Covid-19 on Michael’s Domain

Most dangerous disease of 2025?

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to effective vaccines and evidence-based treatment, Covid-19 is not the most dangerous disease of 2025. Equally unsurprising for experts is the fact that HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria are still the top three diseases of concern this year. These cover three different types of pathogens: viruses, bacteria, and parasites. All three collectively kill about 2 million people every year. We in Europe and the US think of HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria as diseases of the past or as manageable chronic diseases. However, all three of these can come back. Malaria was, e.g., endemic in Finland before it slowly disappeared ( last indigenous case in 1954 ). As a consequence of climate change, it could not only return but also spread into countries that have never seen it before. However, in Europe and the US, we probably should be most afraid of the bird flu (avian influenza). Why? Because all pieces are in place for the end of the world as we know it. Influenza type A H5N1 is the type of bird flu currently writing headlines. It has recently caused many outbreaks in birds and cows. Also, humans have increasingly become infected by birds, cows, or drinking raw milk. The only thing that prevents the bird flu from becoming a pandemic is that the bird flu virus does not easily transmit from human to human. However, it only takes a single mutation to change this behavior ( https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adt0180 ). With every infected human, the chance that this mutation happens increases. Influenza is notably an RNA virus, which does mutate on average much easier than a DNA virus. Therefore, it makes much sense to vaccinate the people who are at the greatest risk of contracting the disease, like poultry workers, bird ringers, or vets. Finland has started to do exactly that , and also several other EU countries are following a similar strategy . However, unless the rest of the planet follows, these actions won’t make much of a dent in the global mountain of risk in front of us. The production of a bird flu vaccine is routine and could be done rather rapidly since the process is identical to the generation of the seasonal flu vaccine. But I doubt that it will be possible to vaccinate the population fast enough. Big countries like Germany apparently want to wait until the virus has mutated. How else can you interpret the statement of the German Federal Ministry of Health that Germany would only acquire bird flu vaccines ‘ in the case of an existing or imminent threatening communicable disease ’. What could possibly go wrong? It is scary that in the US, somebody advocating raw milk might soon be the secretary of Health and Human Services. Other countries take the threat more seriously. While most countries - including Finland - have dismantled their state-run vaccine development centers years or decades ago, the UK maintained a state-owned vaccine development and evaluation center (VDEC, UKHSA’s Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre ). The UK government has just tasked its VDEC with making 5 million doses of a bird flu vaccine to prepare for a possible epidemic ( https://www.euronews.com/health/2024/12/03/uk-purchases-5-million-bird-flu-vaccine-doses-to-prepare-for-possible-pandemic ). With up to 30% mortality in humans , the bird flu makes Covid-19 (0.3% mortality for unvaccinated people my age) look like a bargain. While the 30% mortality rate is likely an overestimate, even a 3% mortality rate would still be about 10 times worse than COVID-19. Differently from COVID-19, we know the virus and could be well prepared. But with an incompetent government (and I am not only thinking of the coming US government), we are heading straight for the apocalypse. It is unlikely that any warp-speed operation or vaccination campaign will be fast enough to catch up with the flu wave that will be rolling around the globe faster than ever due to air travel having surpassed pre-COVID-19 levels and further on the rise. Happy New Year - and don’t forget to stockpile toilet paper! This piece is loosely based on the discussion about emerging diseases in episode #1017 of the The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast..

Finally boostered

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hooray, I am finally boostered! I did not mind what I would get, but ended up for the 3rd time getting the BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA vaccine.UPDATE (23.01.2022):I received some feedback concerning this 2-sentence blog post. I never really think much about the vaccination anymore. To me, the situation appears very clear from a science-based medical perspective. Below, I will keep adding answers to some questions and statements.

Covid-19 vaccination

Sun, 23 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE (August 6th, 2021) I am now fully vaccinated according to the CDC’s definition !

