Word: virality
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McCormick said that the recent rise in resistance is because antibiotics are increasingly misprescribed, offered to patients for viral infections or other illnesses—for which antibiotics are ineffective...
...Many viral outbreaks tend to burn out, as a population naturally develops immunity to the particular pathogens. But a virus can also be devastating, as was in the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918-19 (see viewpoint). Although that flu's mortality rate was only 2%, the virus had infected so many people that it felled 40 million victims in 18 months?more than the total death toll from combat in World War I. So far, SARS' fatality rate is 4%, comparable to normal, noncontagious pneumonia's. Optimists point out that in the three weeks that SARS has gripped Hong Kong...
...deadly consequences. In 1997, when a previously unknown strain of avian influenza killed nine in Hong Kong, the government's swift move to quarantine patients and cull more than a million chickens was widely credited with halting the spread of the disease. The risks of an uncontrolled viral outbreak are catastrophically high: with its tens of millions of pigs, poultry and people living in close proximity, southern China has long been one of the world's most lethal breeding grounds for killer viruses...
Indeed, the viral attack is practically over within the first couple of days of a cold, often before you realize that anything is wrong. To be effective, an antiviral cold drug would have to be taken as soon as you suspect you might be coming down with something. That's a tall order but not impossible. In the mid-1990s the German drug company Boehringer-Ingelheim developed an antiviral molecule, dubbed BIRR 4, that proved in clinical trials to significantly shorten most colds triggered by rhinoviruses and lessen their severity. The product worked by mimicking those molecular footholds used...
...studied the common cold for more than 40 years, has shown that although it's easy to become infected with a cold virus, about 25% of those who get infected suffer few if any symptoms. For whatever reason, their bodies do not go overboard fending off a viral attack. That suggests to him that you ought to be able to stop the virus and damp down the immune system without causing any major side effects and that any cure has to consist of a combination of drugs...