Latest news with #SARS‑CoV‑2
Miami Herald
11-05-2025
- Health
- Miami Herald
Managing PoTS: Tips for Living with the Chronic Illness Affecting Millions
Imagine standing up and your heart suddenly races as if you've sprinted a mile-except you haven't budged. For millions of Americans with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (PoTS), this dizzying, exhausting reality is their daily norm. Though not fatal, PoTS profoundly disrupts everyday life, causing a spectrum of symptoms-dizziness, near‑fainting, brain fog, palpitations, fatigue, tremors, chest discomfort, headaches, nausea and gastrointestinal distress. Recent data suggest PoTS is on the rise. "PoTS can be triggered by SARS‑CoV‑2 infection as part of long COVID," said Dr. Svetlana Blitshteyn, professor of neurology at the University at Buffalo. A 2025 study in The American Journal of Medicine found that nearly 80 percent of long‑COVID patients met the diagnostic criteria for PoTS. "Prior to the pandemic, at least 3 to 5 million people had PoTS, which has likely doubled after the pandemic," Blitshteyn told Newsweek. "We still don't know exactly how many Americans currently have PoTS, but it is estimated that millions more Americans are now suffering from this disease," added Dr. Brit Adler, a professor of medicine in the division of rheumatology at Johns Hopkins University. PoTS is described as an abnormality in the functioning of the autonomic nervous system, the system controlling breathing, gut function, heart rate, blood pressure and many other bodily functions. It can also be linked to problems like "low blood volume, vascular dysfunction, or other mechanisms," Adler said, adding that those with hypermobility syndromes like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome often had the condition as well. PoTS comes as a result of the autonomic nervous system's "adjustment to being upright not functioning properly," Professor Lesley Kavi, the chairperson of the U.K.-based charity organization PoTS UK, told Newsweek. As many basic tasks in the day require postural changes and standing, a person with PoTS is constantly being put under strain as they navigate simple tasks. Symptoms tend to lessen when a patient is horizontal, but it can sometimes take a long time for symptoms to ease off once flared. Things like heat, prolonged standing, dehydration, stress, intensive exercise, viruses, infections, and menstruation can all worsen PoTS symptoms. Kavi said that major surgery, injuries such as concussion, and exposure to a traumatic event can trigger an onset of PoTS, but she added that there isn't enough data and research yet to be able to determine precisely what mechanisms are going wrong within the body. Dr. Zachary Spiritos, a specialist in gastroenterology and hepatology at North Carolina's UNC Health, told Newsweek: "Many people may be born with a vulnerability, and then something in the environment - often an infection or injury - triggers the onset of symptoms. It's multifactorial, and the exact blend is different for everyone." Prevalence estimates range widely: the Cleveland Clinic cites 1–3 million U.S. cases, while Dysautonomia International reports 3–6 million. This variability stems largely from under-recognition-most clinicians seldom consider PoTS during evaluation, according to Spiritos. Women account for approximately 80 percent of cases in the U.S., according to Dysautonomia International, likely due to hormonal influences and autoimmune predisposition. "This is partly because the X chromosome carries many immune-related genes, and women have two copies, which can lead to more robust, but also more error-prone, immune responses," Spiritos said, "[And] we see anecdotal patterns where estrogen can worsen PoTS symptoms, while testosterone may be protective." Lesley Kavi from PoTS UK said that avoiding symptom triggers can be a good place to start for managing the condition, although this is very individual. For some, this could include avoiding prolonged standing, dehydrating things like the heat, alcohol, and caffeine, she added. Increasing fluid intake is essential, Kavi said, adding an adult with PoTS should aim to drink between two to three liters of water a day, or more if they exercise or are in a hot environment. In order to ensure the water stays in your system, increasing sodium intake is also important, Kavi said. Patients are advised to increase their sodium intake to as much as 10,000-12,000 mg per day, but each patient will respond best to a different amount. Compression clothing, particularly tights or leggings that cover the abdomen, are helpful in boosting blood circulation too, Kavi said. Typically medical grade compression is required of between 20 to 30 mmHg. "Exercise can be something that helps the most for some people, but the problem with exercise is that it can make others feel really terrible afterwards, even for a day or two," Kavi added. Starting "low and slow" is always the way to go, Kavi said, adding that it was important to get expert input. The best forms of exercise to start with are horizontal, she added, pointing to exercise