SNC Health Buzz

The coronavirus pandemic has turned the world’s attention to the immune system, the body’s defence force against disease-causing bacteria, viruses and other organisms that we touch, ingest and inhale every day. SARS-CoV-2 is a highly infectious agent that constitutes one of the greatest dangers to public health of the past century .Morbidity and mortality data make it clear that age, smoking status and multiple conditions greatly increase the frequency of serious illness and death.  There is an abundance of data from model systems and humans that age and conditions of metabolic stress including: - obesity  - type 2 diabetes - smoking  - heart failure - nerve damage  -central brain injury. Read more:  6 reasons why you shouldn't worry about COVID-19 vaccines Viruses aren’t technically alive: While they contain genetic instructions to make more of themselves, they lack the molecular tools to execute the steps, and must hijack living cells to complete the replic

The world has been  sent into self-isolation  in an attempt to curb the spread  of the virus.  Developing new vaccines takes time, and they must be rigorously tested and confirmed safe via clinical trials before they can be routinely used in humans.  Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US, has frequently stated that a  vaccine is at least a year to 18 months away .  Read also :  7 reasons why many Americans refuse to wear masks What is a vaccine? A vaccine is a type of treatment aimed at stimulating the body's  immune system  to fight against infectious pathogens, like bacteria and viruses. They are,  according to the World Health Organization , "one of the most effective ways to prevent diseases." - There are no specific treatments for COVID-19 as yet, though a number are in the works, including experimental antivirals, which can attack the virus, and existing drugs targeted at other viruses li

Dr. Anthony R. Fehr,  Assistant Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Kansas. He was one of about a hundred people in the country studying the coronavirus full-time. In the fall, before this all happened, he says. “I knew that there’s a lot of SARS-like viruses in China that this could happen. So I actually had a slide in my lecture that was like, ‘there are lots of SARS-like coronaviruses, we could have another outbreak within our lifetime.'” Read also :  7 reasons why many Americans refuse to wear masks It’s clearly descended from a bat population ,and what we do know is that there are a lot of coronaviruses in bats and a lot of SARS-like coronaviruses similar to this one and the original SARS. There’s a lot of viruses in bats in China. China has a lot of really amazing caves that are very important dwelling places for bats. Having said that, there are clearly coronaviruses in African bats, I think I saw a report where there was an Australian one. So it’s