VIRUSES

• Viruses are bits of genetic code bundled inside a collection of lipids and proteins which can include a fat based casing known as viral envelope.
• Enveloped Viruses typically survive outside of a body for only a few days.
• Once their fragile exterior is broken down , they begin to degrade.
• Every enveloped virus is different.
• On a copper surface virus could be detected for 4 hours only.Copper naturally breaks down bacteria and viruses.
• Novel coronavirus and its cousin SARS,which caused a major outbreak in 2002 and 2003 , last on surfaces for similar amounts of time.
• Influenza viruses do not contain in porous surfaces like clothes for more than 4 hours.Because clothes pull moisture away from the virus and cause to degrade.
• Never coronavirus could persist as aerosol for up to 3 hours.
• Coronavirus does not penetrate skin because skin's outermost layers are slightly acidic, which prevents pathogens from entering the body( Greatorex).
• Sars virus SARS - CoV - 2 lasts for 24 hours on a cardboard.
• Long incubation period is an alarming condition in the case of COVID -19 virus.
• A new study published in M arch 2020 in Lancet found that coronavirus patients  shed the virus for between 8 and 37 days.
• Dozens of viruses exist in the corona virus family.But only 7 affect humans.
• Four are known to cause mild colds in people,while others are more novel,deadly and thought to be transmitted from animals like bats and camels.
• SARS -  CoV - 2 is the virus causing the disease COVID - 19.
• Ultraviolet rays is thought to degrade viruses.
• Soap opens the exterior envelope and causes to degrade virus.Soap molecules can trap tiny fragments of the virus which are washed away in water.
• A full grown immune response  can take another 3 days in humans.That means a respiratory virus like the flu ,which can replicate in as little as 8 hours ,is way ahead of the game.THE IMMUNE SYSTEM IS NOT SO EASILY TRICKED THE SECOND TIME.WHEN IT HAS BEATEN AN INVADER ONCE IT KEEPS A SPECIALISED WEAPONS CACHE DEDICATED TO THAT PARTICULAR PATHOGEN,READY TO MOUNT A HIGH SPEED REACTION IF IT HAS EVER DETECTED AGAIN.

HERDIMMUNITY

So the second time the disease shows up in your body the virus would not have that handy head start.f some people pass on the infection and others do not, the average transmission rate will be less than one.When transmission rate dips less than one a community is said to have  herd immunity.

• Dozens of viruses exist in the coronavirus family, but only seven affect humans.Four are known to cause mild colds in people, while others are more novel , deadly, and thought to be transmitted from animals like bats and camels.
• According to Harvard Epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch within the coming years some 40 % to 70 % of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID - 19 . This does not mean all will have severe illness.It is likely that many will have mild disease or may be asymptomatic.About 14% of people with influenza have no symptoms. Lipsitch is the only one with the belief that this virus will continue to spread widely.
• With the other 4 virus infections people are not known to develop long-lasting immunity. If this virus follows suit and if the disease continues to be as severe as it is now( April 2020), "cold flu  season" could become cold and flu and COVID- 19 season.
• Warmer air holds more moisture which prevents airborne viruses from travelling as far as they could in dry air.
• In humid conditions the small liquid droplets in a cough or sneeze gather more moisture as they are expelled.
• Too heavy droplets cannot stay airborne,so they drop to the ground.

