Scientists Are Trying to Spot New Viruses Before They Cause Pandemics
Science Times
Feb. 15, 2021
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Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston, Feb. 13, 2021. Scientists want to build a weather system for viruses. It would require a big financial investment, plus buy-in from doctors, hospitals and blood banks. (Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times)Kayana Szymczak/NYT
Back in the summer, Dr. Michael Mina made a deal with a cold storage company. With many of its restaurant clients closed down, the firm had freezers to spare. And Mina, a public health researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, had a half-million vials of plasma from human blood coming to his lab from across the country, samples dating back to the carefree days of January 2020.
Covid 19 coronavirus: Scientists are trying to spot new viruses before they cause pandemics
15 Feb, 2021 07:37 PM
6 minutes to read
A lab scientists preparing to test Covid-19 samples from recovered patients. Photo / Getty Images
New York Times
By: Veronique Greenwood
Scientists want to build a weather system for viruses. It would require a big financial investment, plus buy-in from doctors, hospitals and blood banks. Back in the summer, Dr. Michael Mina made a deal with a cold storage company. With many of its restaurant clients closed down, the firm had freezers to spare. And Mina, a public health researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, had a half-million vials of plasma from human blood coming to his lab from across the country, samples dating back to the carefree days of January 2020.
Dec. 14, 2020 9 a.m.
Illustration by John Opet
Princeton disease ecologist C. Jessica Metcalf and Harvard physician and epidemiologist Michael Mina say that predicting disease could become as commonplace as predicting the weather. The Global Immunological Observatory, like a weather center forecasting a tornado or hurricane, would alert the world, earlier than ever before, to dangerous emerging pathogens like SARS-CoV-2.
In late October 1859, one of the century’s most devastating storms struck the British Isles. Winds, estimated at over 100 mph, howled across the Irish Sea. The storm destroyed 133 ships and caused at least 800 deaths, more than half on the Royal Charter, a steam clipper built to handle the increased gold rush traffic to Australia.