Quotes About Viruses

The risk from viruses is an unanswered question - and it won't be answered until you have had organs transplanted into humans over many years.

The truth is it's more probable that the coronavirus escaped from a Chinese lab that was known to both be tinkering and souping up viruses, and also had reports known of lax security.

Without equity, pandemic battles will fail. Viruses will simply recirculate, and perhaps undergo mutations or changes that render vaccines useless, passing through the unprotected populations of the planet.

I think it would be over-exaggeration to think that there are millions of viruses ready to jump on us and bring us back to the 14th century. That would be looking over a ledge that isn't there.

Maybe I should mention it: I was not from the beginning mainly interested in papilloma virus; I was mainly interested in infectious agents in human cancer. So papilloma viruses came up as the most likely candidate from my viewpoint.

Swine flu is not an anomaly. We know that swine flu - like the vast majority of new outbreaks - comes from animals. We should be monitoring those animals and the humans that come into contact with them, so we can catch these viruses early, before they infect major cities and spread throughout the world.

If we can contain and monitor animal viruses at an earlier stage - when they're first entering human populations, preferably before they've had a chance to become human-adapted, certainly before they've had a chance to spread - we can head off pandemics altogether.

I can't say I'm particularly happy about all the spam and the viruses and the equivalent that we see on the Net, but I think technology can deal with many of the problems that we're now seeing, whether it's filtering or whatever, and laws may help a lot.

Viruses have to live somewhere. They can only replicate in living creatures. So, when the Ebola virus disappears between outbreaks, it has to be living in some reservoir host, presumably some species of animal.

As life forms, viruses are just inherently interesting. It's the microworld - this universe of life too small for us to see - but it's profoundly complicated, and immensely powerful. Ebola is like a beautiful and frightening predator. There is a wonder in the operations of nature that can't be denied, even when we're the losers.

I think the world should unite and focus on strong health systems to prepare the whole world to prevent epidemics - or if there is an outbreak, to manage it quickly - because viruses don't respect borders, and they don't need visas.

Well, I have been trained my entire life to recognize these outbreaks and recognize viruses. I have a Ph.D. in virology.

Viruses were evil incarnate that added to the world's suffering and created useless deaths.

There are three different types of influenza viruses: A, B, and C. Type C rarely causes disease in humans. Type B does cause disease, but not epidemics. Only influenza A viruses cause epidemics or pandemics, an epidemic being a local or national outbreak, a pandemic a worldwide one.

In most life forms, genes are stretched out along the length of a filament-like molecule of DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid. But many viruses—including influenza, HIV, and the coronavirus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome)—encode their genes in RNA, ribonucleic acid, an even simpler but less stable molecule.

Throughout known history there have been periodic pandemics of influenza, usually several a century. They erupt when a new influenza virus emerges. And the nature of the influenza virus makes it inevitable that new viruses emerge.

Louis Sullivan, the first great modern architect, declared that form follows function. To understand viruses, or for that matter to understand biology, one must think as Sullivan did, in a language not of words, which simply name things, but in a language of three dimensions, a language of shape and form. For in biology, especially at the cellular and molecular levels, nearly all activity depends ultimately upon form, upon physical structure—upon what is called "stereochemistry.

The western world suffered the least, not because its medicine was so advanced but because urbanization had exposed its population to influenza viruses so immune systems were not naked to it.

Socialism is like one of those horrible viruses. You no sooner discover a remedy for one version, than it spontaneously evolves into another.

The other naturally occurring viruses, like ebola, are not durable enough to generate a runaway epidemic.

Viruses are measured in millionths of a millimeter.301 As one writer described them, "Like tiny terrorists, viruses travel light, switch identity easily and pursue their goals with deadly determination.

Michael Oldstone, in his book Viruses, Plagues, and History, wrote: "The obliteration of diseases that impinge on our health is a regal yardstick of civilization's success, and those (scientists) who accomplish that task will be among the true navigators of a brave new world."     With

that routine childhood vaccinations might provide kids with cross-immunity against SARS-2. In particular, the tuberculosis vaccine BCG (not currently used in the United States) has received substantial attention due to its nonspecific protective role that could have an effect on novel viruses.36 Other

The average human comprises forty trillion eukaryotic cells and an accompanying microbiome of a hundred trillion bacteria, mostly in the gut, and one quadrillion viruses. We are, in raw cell numbers, more microbe than mammal.