bikes, Pilates, rowing machines, and swimming. Although, it is always best to get professional support, Blitshteyn said. "While there are no cures, there is treatment to help you improve and function better in your life." It is also important to remember "you're not alone and PoTS is a real, physiologic disorder," Adler said. "Many people go years without a diagnosis and are often told that their symptoms are from anxiety and it is in their head." Spiritos said it's a good idea to educate yourself, as "understanding the condition is empowering," and recommended listening to the POTScast and Bendy Bodies podcasts. "Ultimately, community and knowledge are power, and with the right tools, you can get better," he added. Related Articles What to Eat When You're Living With Long COVIDHow This Simple Routine Could Improve Immune Function Over TimeWoman Struggles With Dangerous Heart Condition-Then Dog Changes EverythingMillennial Woman With Stoma Who Refuses To Stop Wearing a Bikini Applauded 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Newsweek
11-05-2025
- Health
- Newsweek
Managing PoTS: Tips for Living with the Chronic Illness Affecting Millions
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Imagine standing up and your heart suddenly races as if you've sprinted a mile—except you haven't budged. For millions of Americans with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (PoTS), this dizzying, exhausting reality is their daily norm. Though not fatal, PoTS profoundly disrupts everyday life, causing a spectrum of symptoms—dizziness, near‑fainting, brain fog, palpitations, fatigue, tremors, chest discomfort, headaches, nausea and gastrointestinal distress. Recent data suggest PoTS is on the rise. "PoTS can be triggered by SARS‑CoV‑2 infection as part of long COVID," said Dr. Svetlana Blitshteyn, professor of neurology at the University at Buffalo. A 2025 study in The American Journal of Medicine found that nearly 80 percent of long‑COVID patients met the diagnostic criteria for PoTS. "Prior to the pandemic, at least 3 to 5 million people had PoTS, which has likely doubled after the pandemic," Blitshteyn told Newsweek. "We still don't know exactly how many Americans currently have PoTS, but it is estimated that millions more Americans are now suffering from this disease," added Dr. Brit Adler, a professor of medicine in the division of rheumatology at Johns Hopkins University. File photo: a doctor checks a patient's heart rate and blood pressure in a clinic. File photo: a doctor checks a patient's heart rate and blood pressure in a clinic. Klaus Rose/dpa via AP What Is PoTS? PoTS is described as an abnormality in the functioning of the autonomic nervous system, the system controlling breathing, gut function, heart rate, blood pressure and many other bodily functions. It can also be linked to problems like "low blood volume, vascular dysfunction, or other mechanisms," Adler said, adding that those with hypermobility syndromes like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome often had the condition as well. PoTS comes as a result of the autonomic nervous system's "adjustment to being upright not functioning properly," Professor Lesley Kavi, the chairperson of the U.K.-based charity organization PoTS UK, told Newsweek. As many basic tasks in the day require postural changes and standing, a person with PoTS is constantly being put under strain as they navigate simple tasks. Symptoms tend to lessen when a patient is horizontal, but it can sometimes take a long time for symptoms to ease off once flared. Things like heat, prolonged standing, dehydration, stress, intensive exercise, viruses, infections, and menstruation can all worsen PoTS symptoms. Kavi said that major surgery, injuries such as concussion, and exposure to a traumatic event can trigger an onset of PoTS, but she added that there isn't enough data and research yet to be able to determine precisely what mechanisms are going wrong within the body. Dr. Zachary Spiritos, a specialist in gastroenterology and hepatology at North Carolina's UNC Health, told Newsweek: "Many people may be born with a vulnerability, and then something in the environment - often an infection or injury - triggers the onset of symptoms. It's multifactorial, and the exact blend is different for everyone." How Common Is PoTS? Prevalence estimates range widely: the Cleveland Clinic cites 1–3 million U.S. cases, while Dysautonomia International reports 3–6 million. This variability stems largely from under-recognition—most clinicians seldom consider PoTS during evaluation, according to Spiritos. Women account for approximately 80 percent of cases in the U.S., according to Dysautonomia International, likely due to hormonal influences and autoimmune predisposition. "This is partly because the X chromosome carries many immune-related genes, and women have two copies, which can lead to more robust, but also more error-prone, immune responses," Spiritos said, "[And] we see anecdotal patterns where estrogen can worsen PoTS symptoms, while testosterone may be protective." What The Experts Recommend For PoTS Patients Lesley Kavi