106
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What's the evidence against SARS-CoV-2 being engineered by humans?
At the moment, there is very little scientific literature about this, but I found two papers that address the problem and are fairly easy to understand. You can find them in the references. Reference ...
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54
votes
What is the benefit of fever during infections?
Fever is a trait observed in warm and cold-blooded vertebrates that has been conserved for hundreds of millions of years (Evans, 2015).
Elevated body temperature stimulates the body's immune ...
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47
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Is the Common Cold an Immune Overreaction?
Can someone die of the common cold?
No.
The common cold is a clinical syndrome restricted to upper respiratory tract involvement. By clinical syndrome, I mean it is the constellation of symptoms (...
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37
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Why don't viruses cause wounds?
A virus does not destroy that many cells before it is exterminated by the immune system or before the host dies.
Perhaps even more crucially, viruses typically target a very specific type of cell — ...
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35
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Has there even been a clinical study where healthy volunteers consented to be infected with a pathogen?
This is a great biological question! It asks a lot about how empirical science is done in the field of modern biology. I'm glad we encourage such questions from curious people who want to learn more.
...
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26
votes
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Did the Zika virus mutate?
There is one main answer to this question: The Zika virus spreads so fast because it never emerged in this part of the world. Hence there is no natural immunity available in the population and a lot ...
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25
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Can simultaneous double pathogen infections happen, or are they prevented?
You can absolutely have two infections occurring together.
One term which is used is 'co-infection'. Also 'secondary infection', in case where either the first infection or the treatment made it more ...
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24
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What's the evidence against SARS-CoV-2 being engineered by humans?
If you need more [counter]evidence, there's a newer paper "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2" by Andersen et al. (March, 17) that touches on the same topic.
The paper brings up two reasons ...
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18
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Has there even been a clinical study where healthy volunteers consented to be infected with a pathogen?
Yes, Dr Barry Marshall self administered Helicobacter pylori to investigate whether it causes stomach ulcers. He won a Nobel Prize for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall
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16
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Did the Zika virus mutate?
A mutation isn't necessary to explain the outbreak in the Americas, given the low immunity of the population, but there is tentative evidence that this strain of the Asian lineage of the virus may ...
14
votes
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Septic Shock: I'll kill myself before you kill me
The important thing to recognize about the host response to sepsis is that it is actually a generalization of mechanisms used in local infection response by the innate immune system. When an animal ...
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12
votes
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Does a microwave oven disinfect food?
Microwave ovens can indeed kill bacteria in food by heating them to high temperatures. For example, this article found that microwave heating could kill all of the Salmonella bacteria in a chicken ...
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12
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Why don't viruses cause wounds?
The innate immune system is remarkably good at providing a first line of defense. Viruses don't just march into your body uncontested. They basically have to fight for every square centimeter of ...
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11
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Why does a Urinary Tract Infection cause a strong, persistent urge to urinate?
Nerve endings exist in a more or less homeostatic interstitial fluid medium which when disturbed in certain ways result in depolarization. This is a very simple explanation, but basically correct. ...
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11
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Has there even been a clinical study where healthy volunteers consented to be infected with a pathogen?
All the time!
For example Flucamp does research on influenza, rhinovirus and (non-SARS) coronaviruses, that involves deliberate infection of paid volunteers.
When the trial starts, we only ...
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10
votes
Is the Common Cold an Immune Overreaction?
The common cold is not the result of a single virus. Over 200 viruses can cause a cold, so specific symptoms could vary depending on the virus in question. However, in the absence of an immune ...
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9
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Acquiring Covid-19 vaccination through kissing with viral vector vaccinated person
No, this is not possible, as the vectors used for the vaccination cannot replicate anymore. Some of the genes necessary for this step have been removed from the viral genome to prevent the ...
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9
votes
How does the first organism infected by a disease get infected?
Viruses evolve like all other biological species. The family of SIVs that gave rise to HIV goes back millions of years across many hosts.
Just like you can build a "family tree" out of ...
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8
votes
Why don't viruses cause wounds?
Smallpox, now eradicated, caused severe lesions. In those who survived: the lesions often turned into scars.
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7
votes
What is the benefit of fever during infections?
Fever normally under hypothalamic heat center's control which stays at limbic system of brain . Hypothalamus sets its own set point 36.4-37.2 in healthy peoples by some molecules named exogenous and ...
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7
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Why are the bacteria that cause hospital-acquired infections resistant to many antibiotics?
Hospitals have certain features:
They are full of people immunocompromised in some way (old, exposed tissue, on steriods etc.)
They are full of people with pathogens
They are full of doctors who will ...
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7
votes
Do organisms use detergents to fight off viruses?
To answer your question, consider why soap is effective against bacteria and viruses. The chemistry of detergents allows them to interrupt the lipid layer that surrounds cells and some viruses. ...
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7
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Do organisms use detergents to fight off viruses?
Possibly?
I note that the body of your question refers to bacteria as well as viruses.
The following review discusses the antimicrobial effects of amphipathic bile salts, including a detergent-like ...
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7
votes
Why don't viruses cause wounds?
The other answers cover our immune system and the likelihood of viruses surviving it.
Regarding your missing nose:
Do you know how big skin cells are?
Do you know how many need to vanish to leave a ...
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6
votes
Why are vaccines containing attenuated microorganisms preferable to those containing dead microorganisms instead?
It's not necessarily true that attenuated vaccines are "preferable" to killed vaccines. It's a case by case basis. In some cases one or the other simply isn't possible or practical. It may not be ...
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6
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what will be the effect of cockroach bite?
I have reared cockroaches by the thousands, for years. Three species, but mainly the infamous Periplaneta americana which I am sure everyone has at least heard about (see picture at the end).
First ...
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6
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Why there aren't any pandemic diseases by prions?
I think that you could argue that some prion diseases do form epidemics or outbreaks. In some cases it does appear that people have referred to BSE/vCJD as pandemics. There is even some journalism on ...
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6
votes
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Why do bacteria in a urinary tract infection (UTI) cause bleeding?
The process by which bacteria in a UTI cause bleeding is that the bacteria cause inflammation of the lining of the urinary tract. The inflammation can cause the blood vessels in the lining to become ...
- 51.5k
6
votes
Can simultaneous double pathogen infections happen, or are they prevented?
There are viruses that require coinfection. The Hepatitis D virus is incomplete and can only reproduce in a host who is also infected with Hepatitis B.
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5
votes
What's the evidence against SARS-CoV-2 being engineered by humans?
A conclusive proof of CoV2's artificial origin would be finding lab records or samples dated before the epidemic, or finding an obvious unique marker sequence in the cDNA. To date there is no such ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible