Climate and science denial….
I’m in a reading-and-watching phase at the moment – not much time for writing. Two videos I recently came across are so good that I’ve embedded them below; they are Read More …
Author: Ian M Mackay, PhD (EIC)
H7N9 numbers….no-one agrees…
#H7N9 number mess. @WHO 22FEB:1223 FAO 22FEB: 1230 CHP 21FEB: 1227 FT: 967+ #VirolDU: no bloody idea Yeeeeup. *Old link – deleted when my account was deleted: https://twitter.com/MackayIM/status/834888299747520512 *Imported Post
H7N9 virus in humans in China: just how big is this?
…I don’t really know, but a lot bigger than I thought when I was tinkering with the numbers for the last post (which has since been updated by the way). As Read More …
Science needs to talk more but I know many scientists who don’t…
A comment I replied to on LinkedIn which I thought was worth expanding on here – a rare moment of clarity pre-coffee. Scientists don’t engage the community while wearing their scientist hat Read More …
Happy Festive Season to all who read this….
..whatever your shape, colour, gender, sex, size, beliefs, weight or disposition, I wish you a happy festive season. May 2017 be a better year for those of us who wish Read More …
Korea contamination: Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in the room..
Remember that MERS-CoV outbreak in South Korea in May 2015? It was the biggest outbreak of MERS-CoV to occur outside the Arabian peninsula, killing 20% of those known to be Read More …
Human parechovirus (HPeV) may be spread with the help of well kids…
The first human parechoviruses (HPeVs) were initially called Human echovirus 22 (HPeV-1) and Human echovirus 23 (HPeV-2).[11,12] These guys were discovered in the summer of 1956, but they weren’t officially Read More …
Human metapneumovirus (HMPV)
Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) was first described by van den Hoogen et al in 2001.[1] It had been isolated from young children with respiratory tract disease, and studies of old serum samples found that Read More …
Whether MERS-CoV spreads or stops is entirely up to the hospitals…
The very steep rises in Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) cases seen in the graph below are not due to overwhelming numbers of new exposures to infected camels. Those upwards inclines Read More …
MERS simmers down in South Korea…did we learn anything this time?
No new cases reported in 8 days and the most recent known date of illness onset now 10 days ago, are good indications that the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus Read More …
PCR primers…a primer!
The polymerase chain reaction (PCR, described here) works mainly because of two components – a heat-stable DNA polymerase enzyme (adds new nucleotides to a chain of nucleotides) and a pair Read More …
Because sometimes laughter conveys a message better than fear…
This builds on my smaller page of MERS-CoV themed wannabe memes found here. These were all made by me but feel free to use if they suit a purpose (a link/reference Read More …
The structure of DNA… a primer
For an organism or a virus, to grow or replicate, it must make new pieces of itself and assemble those pieces into something functional. Let’s take a short walk through Read More …
Rhinoviruses (RVs)…a primer
More than 100 serologically distinct types (serotypes) and another 50 or more genotypically defined and distinct types (genotypes) of human rhinovirus (RV; Greek rhin = nose) exist within the genus Enterovirus. Read More …
Ebola virus disease (EVD) index
To make it a little easier for me to keep up, I thought an index of  my key posts – some of which address your most pressing concerns about Ebola virus, ebolaviruses Read More …