from PoTS UK said that avoiding symptom triggers can be a good place to start for managing the condition, although this is very individual. For some, this could include avoiding prolonged standing, dehydrating things like the heat, alcohol, and caffeine, she added. Increasing fluid intake is essential, Kavi said, adding an adult with PoTS should aim to drink between two to three liters of water a day, or more if they exercise or are in a hot environment. In order to ensure the water stays in your system, increasing sodium intake is also important, Kavi said. Patients are advised to increase their sodium intake to as much as 10,000-12,000 mg per day, but each patient will respond best to a different amount. Compression clothing, particularly tights or leggings that cover the abdomen, are helpful in boosting blood circulation too, Kavi said. Typically medical grade compression is required of between 20 to 30 mmHg. "Exercise can be something that helps the most for some people, but the problem with exercise is that it can make others feel really terrible afterwards, even for a day or two," Kavi added. Starting "low and slow" is always the way to go, Kavi said, adding that it was important to get expert input. The best forms of exercise to start with are horizontal, she added, pointing to exercise bikes, Pilates, rowing machines, and swimming. Although, it is always best to get professional support, Blitshteyn said. "While there are no cures, there is treatment to help you improve and function better in your life." It is also important to remember "you're not alone and PoTS is a real, physiologic disorder," Adler said. "Many people go years without a diagnosis and are often told that their symptoms are from anxiety and it is in their head." Spiritos said it's a good idea to educate yourself, as "understanding the condition is empowering," and recommended listening to the POTScast and Bendy Bodies podcasts. "Ultimately, community and knowledge are power, and with the right tools, you can get better," he added.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
We blew the whistle on the Covid lab leak five years ago and were written off as cranks
If they're supposed to be members of a band of truculent conspiracy theorists intent on disrupting the machine of the state, Prof Gwythian Prins and John Constable don't exactly seem like it. 'In some sense we're all classic establishment figures… but slightly to one side of it,' Constable says, an observation at which Prins nods vigorously. Turning up at a pub just off Trafalgar Square (where Whitehall meets Clubland and visitors to the country mingle with the people who run it) the two men are immaculately turned out and mildly uneasy. Leather-backed armchairs are found; a pot of tea ordered. Prins, 74, is, among a catalogue of other things, the emeritus research professor at the London School of Economics. Constable, 61, is an academic, analyst and the founder of the Renewable Energy Foundation. They are not naturally keen on the spotlight, they insist, yet have come because, Prins says, 'this is a very important story which must be heard'. It relates to a specific sequence of events during the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic, but really, it's about how the British government and Civil Service operates these days. Or rather, how it doesn't operate. 'But we'll come to that,' Prins says. This Sunday marks five years since Boris Johnson appeared on television live from Downing Street to announce a nationwide lockdown in a bid to stop the coronavirus outbreak. It was the most significant set of restrictions on British life in living memory, and rendered much of the country catatonic. Yet while most people outside of government and vital services were forced to put their lives on hold, others were energised to put their talents and expertise towards finding out about the virus. Prins, whose long career has primarily focused on history and geopolitics, including social epidemiology, was one of them. So too Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), whom Prins had met while carrying out work for the Ministry of Defence, where Prins sat on an advisory panel to the Chief of the Defence Staff. The immunologist Prof Angus Dalgleish and the Norwegian virologist Birger Sørensen were also part of the group. They had, in fact, all been in communication as early as January 2020, when whispers about SARS‑CoV‑2 – the virus which causes Covid-19 – were spreading almost as fast as the virus itself. 'Soon after the announcements began to be made, Gus Dalgleish called me up and said his colleague, Sørensen, had done the single most obvious thing,' Prins says. As much of Europe focused on how to contain the spread of Covid, Sørensen began to analyse the virus itself. Sørensen's early research would eventually lead to the conclusion that SARS‑CoV‑2 was engineered during 'gain of function' experiments conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Somehow, it must have escaped. This was essentially the 'lab leak theory', which was instantly mooted when the pandemic started and just as quickly dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Instead, the established narrative proclaimed that the likely starting point was contact between wild creatures and humans in a Wuhan wet market where early Covid cases were identified. 