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Will Corona just be an annoying childhood disease?

2021-01-16T09:04:43.606Z


As soon as enough people have built up immunity, Corona could lose its horror - and turn into a less dramatic daycare plague.


The near future, no question about it, looks bleak.

But the prospects for the coming years are surprisingly good.

US researchers argue in the journal Science that Covid-19 is not a new plague that will plague us again and again for centuries.

On the contrary: as soon as mankind gains immunity against the virus - either as a result of billions of infections or, much better, as a result of massive vaccinations - the terrifying epidemic will probably turn into a less dramatic childhood disease.

Like other coronaviruses, Sars-CoV-2 will in future also cause runners in daycare centers or even cause no symptoms.

The pathogen is unlikely to disappear from the earth's surface again.

According to the prognosis of the infectiologist Jennie Lavine from Emory University in Atlanta, the horror that it is now bringing to people will come to an end because the human immune systems will build up a lifelong partial immunity to the virus - no different from other coronaviruses.

This prevents severe gradients.

That is the good news that encourages us to face the hardships of the coming months.

However, if you look into the future for a longer period of time, you cannot avoid the following insight: Covid-19 is neither the first nor the last pandemic.

The next one could be much worse.

Icon: enlarge

Corona vaccination (in Weimar)

Photo: Jacob Schröter / imago images

Stay safe and healthy!

Your Marco Evers

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Abstract

My reading recommendations this week:

  • 2020 was by a narrow margin the hottest year so far, according to NASA experts.

    That's worrying.

    So far, 2016 was considered the record holder - and at that time an El Niño event in the Pacific had additionally heated the world.

    2020, on the other hand, was cooled by La Niña conditions at least in the last few months.

  • The Bremen-based space company OHB has launched a secret satellite into space in New Zealand, reports my colleague Christoph Seidler.

    In the future, the company could operate its own spaceport - in Germany.

  • Do you find solar panels useful but ugly?

    You can be helped.

    German researchers have developed any number of colorful photovoltaic systems, "beautiful as a butterfly's wing".

  • More than 99.9 percent of all species ever existed are already extinct.

    Homo sapiens is also doomed - but 250,000 years or more are still easy, says a very optimistic British paleontologist.

  • Lockdown, the university is closed.

    A Belgian medical professor still let his students take part in a heart operation live - he filmed them with his camera glasses.

  • What's better than a mask to prevent coronavirus infection?

    Clearly: two masks.

Quiz*

1. How many liters of milk does a baby blue whale drink per day?

2. Which researcher has won two Nobel Prizes in different subjects?

3. Who discovered the four moons of Jupiter in 1610?

* You can find the answers at the bottom of the newsletter.

Picture of the week 

Icon: enlarge Photo: Sipa Asia / ddp images

Living art was created

by pharmacy students at a university in Shenyang, China: They used a Petri dish filled with a nutrient medium ("agar") as canvas - and bacteria as paint.

Only days after the microorganisms, which are initially invisible to the naked eye, have been brought out, does the image appear, which is overgrown a little later.

The »Agar Art« is enjoying growing popularity in laboratories and sometimes even in schools.

Different colors can be displayed depending on the bacterial strain.

Recommendations from science 

  • Corona:

    With the virus mutations, the pandemic is entering an even more dangerous phase

  • China:

    A team from the World Health Organization wants to research the origins of the pandemic

  • Environmental protection:

    A circumnavigator invented a ship that collects garbage from the sea

  • Internet:

    How the Wikipedia online lexicon wants to become a universal translation machine

* Quiz answers


1) 190 liters.


2) Marie Curie.

In 1903 she received a Nobel Prize for physics - and in 1911 that for chemistry.


3) Galileo Galilei.

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2021-01-16

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