Zelenskyy is cozying up to Wall Street leaders

Becoming the first sub-Saharan African country to eliminate Malaria in half a century‚ Cape Verde has gone three years without a single case of transmission. Malaria kills most people who die every year‚ and now that the complex phenomenon of various parasites and various mosquitoes has been quelled‚ it should stay that way owing to […] The post Cape Verde Becomes the First African Country in 50 Years to Eradicate Malaria appeared first on Good News Network.

I’m fascinated by planets. Earth‚ of course‚ is my favorite‚ and like many people I have a soft spot for dear old Pluto—planets that arouse a positive sort of awe‚ with all their boundless beauty. But I’m also drawn to stories about planets‚ real and fictional‚ whose descriptions make you go “nope” and allow you to truly appreciate all the familiar quirks of our home planet‚ from potted plants and waterfalls to mosquitoes and concrete jungles. Here’s a list of some planets dreamed up by SFF authors that I find particularly terrifying…   “Old Seeds” by Owen Leddy When Renny wakes up from stasis‚ xe finds xe has finally reached the planet xe was assigned to work on‚ a planet that does not even have a name because it’s “no longer a place‚ but a product to be processed.” As humanity expanded into the universe‚ it needed more and more area for agriculture. Planets like the one Renny has been sent to act as giant fields‚ with nothing on their surface except endless acres of crops. For Renny‚ it’s overwhelming already to know that the life xe knew and the people xe loved have been gone for more than a century. How can they xe deal with that grief on a planet so dull‚ surrounded by such oppressive landscapes?   “The Bleeding and the Bloodless” by Ruth Nestvold When Devlin woke up‚ he found himself being carried on a stretcher by unfamiliar people on an unfamiliar planet—and not on Earth‚ as planned. Some of his crew had survived and the natives were treating them well. But no planet is without its problems. The society on this one feels primitive but still has some useful technology. Why are the people feeding and housing Devlin’s crew‚ but not letting them leave? Why are they always guarded? And why does this matriarchy not seem entirely kind to the crew’s women?   “The People from the Dead Whale” by Djuna‚ translated by Jihyun Park and Gord Sellar Of all the planets on this list‚ the one described in this short story is the most weirdly fascinating. An “ocean world‚” this planet has two continents—the side with a perpetual morning has nothing but extreme heat and sand‚ while its equal‚ opposite continent has nothing but darkness and ice. Between these giant continents is a channel—in the water‚ giant whales‚ on the backs of which people have lived for millennia. However‚ a disease has spread among the whales and people are to scrambling to find healthy ones‚ while also struggling to survive in their boats and desperately trying to stay away from the extreme heat and cold on either continent.   “Thin Ice” by Kemi Ashing-Giwa TAM-19607e is slowly freezing to death. Once a culturally-rich world‚ it has been taken over by Half-Brilliant‚ a creature of silicon and metal‚ who has put the natives in stasis and now extracts their poems and stories to create new art. The only witness to Half-Brilliant’s new reality—the only one excepted from statis because of their lack of imagination—watches the planet and its culture die. In 2110 words‚ Kemi Ashing-Giwa managed to make me more terrified of the possibilities of AI than the unending torrent of news about ChatGPT has in a year.   “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang‚ translated by Ken Liu Hao describes various planets in this conversational narrative‚ and while it is fascinating to learn about new worlds and new societies‚ novelty sometimes comes with a surprising cost. When the familiar takes unusual turns‚ even if harmless‚ it is difficult to feel comfortable. How would you like to live on a planet‚ for example‚ where giant people from the poles‚ unaware of the tiny people living on the equator‚ crush thousands to their death? What about the planet where people are always evolving‚ growing several arms to make their work easier‚ or slimming their waists thinner than noodles? Most of the places described here may not be physically dangerous‚ but they might mess you up psychologically‚ playing with your ideas of the familiar and the unfamiliar‚ constantly making you question how things work.   “Do Not Go Gentle” by Wendy Nikel Humans moved to a planet where daylight lasts sixteen years. They felt that was enough time to settle down‚ make things work. Now the night is catching up and people are leaving‚ running away from the darkness towards light‚ for those who stay behind go mad. In this rush to survive‚ what do you do when you look towards the sun‚ but your loved ones choose to stay behind? Sometimes‚ the danger is not the planet’s fault. Sometimes‚ it’s us‚ it’s inside us‚ and how we think about “day” and “night” and the twilight that separates the two.   “Evolution” by Paul Crenshaw I’ve saved the best most terrifying planet for the end. The Beagle has been on this planet for only three days‚ and now is being repaired by its crew. They can see the remains of the Albatross nearby‚ which landed on the planet a century ago. In three days‚ the crew has seen all there is to see—all they needed to see: the planet’s flora‚ fauna‚ and the violence that comes at night. Fixing the Beagle and leaving the planet before dark is now a matter of survival. Will they survive‚ and will they be able to warn others about what happened?   Ratika Deshpande (she/her) is currently writing a series of Letters to a Young Essayist. She also runs The Metronome‚ an online resource for psychology students and professionals.