'There have been longstanding concerns in the virological community about the relative laxity in standards in Chinese laboratories,' Prins says. Accidents can happen. 'These things happen. It happened in this country at Pirbright with the foot-and-mouth epidemic. Human error.' Given what he knew about China's interest in biological weapons, Prins found the lab theory 'of sufficient interest' to give Sir Richard Dearlove a ring, who gathered this growing team together. Constable joined later, as did an anonymous civil servant. By this point it was early March and the theory that the wet market was ground zero in the emerging pandemic was becoming cemented in the public's perception. Governments were beginning to shut down their countries, creating policies on the fly and attempting to not contradict one another too much. Concerned, Dearlove and Prins's team felt they needed to do something 'rather more formal' than simply look into the virus and hope the government would reach the same conclusion, especially as they believed their findings would be relevant to decisions made about how best to protect the population and how to quickly develop a safe vaccine. So in March 2020, they sent to Downing Street two top secret documents titled An Urgent Briefing for the Prime Minister and his Advisers, which outlined their belief that SARS‑CoV‑2 was engineered in the Wuhan Institute, and countered many of the opinions held by experts on different elements of the Covid story. The first briefing, solely about the makeup of the virus and proposing a 'Norwegian vaccine' based on Sørensen's research, 'was presented to Number 10 not as an opportunity to say, 'Abandon everything else', but just to say 'You really should put this vaccine into your portfolio'. And that didn't happen', says Prins. The second briefing, sent 10 days after the first and received four days after the announcement of lockdown, was allegedly seen and believed by Boris Johnson. 'We know that,' Prins says. 'But he now says, 'I couldn't resist my advisers'. Well, for me that's not a very convincing answer. You're the prime minister of the United Kingdom, to govern is to choose, you are there to decide what to do.' Prins says he has since learnt that Johnson 'asked for redoubled efforts to discover whether what we were saying was true – and the result of those enquiries was to trash us and say that we're all conspiracy theorists or something'. Constable's major contribution to the team's work was to discover a different potential index case in Britain, or 'patient zero', which could have proved the virus reached these shores more than six weeks earlier than the official line. It in fact involved The Telegraph. Scanning the comments under an article written by Dalgleish one day, he found a subscriber who claimed that he and his secretary both had Covid-like symptoms as early as October or November 2019. The man, whom he tracked down with the help of a Telegraph journalist, then put him in touch with the people he thought had infected him, '[who] turned out to be a family of international business people who travel regularly from the Far East to Britain,' says Constable. 'They'd come for a shooting party in Wiltshire, and many people at this party had gone down with symptoms they subsequently recognised as likely to be coronavirus.' Constable persuaded the family to be tested, in the name of public interest, packaged this all up – their names, contacts, their story, the fact that they were willing to help – and passed it on to Number 10. 'And they did absolutely nothing. So because the tests were never done, we'll never know for sure.' Constable may have been entirely wrong, but he finds it alarming that he was dismissed out of hand. 'Whatever the general picture, you have a series of novel pieces of information being provided by a research group with a different perspective, producing points which would be novel and relevant and would have been important, if they'd been taken into account, and they were all neglected,' he says. None of this would be public – it was marked 'top secret', after all – had Prins's supposedly encrypted email account not been hacked in 2022 by a Russian group working for the FSB security service. He is 'very careful' with his communications, preferring to use Signal, an encrypted messaging and calls app, and Proton Mail, an encrypted email service, yet it didn't stop the hackers. A trove of Prins's emails, including 'a mixture of things that were correct, like this report, and a lot of stuff that was made up', were made public. It led to a slew of coverage, in the shadier outcrops of the internet, of the group's activities. 'If you believe them, I am a black spider at the centre of a Right-wing conspiracy theory to control the entire Western world,' Prins says. Constable waits a beat. 