Threat of outbreak from microbes trapped in permafrost for millennia raised by increased Siberian shipping activity
Humanity is facing a bizarre new pandemic threat, scientists have warned. Ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost could one day be released by Earth’s warming climate and unleash a major disease outbreak, they say.
Strains of these Methuselah microbes – or zombie viruses as they are also known – have already been isolated by researchers who have raised fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered – not by an illness new to science but by a disease from the distant past.
As a result, scientists have begun planning an Arctic monitoring network that would pinpoint early cases of a disease caused by ancient micro-organisms. Additionally, it would provide quarantine and expert medical treatment for infected people in a bid to contain an outbreak, and prevent infected people from leaving the region.
Ok so they mean the virus is a zombie and not that it makes you into a zombie. I’m a bit disappointed.
Here is hoping for both
Not every virus is human compatible. I wonder what the actual chances one of these ancient viruses thaws out, encounters a human before the elements degrade it, and then manages to actually infect said human is.
Doesn’t have to encounter a human first. Just any animal that happens to have contact with humans and share sufficient biological structures. Honestly, I’m afraid of something like deer, elk, or otherwise becoming a reservoir for a new old pathogen like this and passing it on. We already have data showing deer in America acting as a reservoir for COVID.
it’s not just viruses… old prions are currently spreading through deer populations…
Murphy’s law says it will happen.
Cole’s law is finely shredded cabbage
Lmao this is awesome.
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Ancient Mysteries Explained: ColeSlaw
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I’m just waiting for an ancient poxvirus to infect an Alaskan or Russian miner and have him bring it back to his antivaxxer wife before they go to Disney World with ancient smallpox-ridden kids. Like the Floodship crashing into Earth in Halo 3. We’d have to glass the entire area.
We are so back
Aren’t ancient viruses a few millenia behind us in the evolutionary arms race?
Mom’s gonna fix it all soon…
Mom’s coming 'round to put it back the way it oughta be.
🤞
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Strains of these Methuselah microbes – or zombie viruses as they are also known – have already been isolated by researchers who have raised fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered – not by an illness new to science but by a disease from the distant past.
“At the moment, analyses of pandemic threats focus on diseases that might emerge in southern regions and then spread north,” said geneticist Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University.
In 2014, Claverie led a team of scientists who isolated live viruses in Siberia and showed they could still infect single-cell organisms – even though they had been buried in permafrost for thousands of years.
“The crucial point about permafrost is that it is cold, dark and lacks oxygen, which is perfect for preserving biological material,” Claverie told the Observer last week.
The upper layers of the planet’s main reserves – in Canada, Siberia and Alaska – are melting as climate change affects the Arctic disproportionately.
For that reason, Claverie and others are working with UArctic, the University of the Arctic – an international educational network in the polar region – on plans to establish quarantine facilities and provide medical expertise that could pinpoint early cases and treat them locally to try to contain the infection.
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