Lieutenant Commander Lawrence Randall “Dan” Daspit‚ captain of the U.S. submarine USS Tinosa (SS-283)‚ was astounded at his luck. Framed in the periscope eyepiece was a 19‚250-ton Japanese tanker‚ and it had no escort. The Tonan Maru No. 3 was making only 10 knots. It was a sitting duck. Tinosa was on its second war patrol‚ having departed from Midway on July 7‚ 1943‚ to prowl the Japanese sea lanes between Truk and Borneo. On the afternoon of July 24 Daspit‚ having been alerted by his surface-search radar‚ spotted a thin trail of gray funnel smoke on the horizon. He submerged and headed for the target. Once in range‚ he fired four Mark 14 torpedoes at the tanker. All four torpedoes ran true. Thirty seconds later‚ the sonarman heard four distinct “thumps” of the torpedoes striking the hull‚ but no explosions. The tanker turned away and increased speed. Daspit surfaced and began the pursuit with his diesel engines. After a long nighttime chase‚ he was finally in position to try again. His torpedomen checked every fish to make sure they were working perfectly. Then‚ coming at the tanker from the starboard quarter‚ Daspit fired two more torpedoes. Both hit and detonated. The muted rumble echoed through Tinosa’s hull‚ eliciting cheers from her crew They had hit the tanker’s engine room. The vessel slowed to a stop. Daspit took his time approaching the ship’s port side. He planned to fire one torpedo at a time from 1‚000 yards‚ aimed to strike the tanker at the perfect 90-degree angle. The 680 pounds of high explosive in a Mark 14 would tear a huge hole in the hull. Two or three fish would send the vessel to the bottom. It appeared that the Tonan Maru was doomed. Crews aboard U.S. submarines like this one found that defective torpedoes drastically reduced their effectiveness against enemy shipping. At 9:30 a.m.‚ Tinosa fired the first torpedo. It ran straight and true‚ its wake a long‚ white trail aimed at the helpless ship. But the torpedo failed to explode. Daspit fired again. Another dud. Daspit fired again. And again. Six deadly Mark 14 torpedoes‚ the most advanced anti-ship weapon in the U.S. arsenal‚ failed to explode. The fifth one appeared to raise a tall plume of white water as a muted “Whanng!” noise came through the hull. The sixth torpedo broached after striking the enemy’s hull‚ then sank.    Then the tables turned as a Japanese destroyer approached. Daspit fired two more torpedoes from his stern tubes as the sub turned away. The sonarman reported two hits but no explosions. As Tinosa raced eastward‚ Daspit wrote in the patrol log. “I find it hard to convince myself that I saw this.” Out of fifteen fish fired‚ only two had detonated‚ and those had been fired from an oblique angle. The others were so carefully set up as to be right out of the textbook. Not one of them had exploded. Upon his return to Pearl Harbor‚ Daspit was met at the sub pier by Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood‚ Commander‚ Submarines‚ Pacific (COMSUBPAC). A career submarine officer‚ Lockwood was determined and meticulous and had the reputation for giving full support to his crews. He led Daspit up to his office where the infuriated sub skipper related what happened with the Tonan Maru.                   Lockwood later wrote‚ “I expected a torrent of cuss words‚ damning me‚ the Bureau of Ordnance‚ the Newport Torpedo Station and the base torpedo shop. I couldn’t have blamed him. Twenty thousand-ton tankers don’t grow on trees. I think Dan was so furious as to be practically speechless.” But when the only torpedo Tinosa brought back to Pearl Harbor was examined at the torpedo shop‚ it was found to be in perfect working order. The United States submarine fleet ended World War II as one of the most effective forces of the Pacific War. By August 1945‚ the U.S. sank 2‚728 Japanese merchant and naval vessels‚ for a total of 9‚736‚068 tons. Of those‚ 55 percent were sent to the bottom by American submarines. The Tonan Maru should have met its doom on July 24‚ 1943‚ when the submarine USS Tinosa had the Japanese tanker in its sights. But there was a period when U.S. submarines were virtually useless‚ even unarmed‚ in the savage Darwinian world of undersea warfare. That time was from December 1941 to October 1943‚ a total of 22 months. While there were an increasing number of excellent submarines‚ well-trained and motivated crews‚ and superb skippers‚ they lacked one all-important tool: good torpedoes. When Daspit and Tinosa had left Midway‚ the