'Would that it were true…' Prins nods. So the team now regards their warnings as public documents, and on the fifth anniversary, have decided to talk about it, not least because, says Prins, everything 'that has happened in the last five years has made me and the rest of the team increasingly furious, because our advice was not taken'. The lab leak theory is just one element of the briefings which has been subject to a significant shift in public (and official) perception over the last few years. Once viewed as the preserve of cranks, it has slowly pulled up to the wet markets theory and now overtaken it as the prevailing explanation for the virus's origins. The New York Times recently changed its tune on the matter. And the CIA said on Saturday that the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus was 'more likely' to have a 'research-related' origin than a natural one, even if it had 'low confidence' in its conclusion. Full-scale lockdowns, the PPE debacle, the care homes crisis and almost every other aspect of the government's response to Covid has been a point of debate ever since the pandemic ended. The ongoing Covid inquiry rarely makes for comfortable viewing for anybody involved in the pandemic response at a governmental level. Invariably, it vindicates Dearlove and Prins's team – not least in shining a light on the 'false groupthink' that Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's former chief adviser, later identified as paralysing Downing Street during the early months of the pandemic. Prins and Constable are not here to name and shame individual ministers or even scientists – though they do say Sir Patrick Vallance, as the government's chief scientific adviser at the time, should 'carry the can' for blind spots – but are instead here to point out a systemic problem. 'This is about what's happened to our country, to our people, to our children,' Prins says. 'And we don't want it to happen again,' Constable adds. The team they assembled were not all scientists. 'The only thing we have in common is high IQ, I think,' Constable says. 'I think that's basically it,' Prins agrees. 'All of us [are] awkward customers, and extremely clever. That's what you need if you're going to have safe policy. It's true in any area but it's especially true in an area like this where lives are at stake. 'And that's what makes us so disappointed – I'll just use that rather low-grade word – that even with the qualifications that we carried with us, even with the fact that the prime minister of the day subsequently told us, directly, that he'd read this and was persuaded, the reaction was basically to shut us out and shut us down, and prevent any of our material being published.' Prins believes Johnson 'came back to work far too early' after his brush with death from Covid, and should instead have 'gone to Chequers and gone to bed, and read Tacitus, or written his Shakespeare book, and let someone else run the country'. Constable insists that the men want no credit, no recognition, no apology. They may well have been proven wrong on a lot of things, but the alarming thing, they believe, is that they weren't even heard. 'We're not trivial people, we're not time-wasters, we went through a lot of trouble to do this and it was ignored, and subsequent events have shown it was a great pity that we were ignored,' he says. 'My general consideration is that we can see something wrong with our governmental mechanism. It's not sensitive to information because it becomes locked within a particular tunnel vision, and cannot digest, or even see contrary information… Which is fascinating. And very worrying.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
We blew the whistle on the Covid lab leak five years ago and were written off as cranks
If they're supposed to be members of a band of truculent conspiracy theorists intent on disrupting the machine of the state, Prof Gwythian Prins and John Constable don't exactly seem like it. 'In some sense we're all classic establishment figures… but slightly to one side of it,' Constable says, an observation at which Prins nods vigorously. Turning up at a pub just off Trafalgar Square (where Whitehall meets Clubland and visitors to the country mingle with the people who run it) the two men are immaculately turned out and mildly uneasy. Leather-backed armchairs are found; a pot of tea ordered. Prins, 74, is, among a catalogue of other things, the emeritus research professor at the London School of Economics. Constable, 61, is an academic, analyst and the founder of the Renewable Energy Foundation. They are not naturally keen on the spotlight, they insist, yet have come because, Prins says, 'this is a very important story which must be heard'. It relates to a specific sequence of events during the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic, but really, it's about how the British government and Civil Service operates these days. Or rather, how it doesn't operate. 