Quotes About Infection

In 2003 a new coronavirus that causes SARS, "severe acute respiratory syndrome," appeared in China and quickly spread around the world. Coronaviruses cause an estimated 15 to 30 percent of all colds and, like the influenza virus, infect epithelial cells. When the coronavirus that causes SARS does kill, it often kills through ARDS, although since the virus replicates much more slowly than influenza, death from ARDS can come several weeks after the first symptoms.)

virus has only one function: to replicate itself.

AN INFECTION is an act of violence; it is an invasion, a rape, and the body reacts violently.

it can infect someone else for anywhere from an hour to a day after it is exhaled (the lower the humidity, the longer the virus survives). But they did know that it was "a crowd disease," spread most easily in crowds.

Royal Copeland, head of the New York City health department, and the port health officer jointly stated there was "not the slightest danger of an epidemic" because the disease seldom attacks "a well-nourished people." (Even had he been right, a study by his own health department had just concluded that 20 percent of city schoolchildren were malnourished.) He took no action whatsoever to prevent the spread of infection.

San Antonio suffered one of the highest attack rates but lowest death rates in the country; the virus there infected 53.5 percent of the population, and 98 percent of all homes in the city had at least one person sick with influenza. But there the virus had mutated toward mildness; only 0.8 percent of those who got influenza died. (This death rate was still double that of normal influenza.)

Reassortment mixes some of the segments of the genes of one virus with some from the other. It is like shuffling two different decks of cards together, then making up a new deck with cards from each one. This creates an entirely new hybrid virus, which increases the chances of a virus jumping from one species to another.

Closing saloons and theaters and churches meant nothing if significant numbers of people continued to climb onto streetcars, continued to go to work, continued to go to the grocer. Even where fear closed down businesses, where both store owners and customers refused to stand face-to-face and left orders on sidewalks, there was still too much interaction to break the chain of infection. The

But influenza is not simply a bad cold. It is a quite specific disease, with a distinct set of symptoms and epidemiological behavior. In humans the virus directly attacks only the respiratory system, and it becomes increasingly dangerous as it penetrates deeper into the lungs. Indirectly it affects many parts of the body, and even a mild infection can cause pain in muscles and joints, intense headache, and prostration.

From the time an influenza virus first attaches to a cell to the time the cell bursts generally takes about ten hours, although it can take less time or, more rarely, longer. Then a swarm of between 100,000 and 1 million new influenza viruses escapes the exploded cell. The word "swarm" fits in more ways than one. •

After it defeats an infection, specialized white cells (called "memory T cells") and antibodies that bind to the antigen remain in the body. If any invader carrying the same antigen attacks again, the immune system responds far more quickly than the first time. When the immune system can respond so quickly that a new infection will not even cause symptoms, people become immune to the disease.

Even where fear closed down businesses, where both store owners and customers refused to stand face-to-face and left orders on sidewalks, there was still too much interaction to break the chain of infection. The virus was too efficient, too explosive, too good at what it did. In the end the virus did its will around the world.

Yet men could appear healthy while incubating influenza themselves, and they could also infect others before symptoms appeared.

If the Hong Kong chicken influenza had infected someone who was simultaneously infected with a human influenza virus, the two viruses might easily have reassorted their genes. They might have formed a new virus that could pass easily from person to person. And the lethal virus might have adapted to humans.

If there was ever a species that deserved purging from the surface of the planet, it is humanity. We are, or should be, a temporary infestation or infection, a smart virus awaiting its divine antidote.

the inoculation did not confer immunity. It gave him the full-blown disease.

It is one diagnostic trait of Homo sapiens that groups of individuals are periodically infected with a feverish nervousness which causes the individual to turn on and destroy, not only his own kind, but the works of his own kind. It is not known whether this be caused by a virus, some airborne spore, or whether it be a species reaction to some meteorological stimulus as yet undetermined.

Achievement will continue at the same or a greater level only if you do not permit the infection of success to take hold of you and your organization. The symptom of that infection is called complacency. Contentment with past accomplishments or acceptance of the status quo can derail an organization quickly. In sports or business, getting to the top is difficult. One of the reasons staying there is so rare is because the infection sets in.

My father once discovered that one cannot "walk off" gangrene.

Thy food is such As hath been belch'd on by infected lungs.

Yeah, I'm not into sports. If someone told me I had athlete's foot, I'd say that's not my foot!

What is evil anyway, a sad soul infected with devils who take his will, or a man thinking that of all his mother's children he loves himself the best?

in most circumstances, ancient weapons were much better at wounding than killing outright; death followed later, by infection).

Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.