By Justin Worland
...But, as pathogens are exposed to gradually warmer temperatures (click here) in the natural world, they become better equipped to survive the high temperature inside the human body. “Every time we have a very hot day, we have a selection event,” says Arturo Casadevall, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. The pathogens that survive—and reproduce—are better adapted to higher temperatures, including those in our bodies. And, with that, one of our body’s primary defense mechanisms diminishes in effectiveness.
This is not a theoretical, far-off concern. Last year, Casadevall and colleagues documented in the journal mBio how Candida auris (a fungus that gets into the bloodstream, leading to a range of ailments) emerged simultaneously in patients in three different isolated places—southern Asia, Venezuela and South Africa—between 2012 and 2015. In our globalized world, diseases are often transported by human carriers who hop on planes, but in this case the scientists concluded that similar changing climatic conditions in each of these places likely drove the simultaneous development. It’s hard to say how widespread this effect could be, Casadevall says, but there’s no reason to think that it would be limited to fungi like Candida auris....
Viruses and bacteria are sensitive to temperature, hence, climate. One of the warnings climate scientists have stated for decades is that if the climate becomes too warm there will be OPPORTUNITY for single cell organisms to cause disease never before a part of our world. So, what did politicians lob onto as a way to corrupt the issue and provide for their petroleum industry cronys? Heat. If there is snow outside there is no global warming. "W"rong! Never once did the morons in the Republican Party stop to realize they were padding their bank accounts with money that would cause people their lives. The current Republican Senate is fraught with corruption and they still don't see the forest for the trees.
6 March 2020
...South Korea, Italy and Iran (click here) have been worst affected, with more than 6,200 cases in South Korea, almost 4,000 in Italy and more than 3,500 in Iran.
However, infectious disease specialists at Imperial College London estimate about two thirds of cases originating in mainland China remain undetected worldwide.
This could mean "multiple chains of as yet undetected human-to-human transmission" internationally, they say....
