Southern Cameroon, Africa ... The hunt for one of the biggest threats to human survival: the next big killer virus. Dr Arti Prasad
Nine Months Earlier, Meliandou Village, Guinea, West Africa: This is Ebola ground zero. In December 2013 the children of Meliandou Village discovered hundreds of bats nesting in a hollow tree. Bats are thought to carry the deadly virus. This World: Outbreak: The Truth About Ebola, BBC 2015
The hospital was helping to spread it. ibid.
The outbreak had now killed more than eight hundred people in three countries, yet there was still no major international response. ibid.
Liberia: the government response was crude and brutal. ibid.
In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation. Prince Philip, cited Deutsche Press Agency August 1988
It is the smallest creature in the world: a virus. The invisible enemy. Is man to be defeated by something he cannot even see? Are we winning or losing? The World is Ours: The Invisible Enemy 1955
Viruses can only grow in a living cell ... The virus has to enter the cell before it will grow. Dr Frank Perkins, interview Horizon: The Virus, BBC 1970
They have to replicate inside a cell. They can’t just grow if you give them growth medium like a bacterium could for instance. They have to find a particular cell they can enter and replicate in. Professor Geoffrey Smith, Imperial College London
A virus is not just DNA; a virus is also packaged up, covered over with a series of proteins in a nice, elegant, well-compacted form. Francis Collins
It turns out that viruses evolve from each other, like everything else. So if you look at the evolutionary tree of viruses, you can find parts of their genome that haven't changed over evolutionary time. You can recognize what may be a new virus by identifying this little piece of their genome that hasn’t changed and is represented on the chip. Joseph DeRisi
A virus is a form of life with very simple requirements. The basic needs of a virus are a nucleic acid to be transmitted from generation to generation (the genome) and a messenger RNA to direct the synthesis of viral proteins. The critical viral proteins that the messenger RNA must encode are those that coat the genome and those that help replicate the genome. One of the great surprises of modern virology has been the discovery of the variety of genetic systems that viruses have evolved to satisfy their needs. Among the animal viruses, at least 6 totally different solutions to the basic requirements of a virus have been found. David Baltimore, Viruses, Polymerases and Cancer: Nobel Lecture 1975
In the 2002 British horror film 28 Days Later a rampant virus infects a group of people turning them into killer zombies who take over the human population. Zombies: The Truth, 2010
For the rabies virus to become the zombie virus it would have to go through a series of mutations. ibid.
Some scientists do believe the idea of a zombie-like virus is not entirely out of the question in the future. ibid.
Recently, the Ebola virus threatened to sweep across the globe. And humanity had a preview of a possible future where millions suffer and die for pandemic diseases. Fighting Pandemics I: National Geographic 2015
The deadliest organisms are handled by space-suited technicians working in sealed bio-safety Level 4 laboratories ... Killers we have no defence against. ibid.
In pandemic viruses, evolution has created the perfect assassin: fast moving, evasive, and often difficult to detect before it’s too late. ibid.
Probably the greatest threat from genetically altered crops is the insertion of modified virus and insect virus genes into crops. It has been shown in the laboratory that genetic recombination will create highly virulent new viruses from such constructions. Certainly the widely used cauliflower mosaic virus is a potentially dangerous gene. It is a para-retrovirus meaning that it multiplies by making DNA from RNA messages. It is very similar to the Hepatitis B virus and related to HIV. Dr Joseph Cummins, professor emeritus genetics University West-Ontario
More people have perished from viruses than all wars and natural disasters combined. Strange Rituals s1e11: The Apocalypse
Every virus tells a story. If you look hard enough, it’ll tell you where it’s been and where it’s going. In 2020 our world changed. A deadly virus that spread like wildfire. Experts knew it was coming. They tried to warn us. The experts knew because they had seen it happen: in 2014 the largest Ebola outbreak in history burned through west Africa. A sluggist global response led to catastrophe. Fuelled by denial. Now history is repeating itself on a much larger scale. The fear is back as well. Going Viral: Covid-19, National Geographic 2020
In 1976 a deadly illness erupted in a remote province of Zaire … horrifying symptoms followed by a agonising death … Suddenly, the nightmare ended and no-one knew why … Epidemiologists named it Ebola Zaire. ibid.
In January 2020 health authorities worldwide were keeping a watchful eye on the virus that was killing people in China and spreading to other countries at an alarming rate. ibid.
Vials of liquid hope coming off the production line: a vaccine developed in the UK against Covid-19. It could be approved by Christmas. Panorama: The Race for a Vaccine, Fergus Walsh reporting, BBC 2020
The team could move so quickly because of the template they used to design experimental vaccines for diseases like malaria, flu and a different coronavirus called MERS. ibid.
By the end of the summer, trials of the vaccine were running in six countries. ibid.
Has the government failed to protect the NHS? Are their staff on the Covid wards frightened for their lives? We reveal the mistakes that have put workers in danger. And how the government downgraded protection standards as the virus swept the country. Panorama: Has the Government Failed the NHS? BBC 2020
Our health service is being pushed to the limit. A new variant of Coronavirus is driving record numbers of infections and deaths. Many hospitals are at breaking point. Now back in lockdown, our children are again learning from home. Mass immunisations is the only route back to normality, and the race is now on to vaccinate us all. Panorama: The Virus vs The Vaccine, BBC 2021
The largest vaccination programme in the history of the NHS … NHS and care home staff, the old and the vulnerable, are first in line. ibid.
‘There are a continual flow of new viruses that emerge. Viruses reproduce many thousands of times and many millions of times each. And when there’s such rapid evolution of a virus there’s the opportunity for it to change and shift. That is the nature of these coronaviruses that have been circulating among animals for millennia.’ Outbreak: The Virus that Shook the World, ITV 2021, Professor Pilay, UCL
‘What is very rare is for one of these viruses to actually take hold in humans.’ ibid. expert
‘We are ready, we are ready, totally ready.’ ibid. Trump
Decades ago a new virus probably evolved in a bat cave like this one. That virus would soon multiply, killing more than two million people and counting. We know it today as Covid-19. The closest genetic match yet found to Covid-19 comes from a virus from a horseshoe bat found in southern China. ibid.
20 January 2020: The deadly infectiousness of the new coronavirus in Wuhan had finally been publicly admitted to the world. ibid.
Human rights groups have reported people being detained, jailed or simply disappearing after searching out the truth. ibid.
From mid to late January it was detected in 25 countries, mostly in Asia. ibid.
A week after Wuhan had been locked down, the virus had officially arrived in the UK. ibid.
Within a month, 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes. There was no mandatory testing. ibid.
Human rights groups have reported people being detained, jailed or simply disappearing after searching out the truth. ibid.
From mid to late January it was detected in 25 countries, mostly in Asia. ibid.
A week after Wuhan had been locked down, the virus had officially arrived in the UK. ibid.
20 February 2020: ‘So far we have lost nobody to Coronavirus in the United States. Nobody.’ ibid. Trump
Research has shown that super-spreader events played a huge role in the global spread of Covid-19. ibid.
31 March 2020: global deaths – 40,636. ibid.
By the year’s end, the virus across much of the western world was reigniting, and in some places mutating into even more infectious strains. ibid.
The race for a cure: how Britain’s scientists are battling to defeat the deadly Coronavirus. The first human trials for a vaccine against Covid-19 are now underway. Tonight: The Race for a Cure: Making Britain Safe, ITV 2020