'But we'll come to that,' Prins says. This Sunday marks five years since Boris Johnson appeared on television live from Downing Street to announce a nationwide lockdown in a bid to stop the coronavirus outbreak. It was the most significant set of restrictions on British life in living memory, and rendered much of the country catatonic. Yet while most people outside of government and vital services were forced to put their lives on hold, others were energised to put their talents and expertise towards finding out about the virus. Prins, whose long career has primarily focused on history and geopolitics, including social epidemiology, was one of them. So too Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), whom Prins had met while carrying out work for the Ministry of Defence, where Prins sat on an advisory panel to the Chief of the Defence Staff. The immunologist Prof Angus Dalgleish and the Norwegian virologist Birger Sørensen were also part of the group. They had, in fact, all been in communication as early as January 2020, when whispers about SARS‑CoV‑2 – the virus which causes Covid-19 – were spreading almost as fast as the virus itself. 'Soon after the announcements began to be made, Gus Dalgleish called me up and said his colleague, Sørensen, had done the single most obvious thing,' Prins says. As much of Europe focused on how to contain the spread of Covid, Sørensen began to analyse the virus itself. Sørensen's early research would eventually lead to the conclusion that SARS‑CoV‑2 was engineered during 'gain of function' experiments conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Somehow, it must have escaped. This was essentially the 'lab leak theory', which was instantly mooted when the pandemic started and just as quickly dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Instead, the established narrative proclaimed that the likely starting point was contact between wild creatures and humans in a Wuhan wet market where early Covid cases were identified. 'There have been longstanding concerns in the virological community about the relative laxity in standards in Chinese laboratories,' Prins says. Accidents can happen. 'These things happen. It happened in this country at Pirbright with the foot-and-mouth epidemic. Human error.' Given what he knew about China's interest in biological weapons, Prins found the lab theory 'of sufficient interest' to give Sir Richard Dearlove a ring, who gathered this growing team together. Constable joined later, as did an anonymous civil servant. By this point it was early March and the 'wet market theory' was becoming cemented in the public's perception as ground zero in the emerging pandemic. Governments were beginning to shut down their countries, creating policies on the fly and attempting to not contradict one another too much. Concerned, Dearlove and Prins's team felt they needed to do something 'rather more formal' than simply look into the virus and hope the government would reach the same conclusion, especially as they believed their findings would be relevant to decisions made about how best to protect the population and how to quickly develop a safe vaccine. So in March 2020, they sent to Downing Street two top secret documents titled An Urgent Briefing for the Prime Minister and his Advisers, which outlined their belief that SARS‑CoV‑2 was engineered in the Wuhan Institute, and countered many of the opinions held by experts on different elements of the Covid story. The first briefing, solely about the makeup of the virus and proposing a 'Norwegian vaccine' based on Sørensen's research, 'was presented to Number 10 not as an opportunity to say, 'Abandon everything else', but just to say 'You really should put this vaccine into your portfolio'. And that didn't happen', says Prins. The second briefing, sent 10 days after the first and received four days after the announcement of lockdown, was allegedly seen and believed by Boris Johnson. 'We know that,' Prins says. 'But he now says, 'I couldn't resist my advisers'. Well, for me that's not a very convincing answer. You're the prime minister of the United Kingdom, to govern is to choose, you are there to decide what to do.' Prins says he has since learnt that Johnson 'asked for redoubled efforts to discover whether what we were saying was true – and the result of those enquiries was to trash us and say that we're all conspiracy theorists or something'. Constable's major contribution to the team's work was to discover a different potential index case in Britain, or 'patient zero', which could have proved the virus reached these shores more than six weeks earlier than the official line. It in fact involved The Telegraph. Scanning the comments under an article written by Dalgleish one day, he found a subscriber who claimed that he and his secretary both had Covid-like symptoms as early as October or November 2019. The man, whom he tracked down with the help of a Telegraph journalist, then put him in touch with the people he thought had infected him, '[who] turned out to be a family of international business people who travel regularly from the Far East to Britain,' says Constable. 'They'd come for a shooting party in Wiltshire, and many people at this party had gone down with symptoms they subsequently recognised as likely to be coronavirus.' Constable persuaded the family to be tested, in the name of public interest, packaged this all up – their names, contacts, their story, the fact that they were willing to help – and passed it on to Number 10. 