intangible-tangerine

intangible-tangerine t1_j9wdd7n wrote

Reply to TIL about Janet Parker, the last person to die of smallpox in 1978. She worked above one of the last labs in its last months of permission to study the virus. The day Janet's viral strain was confirmed, Henry Bedson, the doctor in charge of the lab, took his own life. by w0mpum

Her father died a few weeks after Janet from a suspected heart attack caused by stress so he was also an indirect victim of this outbreak.

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intangible-tangerine t1_j9j5loe wrote

Reply to What makes bats a good disease vector? by JustJustinInTime

Something not mentioned yet -

Bats have a larger variation in body temperature (10 c to 40 c) and so pathogens which evolve to survive in bats are able to cope better with the much smaller temperature variations in humans. If you have a fever of 39c that's not going to bother a pathogen that's at home in a 40c bat.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2021.0211

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intangible-tangerine t1_j8pfmtm wrote

Reply to comment by Some0neAwesome in TIL that the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night" was the opening line to an actual novel published in 1830, but runs on for another 51 words: "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which..." by dylancatlow

Bulwer Lytton also coined the phrase 'the pen is mightier than the sword' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pen_is_mightier_than_the_sword

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