submarine carried 24 of the best torpedoes in the navy‚ the powerful Mark 14. The Mark 14 had been in service since 1931. Designed in 1926 at a cost of $143‚000 by engineers at the navy’s Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd)‚ the Mark 14s were built at the Naval Torpedo Station (NTS) in Newport. They were complex weapons that required meticulous machining and assembly. Each Mark 14 was powered by contra-rotating bronze propellers driven by a “wet heater” motor that used ethanol steam and compressed air to propel the weapon to up to 46 knots for 4‚500 yards and up to 9‚000 yards at 31.5 knots. It was armed with a 668-pound Torpex warhead. By 1940 each torpedo cost $10‚000‚ five times as much as a new automobile. When the war began‚ nearly every U.S. sub carried the Mark 14 and its crews had full confidence in its reliability‚ but that confidence appeared misplaced by 1943.  Tinosa’s patrol was the most recent and extreme case of what had been a growing problem within the submarine force since the beginning of the war. From the first patrols after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7‚ 1941‚ submarine commanders complained of torpedoes that failed to work properly. On December 14 the USS Seawolf (SS-197) encountered a Japanese freighter near the Philippines and fired eight torpedoes at it. Seven missed. The one that hit failed to explode. In the first three months of war‚ American subs fired 97 torpedoes at enemy shipping but sank only three ships. Some torpedoes failed to explode‚ while others‚ aimed with care‚ seemed to run beneath their targets. Most exasperating of all‚ several had blown up long before hitting the side of a Japanese ship. The torpedo’s most important component was the Mark 6 exploder. The surest way to sink a ship was to break its back at the keel‚ and to do that the torpedo had to explode directly under the hull. With that in mind‚ BuOrd designed a new exploder based on successful British Duplex and German magnetic mines. Its most important feature was the magnetic influence exploder‚ Project G53‚ which was such a closely guarded secret that even though a maintenance and operating manual had been written‚ it was never distributed to the submarine bases. The exploder was triggered by magnetic influence as it passed directly beneath a ship‚ where there was no armor. This was why the first Mark 14s carried a relatively light warhead. The USS Tinosa fired 15 Mark 14 torpedoes but only two of them detonated‚ leaving the Tonan Maru damaged but still afloat. The Mark 6 also came with a contact exploder‚ which was a backup in case the magnetic exploder failed. It consisted of a trigger‚ firing pin‚ and detonator. The device was not much different from that of a gun‚ in which a firing pin hits the primer in a cartridge to cause a detonation. When a torpedo struck a ship’s hull‚ the collision rammed the head backward‚ driving the firing pin into the detonator over the warhead. BuOrd was under a tight budget and saw no reason to spend money to test the expensive torpedoes. It conducted only one test of the Mark 6‚ in May 1926. Ironically‚ the target was a derelict submarine. Two Mark 14s armed with the magnetic exploder were fired at the sub. One ran under the target and failed to detonate. The second one exploded and sank the sub. No further testing was done.  That meant the United States submarine force entered World War II with a torpedo that had a 50 percent failure rate. By mid-1942 submarines had fired more than 800 torpedoes in the Pacific war. Eighty percent had failed. In one instance‚ Lieutenant Commander Tyrell D. Jacobs of the submarine USS Sargo (SS-188) fired eight Mark 14s at a Japanese transport near the Philippines on Christmas Eve‚ 1941. Not one exploded. Charles Lockwood‚ at that time COMSUBSOWESPAC in Australia‚ was listening to his own submarine skippers. He conducted an unofficial test of the torpedoes in June 1942‚ the first real test of the Mark 14 since 1926. Lockwood had torpedoes set to specific depths fired through a submerged net. The holes the torpedoes left in the net showed that they were running far below the depth to which they had been set‚ sometimes as much as 10 to 15 feet deeper. This was conclusive proof of a problem‚ but BuOrd dismissed the findings and blamed the submarine commanders for not setting the torpedoes properly. At Pearl Harbor‚ the then-COMSUBPAC Admiral Robert H. English sided with BuOrd and blamed his sub skippers for what he called their “lack of initiative.”   