The weight of evidence—scientific and epidemiological—points to a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2 with the epicenter at the Huanan wet market in Wuhan, China. Although the virus is endemic in bats, there’s little evidence for a direct jump of the virus from bats to humans in Wuhan. The most parsimonious hypothesis is that some other mammal […]

“In the facilities—the artificial ecosystems—that now house much of Earth’s terrestrial vertebrate biomass, constraints on virulence that prevail in natural ecosystems are not merely removed. Virulence is actually favored. In the words of Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, the viruses are “a response to the selection pressures that exist in a […]

We eat a lot of different products that are packaged in plastic packaging. Plastic content leaches into the water we drink from product packaging and throwaway garbage. Unless you are filtering it out in some fashion such as reverse osmosis or another membrane type of filter, microplastic content can buildup in humans. ~~~~~~~ Scientists observe […]

It is very easy to disrupt a complex system and very hard to get it going again. Trump, Musk, and the Muskateers decided to limit overhead on NIH grants to 15% fearing that some of the overhead might get money to DEI deans. They also limited communication of government health agencies with the public. The […]

So-called “pro-life” extremists want to define the beginning of life as the moment of conception. Setting aside the fact that both the sperm and egg are also alive so life doesn’t begin at conception, one might ponder why those who want to criminalize abortion as murder don’t similarly criminalize miscarriages as murder or assault when […]

Incidence of bird flu in humans, though still low, is rising. “Regular” seasonal flu is now being classified as the worst in 15 years with more US hospitalizations for flu than for COVID. So far this year 68 kids have died of seasonal flu, and the US is on track to exceed last year’s children’s […]

A piece I believe capsulizes what many of us are wondering. Where are our politicians, Senators, Representatives, and healthcare people. Why are they so silent as Trump and his keeper Musk slowly disassemble the nation. There are consequences to this. It will not be Trump, Musk, Congress, or doctors and healthcare who will bear the […]

David Frum’s piece in The Atlantic (to which I subscribe) appears to believe the Covid deniers did win. I tend to disagree with his findings. For example and strictly on deaths alone he notes . . . “once vaccines were introduced, Republicans became much more likely to die than Democrats. In the spring of 2021, […]

There’s no question that SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats to humans. Whether that jump was direct or indirect and whether it occurred in a lab or in the Wuhan wet market is unknown. The Chinese government has been less than completely forthcoming about the COVID 19 epidemiology. There’s no question that bird flu can jump from […]

I grew up in the South. While there were no snake handlers in my town, there were fundamentalists in the area who practiced snake handling. I see no significant difference between those snake handlers in East Tennessee and folks in West Texas who refuse to vaccinate their kids for preventable diseases. Both are tempting God, […]