Coronavirus
fromwww.scientificamerican.com
1 day agoScientists warn the wildlife trade is accelerating dangerous pathogen spread
Wildlife trade facilitates the rapid spread of pathogens, increasing the risk of zoonotic diseases like COVID-19.
I am open-minded; I believe in integrative practices, and I agree that the medical establishment can be arrogant and unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, which now funds so much of medical research. But I fully understand Scherer's frustration with his interminable discussions with Kennedy about scientific articles.
Risks of outbreaks with pandemic potential rise with increasing land-use change, biodiversity loss and climate change. The Pandemic Agreement adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2025 marks a historic shift that establishes the One Health approach as a legally binding obligation for pandemic prevention.
Bats carry a lot of very deadly pathogens like Ebola virus, Nipah, Hendra, coronavirus, and also rabies virus. People are finding more and more bat-borne viruses. When such viruses are transmitted to humans, the results are often fatal so there's a lot of interest in trying to prevent spillover in the first place.
In a study published in Science Advances, researchers in China fed Aedes aegypti mosquitoes blood that contained either a vaccine against Nipah virus or the rabies virus. The viruses, contained in the vaccines, replicated inside the insects and reached their salivary glands, allowing them to pass on the vaccine when feeding on bats or when the bats ate the insects.
If you're based in the United States, you've probably gotten used to government bodies issuing nationwide alerts - including ones that relate to public health. These have, historically, been good ways for health-conscious people to know what to look out for and for regional public health experts to develop strategies to help keep potential outbreaks contained.Unfortunately, now both individuals and institutions are reckoning with a big question: what to do when those warnings are much smaller in number?
"If you are actively sick with diarrhea or some kind of a GI-related condition, go ahead and separate those clothes from other healthy people in the household," said Emergency Medicine specialist Dr. Ali Jamehdor with Dignity Health St. Mary's Hospital in Long Beach. Some people let clothes sit in the hamper for weeks. He said that diarrhea-causing E. coli and salmonella can live that long in your laundry bin.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health said in a news release that among the 1,261 students and staff at the high school, 219 people, or about 17%, tested positive for TB. Subsequently, 204 of those people had confirmed cases of latent TB. The number is a major increase from the 50 latent cases detected by the end of January as testing was ramping up among the school's students and staff.