The Mark 14 torpedo was a complex and‚ at a cost of $10‚000 each‚ expensive device. Finally‚ under pressure from Admiral Chester Nimitz‚ himself a former submariner‚ BuOrd conducted its own tests in August 1942‚ which determined that blame for the depth-setting problem lay with BuOrd. It had increased the size of the warhead but failed to make changes in the mechanism that controlled depth. The pressure sensor had been moved from the nose of the torpedo to near the tail‚ where water pressure became lower as the torpedo sped through the water. The lower pressure indicated that the depth was too shallow so the torpedo automatically went deeper‚ guaranteeing it would pass too far beneath the target. This should have been recognized long before the war‚ but due to BuOrd obstinacy and budget restrictions‚ it became an issue that sub skippers had to discover during combat. The problems continued as late as April 1943; when Commander John A. Scott’s USS Tunny (SS-282) fired 10 torpedoes at three Japanese light carriers that month the crew heard seven explosions‚ but they all proved to be premature and caused no damage. Dozens of torpedoes exploded well before reaching the target. The cause was the hyper-sensitive magnetic exploder‚ which was being triggered by a combination of the Earth’s magnetic field and the approach to a ship’s hull. These problems should also have been discovered and fixed long before the war began. Nonetheless‚ BuOrd maintained there was nothing wrong with the torpedoes and blamed the issues on bad approaches and poor maintenance. Such obtuse stubbornness naturally started a furor among the submarine fleet. U.S. sub crews were risking their lives for nothing. Japanese transports and warships sailed on‚ unmolested. After Tinosa’s cruise‚ Lockwood requested permission to disconnect the magnetic exploder‚ but BuOrd wouldn’t allow it. The submarine crews were forbidden to do anything beyond performing regular maintenance. To prevent any unauthorized tampering‚ BuOrd ordered that the torpedo shop at the submarine base apply dabs of paint to the screws that held the exploder mechanism to the torpedo body. Any attempt to remove or tamper with it would mar the paint. With the zeal American military men take when going against orders‚ some torpedomen obtained small cans of matching paint so they could retouch the screw heads after they had personally worked on the exploders. Submarine crewmembers load one of their fish aboard their boat. Each Mark 14 was 21.5 feet long and weighed 3‚000 pounds‚ so moving them within the cramped confines of a sub was not an easy task. However‚ no matter how carefully torpedomen inspected and overhauled the Mark 14s‚ their efforts were useless. The problem was in design and materials‚ issues beyond the skills of even the most experienced torpedomen. Making matters worse‚ politics became involved. Rhode Island‚ traditionally a state with strong bonds between the electorate and legislature‚ looked upon Newport’s NTS with overprotective eyes. One naval officer stated that “If I had the temerity to fire an incompetent or insubordinate worker‚ the Secretary of the Navy would be visited by both Rhode Island senators and at least one congressman‚ demanding the man be reinstated.” This virtually guaranteed American torpedoes would be poorly manufactured.  By 1943‚ the navy was building 70 Mark 14s per day‚ all carrying the flawed Mark 6 exploder. One of the manufacturers was the American Can Company‚ the primary producer of tin cans for food products. Later International Harvester and Pontiac became producers as well. In the early summer of 1943 Lockwood‚ now COMSUBPAC in Pearl Harbor‚ flew to Washington and demanded action. This time someone was listening. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King issued an order to disconnect the magnetic exploder from all the torpedoes. But Tinosa’s failure to sink the Tonan Maru in July proved the so-called fix had not solved all the problems. The complaints continued to mount. Some torpedomen told of torpedoes they had set to run at a depth of two feet that still passed under a ship. Lockwood took personal action. In order to convince BuOrd the problem was with the torpedoes‚ not with his subs‚ skippers‚ or crews‚ he called in Commander Charles B. “Swede” Momsen‚ the commander of Submarine Squadron (SubRon) 2 at Pearl. In 1939 Momsen had overseen the rescue of the crew of the USS Squalus (SS-192) after it sank off Portsmouth‚ New Hampshire‚ but his habit of speaking his mind had earned him few friends in the Pentagon. Still‚ he was one of the most innovative submarine engineers in the navy and he began to apply his talent to the torpedo problem. Momsen set out to determine if the flaw lay with the contact exploder. He studied charts of the waters around the Hawaiian Islands to find a spot where sheer vertical cliffs descended to deep water and a sandy bottom. An area on the coast of the small island of Kahoolawe was perfect. Momsen‚ along with COMSUBPAC’s gunnery and torpedo officer‚ Commander Art Taylor‚ began supervising live firings from the submarine USS Muskallunge (SS-262) at the cliffs beginning on August 31. The first two exploded. The third one did not. Momsen himself went into the water to examine the torpedo. It had broken in two‚ with the warhead split. Taking extreme care‚ the crew hoisted the unexploded torpedo onto a barge and returned it to Pearl Harbor. Sometimes torpedoes worked‚ as this image of a Japanese destroyer taken through the USS Wahoo’s periscope attests. Momsen and his team also took torpedo warheads filled with sand and a live exploder and slid them down a cable from a 90-foot tower onto a steel plate to simulate different angles and impact speeds. Seventy percent failed to explode. This confirmed something that Momsen suspected. The general belief was that the best angle to fire a torpedo at a target was from exactly 90 degrees‚ or broadside. But‚ as Tinosa’s experience demonstrated‚ this was not true. By studying the unexploded torpedo from the Muskallunge test and the results from the tower‚ Momsen and Taylor realized that a head-on impact distorted the contact exploder’s firing pin‚ and the forces of sudden deceleration when the torpedo hit a target slowed the pin’s motion in its track. Examination of the primers showed dents from the pin were not nearly enough to ignite the warhead. The Mark 14 seemed to be more reliable when traveling at its lower‚ 31-knot speed. When fired at the faster 47 knots‚ the firing pin was almost always damaged. The drop tests also demonstrated that a glancing impact allowed the firing pin to act properly. In other words‚ the best angle to fire was anything other than dead on. Interestingly‚ BuOrd had made a small attempt to find the root of the problem by consulting famed physicist Albert Einstein at Princeton University. Einstein examined the Mark 6 blueprints and concluded that the firing pins were being distorted by the impact. He recommended adding a void between the outer shell and the firing mechanism. But BuOrd did not follow his suggestion. Momsen showed his test results to Lockwood‚ who then took them to Washington. He returned a few days later‚ as he said in his official war diary‚ “madder than hell.” BuOrd finally admitted the exploder was at fault and agreed to design a new one. But that would take a year or more. Momsen advised Lockwood it should be possible to rebuild the contact exploder with different materials. Because the exploder had to be both light and strong‚ the key proved to be the adoption of exotic alloys. The machine shop at the sub base obtained light alloys from‚ ironically‚ the melted-down engine of a Japanese fighter shot down during the Pearl Harbor attack and used the metal to machine and assemble new firing pins‚ springs‚ and guide tracks. The new designs performed exactly as hoped. The project needed a lot more metal than one engine could provide‚ but the team found the perfect source nearby at the Army Air Forces’ Hickam Field—airplane propellers. One Army Air Forces officer reportedly said after being asked for as many damaged propellers as he could provide‚ “A better use for a busted prop couldn’t be found anywhere.” Momsen was promoted to captain and awarded the Legion of Merit for his work on finding and solving the torpedo problem. He had played a significant but little-remembered role in assuring that every U.S. submarine was able to go to war against Japan with reliable torpedoes.  