, biology, and social distance, 

Jim