This could be a key new drug for the West. ibid.
Viruses and bacteria don’t stay the same: they evolve too. Dr Alice Roberts, Horizon: Are We Still Evolving? BBC 2011
This is the story of one of Science’s most significant encounters: pandemic disease born by infectious bacteria, viruses and parasites. Pandemic: A Horizon Guide, BBC 2012
HIV exploits its ability to mutate more than any other virus. Untreated, HIV can make ten billion new virus particles in one person in one day ... One of the most destructive pandemics in history. ibid.
In March 2009 a form of the H1N1 virus called swine flu ... put the globe under the latest threat of a pandemic. ibid.
Poor sanitation during the Second World War drove the reign of infectious disease. ibid.
Polio: at its peak eight thousand people were infected a year in the UK. ibid.
The long-term effects of vaccines were still unknown. And contaminated supplies had infected many of those they sought to protect. ibid.
The world’s most violent killer – the Smallpox virus. ibid.
In a phenomenal effort a team of hand-picked doctors worked tirelessly to vaccinate or treat every case of smallpox. ibid.
It was deemed a public health miracle. By 1979 smallpox was the first infectious disease to have ever been eradicated from the world. In a stroke millions of lives had been saved. ibid.
The pox viruses steal our genetic information. ibid.
Smallpox uses every trick there is. ibid.
The stocks weren’t destroyed. ibid.
Sars is the story of the modern plague – a virus that seemed to come from nowhere and spread panic around the world. ibid.
Sars claimed just 800 lives worldwide, whereas 5,000 people die from flu in Britain alone. ibid.
In 2003 we faced another deadly threat: the H5N1 virus, or bird flu. ibid.
This is the worst Ebola epidemic there has ever been. And efforts to control the outbreak are failing. But there is hope. Horizon: Ebola – The Search for a Cure, BBC 2014
It was first identified less than forty years ago. ibid.
Ebola clearly wasn’t an airborne virus but was only spread through physical contact and bodily fluids. ibid.
Whilst viruses are made of the stuff of life, their existence questions what life is ... Viruses are the most abundant life-form on Earth. Horizon: Why Do Viruses Kill? BBC 2010
HIV is able to pass under our immune radar. Thousands of virus particles can infect human cells. Initially without a person even being aware. They then quietly multiply undisturbed ... HIV has a particular strategy that’s beaten our attempts to produce a vaccine. HIV mutates at an alarming rate. As it copies itself it is continually changing. ibid.
Swine Flu went from a few isolated incidents in Mexico in mid-April 2009 to a world-wide pandemic in just two months. But whilst highly infectious it wasn’t as dangerous as feared. For all our modelling we were still unable to predict the effect of the pandemic with any accuracy. But maybe that shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. Because the one thing viruses don’t want to do is kill us. ibid.
Just over 100 days ago a dead virus took an unprepared world by storm. But as the world scrambled to react to this growing emergency, an astonishing global scientific effort began: to understand the nature of this new enemy and how to fight it. Horizon: Coronavirus, BBC 2020
We’re facing one of the greatest medical and scientific challenges in history. ibid.
This is a completely new strain … All viruses have to hijack the cells of other organs ... Viruses infect all life forms … Where do these new strains emerge from and why? ibid.
Scientists had mapped the virus’s gene and discovered it shares 96% of its genetic code with a virus found in bats. ibid.
South Korea: mass testing rather than lockdown to suppress the spread. ibid.
When the Spanish first set foot on Mexican soil they faced some fifteen million native Americans. And yet within half a century up to 80% of this population is wiped out. Who Killed the Aztecs? 2008
Conventional wisdom suggested that the collapse of the Aztec population resulted from an historic one-off: the first contact with peoples of different infections and immunities. New evidence points to an epidemic caused by a local virus that suddenly wipes out the native population in devastating numbers. ibid.
But the number of deaths and the speed at which the casualties spread across the Aztec Empire suggests that in Mexico a second mutation took place. This mutation allowed the virus to pass directly from human to human. Once this happened the scene was set for an Aztec apocalypse. ibid.
A team with a radical new idea: to find ancient viruses that have been trapped in the cave. Return to the Giant Crystal Cave, National Geographic 2010
An unidentified virus strain is rapidly spreading across the state of New Jersey. World War Z 2013 starring Brad Pitt & Mireille Enose & Daniella Kertesz & James Badge Dale & David Morse & Fana Mokoenz & David Andrews & Sterling Jerins & Abigail Hargrove et al, director Marc Forster, radio news
Mother Nature is a serial killer. No-one’s better, more creative. ibid. young scientist
A hundred years ago a mysterious new epidemic took hold in Britain and America. There was no vaccine to prevent it and no cure. It was every bit as terrifying as the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s except the victims of this cruel plague were mainly children, and its symbol was a caliper. Stephanie Flanders, The Battle to Beat Polio, BBC 2014
The battle to beat Polio tested medical science, particularly here and in America, to the limit. ibid.
The formaldehyde he [Brodie] used hadn't killed all the virus in his vaccine [Coleman & Brodie]. ibid.
Some patients spent fifty years in this horizontal prison [iron lung]. ibid.
Roosevelt ... founded the March of Dimes, a Polio charity that would lead the fight on every phase of the sickness. ibid.
A number of children in the west and south-west of America had started to get Polio from the vaccine itself. ibid.
Viruses are up to a hundred times smaller than bacteria, and far far simpler. Michael Mosley, Pain, Pus and Poison: The Search for Modern Medicines II: Pus, BBC 2013
The smallpox virus is held in a level 4 containment lab. ibid.
A virus is a string of nucleic acid with attitude. Dan Dennett, lecture Venice September 2006, ‘The Domestication of the Wild Memes of Religion’
A lot of human viruses, particularly most of the important ones – Hepatitis B, for example, HIV, Influenza – they came from the animal or bird reservoirs on this planet. I think Influenza is not basically a human virus. It can be humanised, but basically at heart, it’s a bird virus. Professor John Oxford, Retroscreen Virology
If you analyse at this present time the threat – it’s not actually Al Qaeda, it’s not bio-terrorism – it’s the great natural infections of this world. That’s the threat. John Oxford
Viruses dominate on this planet. There are six billion of us – there’s probably a thousand times greater number of viruses. In a sense you could say it is their world ... They turn us into a virus replication factory. John Oxford
Each person walking by has a plethora of viruses in them. They have at least four viruses – everyone, me included, will have an entero-virus, we’ll have a chicken-pox virus, we’ll have a herpes virus, we’ll have a walt virus as well. Over a lifetime one would be attacked by probably five hundred, six hundred, a thousand viruses, from all kinds of families. John Oxford
SARS – the ride in the Metropol Hotel’s elevator will launch a worldwide epidemic, one that randomly strikes its victims ... Viruses have been killing humans ever since the existence of mankind, even though we’ve only been able to see them since the creation of the electron microscope, a device that makes the invisible visible ... In the 20th century alone, more people died from viral infections than from all the wars around the globe. The Virus Empire: Silent Killers, History 2008
The single biggest threat to mankind’s dominance on the planet is the virus. They are looking for food. We are their meat. Joshua Lederberg
Ebola – the world’s most terrifying modern plague. A ruthless killer striking over and over again ... Ebola has been around longer than anyone thought. Ebola Exposed, Discovery 2015
It targets white blood cells ... The RNA takes over and it hijacks the cell’s ability to duplicate. ibid.
An extended family with a global footprint ... Where is it hiding, and where does it come from? ibid.
It all seems to start with bats. Ebola jumped into humans by mistake. ibid.