Admiral Charles Lockwood (left) and Commander “Swede” Momsen (right) played vital roles fixing the torpedo issues. With every machine shop at the sub base working on the problem‚ by the fall of 1943 the Pacific Fleet’s submarines were finally armed with reliable weapons. “From that moment on‚ all major exploder problems suddenly disappeared‚” said Lockwood. Underruns were still a concern‚ though. Taylor and Momsen again had torpedoes fired through a series of evenly spaced nets. The tests showed that not only were the Mark 14s running well below their set depth‚ they were not even running flat. They ran alternately deep and shallow‚ like a sine wave through the water. It was sheer luck if the weapon was at the right depth when it reached its target. This was not something that could be fixed at Pearl Harbor. It would have to go right to BuOrd and the NTS. But at least Lockwood’s skippers could make allowances for the erratic depth settings. Knowing that the sine wave had a cycle of about five hundred yards‚ crews could set a torpedo so it was on the high point of the curve at impact. By the time the first reliable torpedoes went to sea‚ the war had been going on for 21 months. Dozens of patrols had been wasted‚ hundreds of American lives lost‚ and important enemy targets missed. Now aggressive‚ skilled‚ and innovative submarine commanders—men like Dudley “Mush” Morton of USS Wahoo (SS-238)‚ Richard O’Kane of Tang (SS-306)‚ and Eugene Fluckey of Barb (SS-220)—had the torpedoes they needed and were adopting the tactics to use them. They patrolled on the surface by day‚ keeping a sharp lookout for planes and scanning the seas with radar. This doubled the area they could patrol. With the reliable torpedoes virtually guaranteeing a kill‚ the men under Lockwood’s command began sweeping the Pacific Ocean of Japanese ships. All they needed was good intelligence‚ initiative—and luck. As Lockwood told one new sub skipper‚ “If you’re not lucky‚ I can’t use you.” It was still a dangerous game of cat and mouse‚ but now the fleet’s subs were no longer unarmed. They were deadly sharks hunting for prey.  this article first appeared in world war II magazine See more stories SubscriBE NOW!  

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Mars is a frigid desert‚ but we know in the past that it had rivers‚ lakes‚ and even maybe an ocean. Those features are still carved in its rocks today. Most of the valleys and lakes were carved before 3.7 billion years ago‚ but something that is not clear is how long these water features were around. A new study argues that the rivers flowed for only a fraction of that epoch.Previous work estimated that it took at least tens of thousands of years for the valleys to form – that's the minimum amount of time for those rivers to have flowed. But what is the maximum time? Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist Alexander Morgan has estimated just that. He found that‚ at most‚ water was carving the rocks for 100 million years‚ but it was not a constant flow."In this study‚ I used craters that predate and postdate valley systems to place maximum bounds of hundreds of millions of years on the era over which these systems formed. Previous work had only determined minimum timescales‚ so these new results provide an upper bound on the timescale over which Martian valleys were active‚" Morgan said in a statement."Given what we know about erosion rates on early Mars‚ longer timescales imply that conditions permitting rivers were highly intermittent‚ with long arid periods interspersed with brief episodes of fluvial activity."The reason why the activity appears to be intermittent is not clear. Maybe erosion was impeded by boulders and terrains that were more difficult to carve out. Or maybe‚ rivers only began to flow when the weather got warm enough‚ or after some particularly strong volcanic activity. The climate of a planet can change‚ like the changes responsible for Earth’s periodic glacial periods.The work adds some nuance to the past history of Mars. Was the Red Planet "warm and wet" with an ocean? Or was Mars "cold and icy" with massive ice sheets? It could have had its periods of warmth over longer frigid and dry epochs."Over the past decade or so we've come to realize that these descriptors are far too general‚ and it doesn't really make sense to try to condense hundreds of millions of years of climate history into a two-word description‚" Morgan said."Like Earth‚ early Mars was complex‚ and the conditions permitting surface water likely varied considerably. Earth has undergone massive climatic changes throughout its history – for example‚ 20‚000 years ago‚ the area that is now Chicago was beneath half a mile of ice – and surface conditions permitting rivers on early Mars likewise probably waxed and waned."The study is published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

