Global surveillance of infectious disease including pandemics like COVID
This is a model of the dispersion of an ideal launch of a true aerosol (like anthrax spores where 1 ppm equals 1 microgram or 1 million spores or 100 human lethal doses). One degree of latitude equals 69 miles and one degree of longitude equals 54.6 miles.
From this picture one can see a release of particles quickly changes from uniform to a complex distribution of falling ones, rising ones and those that follow chaotic convections and patterns even in still conditions like this one. Why aerosols do not follow simple assumptions:
Attribution is very difficult. Recently several conflicting plausible equivocal hypotheses based on genetic evidence on the mechanism of spillover of SARS-2 have been proposed. One says the virus has been in bats 40-70 years prior to its present form and then spread to humans by happenstance, no intervening animals like snakes or pangolins required. The virus just either evolved a gene for human ACE2 receptor binding by mutation and/or the bats had a similar receptor which evolved toward a human compatible form that selected for better binding among viral mutants. A second hypothesis is that the COVID-19 virus was a result of homologous recombination of two very similar viruses infecting the same host cell in an animal or human. This process is very common in coronaviruses. The enzyme, RNA dependent RNA polymerase can shift between 2 template viral RNAs and yield a hybrid third new virus. However, this same enzyme proof reads the new sequences reducing the probability of mutations and mistakes in replication. Examining the genome of SARS-2 shows recombination has happened in the past. One of these possible bat viruses (the other participant is unknown) is SARSr-Ra-BatCoV-RaTG13. The viruses must have very similar RNA sequences for this to happen. The latter has 96.1% genome identity with SARS-CoV-2. Recently another paper has questioned the validity of the methodology for this observation. The problem with RNA is that the host cell can modify it after replication which can lead to different sequences including changing the sequences of subsequent replicates in the future. Also, genetic and computer mathematical analysis indicates that the region of the genome which determines the cell binding appears to not have undergone homologous recombination. So where are we? We need more than genetic analysis to solve this problem. Viruses must be isolated from natural potential sources. In my tenure in the USAF Counterproliferation Team (1989-2011) l had seen this dilemma before in bacteria and viruses. In anthrax, genetic researchers vehemently declared horizontal gene transfer or homologous recombination of its DNA rarely if ever occurred until we found a hemolytic (breaks down red blood cells) and ampicillin resistant anthrax from a biological warfare plant in Iraq. It was not genetically engineered but only exchanged genetic material with a biological insecticide bacteria grown in the vats between anthrax production as a cover for nefarious activity. Later we discovered this could be accomplished with a synthetic nonproteinaceous virus called a nanobe which transferred ampicillin resistance but also inadvertently activated a silent hemolysis gene by homologous recombination. Later an anthrax-like disease was discovered in equatorial Africa in chimpanzees caused by another bacterium carrying anthrax genes, a natural occurrence of the phenomenon. We also discovered that if a gene for the RNA polymerase of VEE {Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis virus) was placed in a retrovirus crippled so it could not infect and reproduce in cells but only express transferred protein genes, a new complete infectious replicating virus appeared. These examples show the flaw in genetic analysis limited by the assumptions of what can happen and how by genetic natural and artificial manipulation.
Another obvious characteristic of this virus’ infectivity which says it still has strong ties to animal disease is its ability to readily infect minks from humans with probable back infection of humans. Its relative ease of infection of cats and also, but less so, dogs from humans with less probability of back infection to humans is more evidence that the virus still maintains animal infective potential. The disease is not just a zoonosis, it is also a anthroponosis , an infectious disease of humans that can be transmitted naturally to other animals. Another example is tuberculosis (bacterial) transmitted from humans to captive primates and elephants.
Although One Health has come a long way since Rudolf Virchow, MD, in the 1800’s stated “Between animal and human medicine there are no dividing lines—nor should there be. The object is different but the experience obtained constitutes the basis of all medicine,” and coined the term “zoonosis” to indicate an infectious disease that is passed between humans and animals, it is still having difficulty in connecting in the transition between animal and human infectious disease, the “No Man’s Land”, until the crossover occurs. In 1947, James H. Steele, DVM, MPH, founded the Veterinary Public Health Division at CDC. He became the Veterinary Father of One Health. His lead produced nearly 70 years of Annual James Steele Conferences on Diseases in Nature Transmissible to Man (DIN) which have pursued the One Health concept in infectious disease. The COVID-19 experience and the apparent surprises it has given to the medical community and the isolation of the veterinary profession or at least its sideline position (my opinion) indicates we have a long way to go. I worked for 22 years in the USAF AFRL in the no man’s land between outbreaks of zoonotic diseases in the little supported, some consider impossible, field of attribution of both natural and nefarious sources of infectious disease. However CDC and other organizations are making active efforts spurred by COVID-19 to re-invigorate the One Health Effort. https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/history/index.html
“In 1885, Louis Pasteur administered the first rabies vaccine in a person, marking an important turning point in public health. Today, zoonotic diseases continue to be one of the biggest threats at the human-animal-environment interface. A One Health approach, with involvement from experts across sectors, is key to preventing and controlling zoonotic diseases that can have global consequences.