'And they did absolutely nothing. So because the tests were never done, we'll never know for sure.' Constable may have been entirely wrong, but he finds it alarming that he was dismissed out of hand. 'Whatever the general picture, you have a series of novel pieces of information being provided by a research group with a different perspective, producing points which would be novel and relevant and would have been important, if they'd been taken into account, and they were all neglected,' he says. None of this would be public – it was marked 'top secret', after all – had Prins's supposedly encrypted email account not been hacked in 2022 by a Russian group working for the FSB security service. He is 'very careful' with his communications, preferring to use Signal, an encrypted messaging and calls app, and Proton Mail, an encrypted email service, yet it didn't stop the hackers. A trove of Prins's emails, including 'a mixture of things that were correct, like this report, and a lot of stuff that was made up', were made public. It led to a slew of coverage, in the shadier outcrops of the internet, of the group's activities. 'If you believe them, I am a black spider at the centre of a Right-wing conspiracy theory to control the entire Western world,' Prins says. Constable waits a beat. 'Would that it were true…' Prins nods. So the team now regards their warnings as public documents, and on the fifth anniversary, have decided to talk about it, not least because, says Prins, everything 'that has happened in the last five years has made me and the rest of the team increasingly furious, because our advice was not taken'. The lab leak theory is just one element of the briefings which has been subject to a significant shift in public (and official) perception over the last few years. Once viewed as the preserve of cranks, it has slowly pulled up to the wet markets theory and now overtaken it as the prevailing explanation for the virus's origins. The New York Times recently changed its tune on the matter. And the CIA said on Saturday that the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus was 'more likely' to have a 'research-related' origin than a natural one, even if it had 'low confidence' in its conclusion. Full-scale lockdowns, the PPE debacle, the care homes crisis and almost every other aspect of the government's response to Covid has been a point of debate ever since the pandemic ended. The ongoing Covid inquiry rarely makes for comfortable viewing for anybody involved in the pandemic response at a governmental level. Invariably, it vindicates Dearlove and Prins's team – not least in shining a light on the 'false groupthink' that Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's former chief adviser, later identified as paralysing Downing Street during the early months of the pandemic. Prins and Constable are not here to name and shame individual ministers or even scientists – though they do say Sir Patrick Vallance, as the government's chief scientific adviser at the time, should 'carry the can' for blind spots – but are instead here to point out a systemic problem. 'This is about what's happened to our country, to our people, to our children,' Prins says. 'And we don't want it to happen again,' Constable adds. The team they assembled were not all scientists. 'The only thing we have in common is high IQ, I think,' Constable says. 'I think that's basically it,' Prins agrees. 'All of us [are] awkward customers, and extremely clever. That's what you need if you're going to have safe policy. It's true in any area but it's especially true in an area like this where lives are at stake. 'And that's what makes us so disappointed – I'll just use that rather low-grade word – that even with the qualifications that we carried with us, even with the fact that the prime minister of the day subsequently told us, directly, that he'd read this and was persuaded, the reaction was basically to shut us out and shut us down, and prevent any of our material being published.' Prins believes Johnson 'came back to work far too early' after his brush with death from Covid, and should instead have 'gone to Chequers and gone to bed, and read Tacitus, or written his Shakespeare book, and let someone else run the country'. Constable insists that the men want no credit, no recognition, no apology. They may well have been proven wrong on a lot of things, but the alarming thing, they believe, is that they weren't even heard. 'We're not trivial people, we're not time-wasters, we went through a lot of trouble to do this and it was ignored, and subsequent events have shown it was a great pity that we were ignored,' he says. 'My general consideration is that we can see something wrong with our governmental mechanism. It's not sensitive to information because it becomes locked within a particular tunnel vision, and cannot digest, or even see contrary information… Which is fascinating. And very worrying.'