As winter rages‚ and viruses continue to spread‚ you might find yourself wondering: Can I catch two at once? What about three‚ or four‚ or (gulp) more? And‚ perhaps most importantly‚ what happens if I do?It’s a question that was posed a lot back in 2022 when fears of a so-called “tripledemic” of COVID-19‚ flu‚ and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) were rife.“Most of what we know about virus infection‚ virus pathogenesis‚ [and] virus epidemiology is based on the one virus-one disease approach‚” Pablo Murcia‚ a virologist at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research‚ told The Scientist at the time. “And that’s not real.”Can you be infected with multiple viruses at once?Unfortunately‚ yes – you can be infected with more than one virus at a time. However‚ we know relatively little about how these viruses interact‚ Murcia added.In one 2019 study‚ Murcia and colleagues analyzed respiratory illness cases in Scotland between 2005 and 2013‚ finding that of all patients who had at least one virus‚ 11 percent also had another – some unlucky individuals harbored up to five.What happens if you are?If you do catch more than one virus at once‚ it is possible that the symptoms of one could compound the symptoms of the other‚ leaving you feeling worse off than if you simply had one virus. Although‚ not necessarily.“The best data about coinfection come from studies of more serious viruses‚ such as HIV and hepatitis‚” wrote Dr Richard Klasco in a 2018 piece for The New York Times. “These studies show that coinfection can worsen‚ ameliorate or have no impact on the course of an illness. The outcome depends on the viruses involved.”For example‚ coinfection with HIV and hepatitis C virus can result in a worse outcome‚ Klasco adds.Referring to respiratory co-infections‚ Dr Armando Paez‚ chief of the Infectious Disease Division‚ Baystate Health‚ said: “Hospitalization is often required for those suffering from co-infections due to their more serious cases of illness.”But it’s not all bad news. As Klasco mentioned‚ not all co-infections will have a negative outcome. A dual infection with influenza A and B‚ he says‚ doesn’t seem to worsen symptoms. The same is probably true of the common cold:“While you can get two colds at once‚ you probably won’t feel any worse than you would with one. The difference that you might experience is being sick for longer than you might otherwise expect.” Viral interferenceSometimes‚ viruses can block one another in what is known as viral interference. This is what‚ according to some experts‚ likely happened during the pandemic: COVID may have taken precedence over flu and RSV‚ effectively blocking them.Similarly‚ in the autumn of 2009 during the swine flu pandemic‚ rhinovirus‚ which is responsible for the common cold‚ began to dominate in some parts of Europe‚ before swine flu took over again. That same year‚ the pandemic delayed the onset of RSV by up to two and a half months.This sort of interference can arise in a number of ways. For example‚ different viruses can target the same receptors on host cells‚ meaning that the first to gain entry can prevent other viruses from getting access. Viruses can also compete for resources once inside host cells‚ resulting in a "survival of the fittest" type situation.The best-understood mechanism of interference involves interferons – defensive molecules produced by the cells of vertebrates when they sense a virus is present. Interferons trigger the expression of genes that can prevent more than one virus from entering a cell or stop viruses that are present from replicating or exiting the cell.Although viral interference can provide short-term immunity against other viruses‚ using these and other methods‚ it’s by no means a given and it’s still very much possible to catch multiple viruses at the same time.All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text‚ images‚ and links may be edited‚ removed‚ or added to at a later date to keep information current. The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice‚ diagnosis‚ or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions. 

It’s heartbreaking to witness the plight of pets abandoned by their owners‚ left to fend for themselves. This story‚ however‚ shines a light on the resilience of a dog named Mama and the compassion of those who helped her. Mama‚ a pit bull‚ found herself alone in an orchard near Ducor‚ California‚ after her owners... The post Radio DJ vows to rescue abandoned pittie who’s been living alone in orchard for 15 months appeared first on Animal Channel.