A newsletter providing a short account of the articles published in the last month — Hi everyone! It’s time for me to send another monthly update on the articles published in Microbial Instincts, an independent publication about infectious diseases and vaccines, last month. As usual, here is the list (friend-linked) that I hope will keep you more scientifically informed: Monkeypox Monkeypox: The New Public Health Emergency…

Children, pregnant women, and immunocompromised individuals are at higher risk of severe and potentially fatal monkeypox. — With over 21,000 confirmed cases across 78 countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) finally declared the current monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), the organization’s highest alarm, on 23 July 2022. Unlike prior PHEIC declarations like Covid-19 and polio, most of the panel advisors (9 out…

Either we evolve our ways to fight Covid or let it out-evolve us again. — When Deltacron — a Delta-Omicron hybrid SARS-CoV-2 variant — made headlines earlier this January, some feared it could be the worst variant possible. But that Deltacron was very rare — only in about 2 out of 30,000 samples sequenced —and did not take off. All worries subsided, and we realized…

In fact, exhausted immune cells have been documented in Covid-19, but not Covid vaccination. — When Covid vaccine booster shots were proposed last year, people debated their practicality and risk-benefit ratio, especially among the younger populations. Every vaccine shot has side effects and risks, which must not outweigh their protective benefits. In the end, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized mRNA booster shots for…

The more transmissible and immune-evasive BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants have taken over — It’s a common assumption that the second time you get the same infectious disease, the easier it is for the immune system to deal with it thanks to prior immunity, where symptoms would be milder or non-existent at all. This assumption is valid with varicella-zoster virus (chickenpox), respiratory syncytial virus…

A newsletter providing a short note of each of the articles published in the past month — Hello all! It’s time for me to send another monthly update of published articles in Microbial Instincts, an independent publication on infectious diseases (including vaccines). As usual, here is the list (friend-linked): Monkeypox Why Monkeypox Hasn’t Killed Anybody in Non-African Countries With Its Case Fatality Rate of 1–10%: Although monkeypox is…

Prior immunity — especially from natural infection — may backfire instead when it comes to Omicron. — In the late 1900s, scientists discovered that antibodies generated against a particular influenza virus strain were deployed again even when the person got infected with a different influenza virus strain. Not only are such old antibodies ineffective, but they sometimes hinder the formation of newer, more effective antibodies. In essence…

But they are the best we’ve got. — If there’s anything unusual about the current monkeypox outbreak — now over 1500 cases in more than 30 countries — it’s its diverse yet limited spread worldwide. This had never happened before, ever since monkeypox was discovered and known to be endemic in Africa only. This phenomenon is most likely…

That’s because African children and immunocompromised individuals bear nearly all of the monkeypox deaths historically. — One weird thing about monkeypox is that we don’t really know how severe it is. The monkeypox virus has recently caused an international outbreak, with over 1000 cases across about 25 countries to date, but no one has died. That means the case fatality rate is, or close to, 0%.