Vaccines - Calling the shots

Kudos to NOVA!  They did a fantastic job detailing the benefits of vaccination and the challenges of getting the populace to listen to doctors about vaccinations and not the hyped up social media. Yes, vaccinations today are effective and safer than the alternative of catching the disease but they are not without risk. But neither is driving your car or crossing the street. However, vaccination is much better than contracting a terrible, preventable disease and ending up in the hospital or dying.

NOVA didn't just say vaccines are safe and go get vaccinated. They went deeper to convince the populace that vaccines are worthwhile. They talked with doctors who vaccinate their own kids, mothers of autistic children who are convinced that the vaccine did NOT cause the autism, and survivors of extreme (and rare) complications of vaccines who said they would get vaccinated again or vaccinate their own children.

I encourage everyone to watch this and not the rants on social media about vaccinations. They are not doctors/scientists.



*****
This is a personal blog. The views expressed herein may not represent those of my employer.

Start of the Ebola virus outbreak

Recent genetic studies of the Ebola viruses circulating in west Africa revealed that the current outbreak was sparked by at least two different Ebola virus strains. It is unclear whether these two strains were co-transmitted, that is transmitted into the human population at the same time, or whether they arrived separately but at a similar time. Furthermore, these studies suggest that the current strains of Ebola virus spread from within central Africa, perhaps through fruit bats, a known vector, into western Africa. Certain fruit bats known to carry Ebola virus have a population range from central to western Africa into the hardest hit regions.

Most concerning is that these studies demonstrate the virus to be changing fairly quickly. This includes the sites used to confirm infection and those targeted by vaccines and antibody-based therapies. If sufficient changes in the genome accumulate the virus may not only become hard to kill, but also hard to detect. Without current PCR-based tests, diagnose would be challenging and time consuming, leading to death of the patient before confirmation of infection and initiation of a treatment plan.



*****
This is a personal blog. The views expressed herein may not represent those of my employer.

Grand distances

Conveniently, following my last posting, recent data was published confirming the distance to the Pleiades star cluster. Many are familiar with this cluster of bright stars as the Seven Sisters in the constellation of Taurus the Bull. This star system was measured to 136.2 parsecs away by very long baseline radio interferometry (VLBI). Not that that means much to any of us. The important part is the distance.

The Pleiades is one of the closest star clusters. But what is 136.2 parsecs? In more familiar units, this is 444.22 light-years away. Meaning that traveling at the speed of light (300,000 km/s) it would take 444 years to reach the Pleiades. Conversely, the light we see now from the Pleiades left those stars in 1570 to just now arrive.

But, let's think of this in more down-to-earth terms. Assuming that you could drive non-stop at 80 miles/hour, it would take 3,721,765,913.75 years to reach the Pleiades. That's 3.7 BILLION years. And those stars are close.

So, if we are alone, it's an awful waste of space. But that also means that unless we (or other sentient aliens) develop faster than light travel, it's going to be a long time until we meet anyone from those stars.



*****
This is a personal blog. The views expressed herein may not represent those of my employer.