@CDC_NCEZID and #WorldZoonosesDay on social media.
Bats have unusual special exposure and maintenance of present and potential pathogens. How did and does this happen?
It may seem an obvious statement that SARS-CoV-2 is an animal coronavirus behaving like an animal coronavirus in an atypical host, humans, but it has meaning beyond the obvious. First, it is not seasonal nor does it just cause a cold-like syndrome like other human coronaviruses (other than SARS-1 or MERS). It also infects the respiratory tract and the gastrointestinal tract and virus is shed from both. It infects the olfactory epithelium but not the nerves providing a privileged sequestered site to avoid the immune system as well as other such privileged sites in the GI tract. Humoral IgG immunity is less effective or durable and some subtypes of IgG enhance damaging or even fatal cytokine storms, although as many as 80% of an infected population is asymptomatic or has mild symptoms but can still shed infectious doses of virus. Some of these and more severe case survivors become sustained carriers. The average percentage infected in many populations is between 6-10%; meaning natural herd immunity is unlikely. This reflects infection prevalence in bat colonies of related coronaviruses. Therefore, it has a high efficiency of transmission but limited distance of environmental transmission unless in very close, high density populations—why masks, distancing and good hygiene work against the spread but why these traits assure long term natural sustainment in a population, an evolutionary advantage to stay around and not burn out. Also, oral or nasal vaccines which initiate mucosal immunity (IgA) and/or T cell immunity (which is sustainable against SARS-CoV-2) are most likely to work, maybe preventing disease but not asymptotic or mild infection. Since IgA immunity is linked to the microbiome, probiotics may help here. These characteristics are shared by other coronaviruses in dogs, cats, and cattle.
This blog is based on facts gathered from the best scientific sources available and years of experience in observation and experimentation in the fields of global bio surveillance, microbiology and parasitology and related detection, diagnostic, decontamination and antimicrobial technologies. The general science and methodologies are updated as they occur. One way to judge this source and others on line is by whether they accept the facts, which are indisputable once verified, and acknowledge that the interpretations of these facts are subject to change based on scientific principles and further observation. A contemporary example is that COVID19 is the cause of the current excessive sudden rise in deaths and morbidity in the US and globally. Disputing the exact numbers by attributing the immediate cause of death to specific pathological pathway variations in how deaths immediately occur does not decrease the very strong correlation to the presence of the virus. Causal relationship has been reinforced by these consequences increasing when precautions such as masks, distancing and decreasing density of gatherings are ignored. The references for statements in this blog will be listed on page 3 of this blog and principles applied documented in my books: Type B Cytochromes: Sensors and Switches(CRC Press, Taylor & Francis) and The Black Dragon Trilogy: Notes from the Shadows, Pathogenic Ecology and Nanowarfare (Amazon eBooks).
My prediction of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, in the Amazon eBook Pathogenic Ecology in 2015: “Two new coronaviruses (bat SL-CoV-WIV1) have been detected in bats in China, so the alert is out on a new “SARS” about to emerge from them. They are from Chinese horseshoe bats (the Rhinolophus rouxii species group; family: Rhinolophidae: a Microchiroptera inhabiting temperate and tropical regions of southern Europe, Africa, and Asia south to northern and eastern Australia, and insectivorous, capturing insects in flight) found in Yunnan,”
“Pathogenic Ecology” is “the natural relationship to animate and inanimate components of the environment that support the sustainment of a pathogen in the environment or prohibit its sustainment, or their interactions with an introduced pathogen that allow for the establishment of disease in a new environment.”
Biosurveillance: defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 21 (HSPD-21) is “active data-gathering with appropriate analysis and interpretation of biosphere data that might relate to disease activity and threats to human or animal health—whether infectious, toxic,..”October 18, 2007, Presidential Directive by President George W. Bush.
