

New SARS-Like Virus Infects Both Humans and Animals - materialhero
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/new-coronavirus-infectious/

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freehunter
> _hCoV-EMC (short for human coronavirus-Erasmus Medical Center)_

I understand that hCoV is a category of virus, but this strikes me as an
unusual name. If this becomes a larger problem, people are not going to be
calling it hCoV-EMC. hCoV would be incorrect, so would they rather people call
it EMC and associate the name of the virus with the name of the medical
facility that named it? Nobody called SARS SARS-hCoV, they called it SARS.

It just strikes me as an interesting name choice, and perhaps a bit
narcissistic on the behalf of the research facility (not that narcissism isn't
running rampant through science anyway).

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endtwist
Tangentially related, but reading this was very reminiscent of the movie
Contagion: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/>.

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Nrsolis
It's not said often enough, but Contagion is probably the best and most
realistic movie to deal with the likely scenario of a deadly pandemic.
Everything from the political and economic impact along with the roles of the
scientists and field personnel were spot on.

I found it to be a riveting story.

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newplagiarist
Are humans not animals now?

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chc
Is pedantry a good use of your time?

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newplagiarist
I generally have to call into question the merits of an author when they
unnecessarily distinguish between humans and other animals. Especially when
that isn't the truly interesting item coming from the research.

The two genuinely interesting items from the research are that it uses a yet-
to-be identified means to enter the host's cell. The other being that it can
still infect any of the probable original hosts of the virus, even though that
has not been previously documented in SARS.

Virus' being able to infect different species is not that new or note worthy
and I believe the title of the article is therefore poorly thought-out and
misleading. It's not even new or noteworthy for SARS which had the ability to
infect multiple species.

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lambersley
As a lay person, when I read of viruses, I look for ways I can contract such a
thing. In the example of West Nile, I know to stay away from mosquito-prone
places. For creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (variant of mad cow), I knew to cut down
on my intake of beef. I think its important to distinguish between humans and
_other_ animals for this reason.

And having lived through SARS in Toronto, I can tell you that many people
didn't have chicken on their tables during that summer.

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oboizt
Bats and pigs! It's like Contagion!

(I'm never going outside again lol)