Martin Jeltsch (1933-2021)

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This morning, my father, Martin Jeltsch, died from Covid-19 at age 88. He had the opportunity to get vaccinated already starting from January 25th, but he decided not to. If he had taken the first opportunity to get vaccinated, he would have most likely been already partially protected, when he contracted the disease. However, it is no secret that he opposed vaccinations, and his professional affiliation with complementary and alternative medicine was just one of the many things that have made our relationship very complicated. Herd immunity through vaccination will also protect the unreasonable. Hopefully, we will get there soon.UPDATE: According to our mother, my father did actually plan to get vaccinated. However, vaccine roll-out in his county started in the end of January only and he had not even received the first shot yet. That first shot would have given him already partial immunity and most likely would have prevented a serious disease course.

Exponential growth

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Talking to people that are genuinely concerned about the survival of mankind, I frequently have heard the sentiment “It’s politically not correct to say so, but the Covid-19 pandemic is the best thing that ever happened to the green agenda”. If SARS-CoV-2 had turned out to be as infectious as measles and as deadly as Ebola, it would have been an inhumane solution to the problem of global warming.I predict that in the near future, a militant environmental activist with an excellent synthetic biology education will develop such a virus to rescue planet Earth. If this person does a good job, (s)he will replace Hitler as the incarnation of evil for all generations to come. SARS-CoV-2 was an accident, but perhaps already the next pandemic will truly be man-made, intentionally by a mad man. With PCR, Gibson Assembly, and CRISPR/Cas, all the tools are available to everybody on this planet.Exponential growth is understood by everybody, who has not been living under a stone for the last 9 months. Strangely enough, the only exponential functions that seem to be of interest at the moment are those of viral spread.Everybody with basic mathematical understanding knows that the description “% growth per year” denotes an exponential function. And every scientist knows that any exponential growth in the real world must level off at some point because everything is a limited resource. Therefore any economic model that requires constant economic growth to keep the system going is doomed in the long run. The question is not WHETHER, but only WHEN the collapse will happen and HOW it will happen.Exponential growth in nature levels off in different ways: It can gradually slow down approximating linear growth before coming to a standstill. But it can also almost instantaneously stop and fall back to the baseline. The first is true e.g. when bacteria grow in a test tube. The latter is true e.g. for the growth of cancer cells in an organism.Read more: http://www.igbp.net/globalchange/greatacceleration.4.1b8ae20512db692f2a680001630.html

The evolution of garbage

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Disposable coffee cups have taken over beverage cans and bottles in the thoughtless littering competition a long time ago. That is true at least for Finland and those few other EU countries that managed to establish a somewhat sensible return system for cans and bottles. However, used face masks are becoming a strong competitor for coffee cups thanks to COVID-19.

Future-proofing

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Will the Covid-19 outbreak result in more than just temporary changes to the way our societies prepare for the future? Will we future-proof the way we organize our economies, our industry’s supply chains, our public health care, the way we travel, the way we consume? If history is of any guidance, I fear that not much will be learned from this crisis. Likely, our governments will make sure we have enough face masks and a better infrastructure to set up new virus tests for coming viral epidemics. Virologists and epidemiologists have been asking to prepare for a pandemic with less success than we wish now. Since the Spanish flu, it was clear that in a globally connected world viral pandemics are inevitable. The question was never if, but only when the next would happen. We had enough warning shots: SARS, MERS, ebola, and swine flue, just to mention a few.Other experts have been and are still warning to prepare for global crises of other types. Similar to a viral pandemic, the question is not if, but only when the next major asteroid impact or CME ( coronal mass ejection ) will happen. Similar to Covid-19, we got an ample amount of warning shots for both: The Tunguska event , the Chelyabinsk meteorite , the Carrington event , the 2012 solar storm just to name the more known ones. Despite this, we are not prepared for such disasters and I fear that governments don’t see the similarities between the Covid-19 outbreak and a CME. Unfortunately, astronomic events can be orders of mangitude worse than any pandemic.