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Close Relative of Highly Fatal Coronavirus Discovered in Brazil's Bats
Brazil's bats are harboring a vast and diverse pool of coronaviruses, a new study finds, including a newly identified strain that may pose a danger to human health in the years to come. Scientists are taking the threat seriously and will soon conduct testing in a secure lab to see if the variant really could spill over to our own species. The discovery is cause for concern because the strain is eerily reminiscent of the bat-borne virus behind Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) – a contagion that causes a very high case fatality rate of nearly 35 percent in humans. Since its identification in 2012, the MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV) has caused 858 known deaths, mostly in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. While mild cases are likely underreported, this virus holds the highest case fatality rate of all the known coronaviruses that can infect humans, making it the most lethal. For comparison, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS‑CoV‑2, has a human case fatality rate of around 2 percent, according to a 2022 study. Scientists in Brazil and China discovered the close relative of MERS-CoV while testing 16 different bat species in Brazil for pathogens. Taking more than 400 oral and rectal swabs from bats, the international team, led by Bruna Stefanie Silvério from the Federal University of São Paulo, identified seven distinct coronaviruses. These were harbored by just two species: Molossus molossus (an insect-eater) and Artibeus lituratus (a fruit bat). Only one of the viral variants shares an evolutionary history with MERS-CoV. Until now, members of the MERS-CoV family had only been documented in bats of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. This indicates that "closely related viruses are circulating in South American bats and expanding their known geographic range," according to the authors. Scientists have known that viruses found in bats are a threat to human safety since long before the 2020 pandemic. In 2002, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, became the first pandemic transmissible disease in the 21st century to have an unknown origin. The fatality ratio of this viral outbreak reached around 10 percent by the end of the epidemic in June 2003. Later, researchers figured out that bats were a natural reservoir for SARS-like coronaviruses, and after years of hard work, they confirmed that SARS-CoV-1 spilled over from these wild mammals to ourselves. In 2012, yet another deadly coronavirus appeared on the scene. The MERS coronavirus was first identified in Saudi Arabia after most likely jumping from bats to camels to humans. While this virus spreads less easily among our own species, travelers have carried the infection to the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The discovery of a MERS-like strain in South America underscores the "critical role bats play as reservoirs for emerging viruses," write Silvério and her team. "Right now we aren't sure it can infect humans, but we detected parts of the virus's spike protein [which binds to mammalian cells to start an infection] suggesting potential interaction with the receptor used by MERS-CoV," explains Silvério. "To find out more, we plan to conduct experiments in Hong Kong during the current year." Since 2020, the world has taken the threat of coronaviruses spilling over from wild mammals to humans more seriously than ever before. The discovery of a threatening bat-borne virus in South America is certainly concerning, but it's also a point of comfort. Now that we know it exists, scientists can keep a close eye on the threat. "Bats are important viral reservoirs and should therefore be submitted to continuous epidemiological surveillance," argues co-author Ricardo Durães-Carvalho, biologist at the Federal University of São Paulo. Better the devil you know than the one you don't. The study was published in the Journal of Medical Virology. Regularly Giving Blood Could Benefit Your Own Health, Too 5 Early, Speech-Related Signs You're at Risk of Alzheimer's Disease Scientists Found The Silent 'Scream' of Human Skin For The First Time
