Virus on the loose

Kaiser Permanente is on the ball -- I was not surprised to notice Monday that they are apparently on the lookout for infected travelers and imported viruses. Such as the Wuhan coronavirus, I expect. I see that the CDC is now urging U.S. citizens to avoid all nonessential travel to China. Let's hope the Trump administration doesn't somehow get this public health measure mixed up with its trade war -- or use it to scare silly people silly. Trump was all in with scare mongering during the West African ebola outbreak a few years back.

Meanwhile, it's encouraging to learn that somewhere in the depths of the executive branch, there are still scientists who seem to be responding professionally to the appearance of a dangerous new respiratory virus.

The CDC is growing samples of the novel coronavirus so researchers can develop medical countermeasures and better understand how the latest SARS-like virus has spread, the agency’s respiratory disease director said. ...

“We are growing the virus in cell culture, which is necessary for further studies, including the additional genetic characterizations,” Nancy Messonnier, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a Monday telephone press briefing.

Those sample viruses will allow companies like Gilead Sciences Inc. and AbbVie Inc. that are pursuing potential treatments to see if those drugs can work. It’s not immediately clear how long it will take the CDC to isolate the virus.

“Once isolated, the virus will be available in the BEI resources repository, which is an NIH resource that supplies organisms and reagents to the broad community of microbiology and infectious disease researchers,” she said.

Bloomberg Law

Let's hope these folks can remain unpolluted by politics or panic.