Russian flu in 1890 was early Covid

[cyrano]

Clinical evidence that the pandemic from 1889 to 1891 commonly called the Russian flu might have been an earlier coronavirus pandemic​

https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1751-7915.13889

 

[gyraf]

coronavirus'es come and go - they're quite dangerous the first time around, then they get to belong to the pool of circulating illnesses already known to our immune defence

The common cold in all it's splendid variants is a coronavirus iirc

the trick is to catch it in a younfg age in order not to die (or alternatively, get vaccinated)

/Jakob E.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Indeed there are multiple variant corona viruses (Sars, Mers, etc) upper respiratory diseases of varying severity.

The common cold is generally a rhinovirus, but mutates enough that effective vaccines don't exist. Big pharma has been trying for half a century to milk that golden cash cow.

I remain optimistic that FarUVc (short wavelength UVc light 222nm) that isn't harmful to humans, but still destroys microbes, could be used to reduce infection spread in public places and hospitals. That is the good news. The bad news is that the only way to make far-UVc now is expensive excimer lasers.

In theory, one could fabricate a cost effective far-UVc LED but so far the experimental LEDs operating at that short wavelength are too low efficiency to be practical.

The world governments spend billions/trillions(?) on R&D... a far-UVc LED technology could pay huge dividends for world health. How do we get that to happen?

JR

PS; It is a little early to worry about this since cost effective far-UVc LEDs are still a wet dream of mine, but if/when they happen, I could almost imagine a world where generations grow up without exposure to common microbes. I'll happily cross that bridge if/when we come to it.

 

[hodad]

The common cold is generally a rhinovirus,

Per wikipedia: Well over 200 virus strains are implicated in causing the common cold, with rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, adenoviruses and enteroviruses being the most common.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Did I mention I stopped sending money to wiki too....
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Looks like Rhinovirus leads your cited list for most common...

But keep digging. Fact checking me... is low hanging fruit when I post extemporaneously.

JR

PS; Somebody should fact check Pres Biden... He just said (yesterday) that 350M Americans have been vaccinated. Sounds like his vaccination effort was wildly successful. He was reading from his pocket cheat sheet so might not be his fault.

 

[shabtek]

re WIKI:
is it really bad ? or is it the editors you don't like

 

[JohnRoberts]

I quess it would be the new squad of editors.
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Previously and for several years, after I found some useful information, thanks to a wiki page, I would slide a few dollars to them the next time they put on the bite for a contribution. I appreciated the wealth of factual content they provided.

Then a while back I heard the co-founder of the wikipedia site (Larry Sanger) complain that wikipedia's robust commitment to neutrality is long gone. Saying that some pages have become little more than left wing advocacy essays. This probably reflects the current biases in academia and mainstream media editorial.

FWIW I also stopped using google's search engine because of manipulation within search results to steer sentiment (I talked about that here, years ago).

I am not wearing a tin foil hat yet, but the list of trustworthy information sources keeps shrinking.

Neutrality is subjective, so don't take my word for it (of course).

JR