Word: viral
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...risk complexity. They will have to argue that foreign policy involves more than just the threat of force, more than just bullying friends and clobbering foes. Indeed, the greatest threats today involve a new kind of power that is neither hard (military) nor soft (economic and cultural) but viral. These new threats attack the global community insidiously. Terrorism is one virus, obviously; but there are also crime syndicates, environmental problems and businesses that operate beyond the reach of international law (not to forget actual viruses like SARS and AIDS). In an age of viral power, Democrats might argue...
...Fortunately, at the moment there's little evidence to suggest the disease has shifted gears and spreading more rapidly than before. In fact, absent the kind of environmental factors that facilitate large-scale outbreaks like Amoy Gardens' where one superspreader is believed to have discharged a large viral load into the complex's dodgy plumbing system, SARS doesn't seem to be as contagious as first feared. On average, say epidemiologists, each sufferer infects only two people, compared with 16 victims for a person with measles...
...obsessive swabbing won't help if your flat is a viral highway. The government announced Thursday that the Amoy Gardens outbreak, which infected 321 residents, was due in part to a faulty plumbing system. Virus-infected sewage droplets were sucked up through dry U-pipes that lead to residents' bathrooms, contaminating their apartments. The lesson? Always make sure your U-pipes are filled with water?and pour some of that bleach solution in there for good measure...
...battle in what is likely to be a lengthy war. AIDS and SARS (and the common cold, for that matter) are caused by viruses?and viruses are notoriously hard to kill. Although doctors have a huge arsenal of drugs and antibiotics capable of wiping out most bacterial infections, a viral invasion is a tougher proposition. "All along, it's been much easier to produce agents to kill bacteria than to kill viruses," says Professor Brian Tomlinson, a clinical pharmacologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK...
...swelling in the lungs, a result of the body's own immune-system response. In Hong Kong, doctors claim they are successfully combating the disease using the antiviral drug ribavirin to inhibit the virus combined with corticosteroids to check an overstimulated immune response. Ribavirin works by interfering with intracellular viral replication, slowing the infection's spread within the body. The problem, as microbiologist Professor John Tam of CUHK points out, is that "if you stop the replication, that means you stop the function of the cell...