RECENT VIRUS OUTBREAKS

• Ebola virus outbreak in 2014 became pandemic
• Zika virus outbreak in 2015-2016
• SARS,Swine flu , bird flu etc. were also caused by viruses.
• Dozens of viruses exist in the corona virus family.But only 4 are known to cause mild colds in people while others are  more novel, deadly, and thought to be transmitted from animals like bats and camels.
• The virus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease COVID - 19
• Two viruses are involved in the infection of this new disease.coronavirus and paramyxovirus are supposed to cause one disease.
• Gene sequencing showed the virus contains single stranded RNA.IT CONTAINS ONE COPY OF A 27 TO 32 KB LONG CAPPED AND POLYADENYLATED AND HELICALLY ENCAPSIDATED BY NUCEOCAPSID PROTEINS.
• Corona virus destroys or atleast diminishes immunity in the patient so that second virus has practically an open door to go in and to sicken the patient beyond what this virus would be able to do normally.
• Both are common viruses found in all COVID-19 patients. According to Dr. David Heymann two viruses causing a single disease complicates the situation.
• The filamentous ribonucleocapsids are surrounded by matrix proteinswhich form form the virus cores. These cores are wrapped in envelopes formed during coronavirus budding from a host cell. 
• The membranes contain distinct club or petal shaped protrutions identified as S proteins.It is these proteins that give the virions a crown like appearance  in electron microscopic images. 
• S proteins are the major antigenic determinants of coronaviruses, and they mediate receptor association and fusions of the viral and cellular membranes.
• Coronaviruses from groups 1 & 2 ( genetic and serological groups) are know to cause disease in humans.Coronavirus diversity is generated by mutations due to polymerase infidelity. A key feature of coronavirus evolution is propensity of the viral genomic RNA to recombine.
• Recombination permits the virus to aquire genes and gene regions(pieces)from other transcripts, including those of other coronaviruses . 
• SARS -CoV - 2 has been detected in few ferrets,cats,tigers and dogs. But in Wuhan bats and pangolins are the suspected sources.
• Initial patients were either stall owners , market employees, or regular visitors to the wet market.
• Cspikes consist of two connected halves and the spike activates when those halves are separated. Only then can the virus enter a host cell.
• In SARS cassic this separation happens with some difficulty. But in SARS - CoV - 2 (COVID -19) THE BRIDGE THAT CONNECTS THE TWO  HALVES CAN BE EASILY CUT BY AN ENZYME CALLED FURIN.
• 43% of  people with the COVID-19 CAUSING VIRUS WILL NOT SHOW SYMPTOMS.
• Most respiratory viruses tend to infect either the upper airways or lower airways .
• Upper respiratory infection spreads more easily , but tend to be milder  while a lower respiratory infection is harder to transmit, but more severe.
• Antiviral antibodies emerge 3 to 4 days after virus detection. Cytotoxic T cell play an important role against COVID-19.
• full grown immune response can take 3 days,which means that a respiratory virus like flu can replicate in as little as 8 hours.
• COVID -19 has time to replicate itself and infect a new host before the immune response within a cell can take around 24 hours to trigger,says Elly Gaunt(virologist, University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute).
• African swine fever is a viral disease affecting pigs and wild boar with up to 100% fatality rate.There is no vaccine . The virus can exist in the environment and in a variety of swine products.
• First reported in Kenya in 1921. It became endemic in most sub Saharan African countries.
• The new virus could be just the very tip of the iceberg in terms of animal borne diseases infecting humans.
• Zoonoses(animal borne diseases) cause 2.5 billion cases of illnesses.And zoonotic diseases cause 2.7 million deaths every year.

Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners typically use Tan Re Qing to treat bronchitis and upper respiratory infections. Bile is extracted from Bear by inserting a catheter,syringe or pipe into gall bladder of Bear. Tan Re Qing injections contain a horn powder, extracts from several plants and Bile from bear. Clifford Steer,prof. of University of Minnesotta,Minneapolis was studying benefits of ursodeoxycholic acid. He fond that bear bile is not an effective treatment for novel corona virus.But he says ursodeoxycholic acid is distinct from other bile acids in it's ability to keep cells alive and may alleviate symptoms of COVID19 because of it's antiinflammatory properties and ability to calm the immune response.

CONSEQUENCES OF DESTROYING FORESTS AND HABITATS

• Rate of environmental degradation puts life on Earth at risk.
• Large mammal with a core body temperature of 37 degree Celsius, will be able to evolve that quickly - there is no evidence.Insects can but humans can't and that is the problem.
• Economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and people of our daughter's generation will find it hard to survive.
• Humans are eating away at our own life support systems at a rate unseen in the past ten thousand years,two research papers say.
• By degrading land and fresh water systems and emitting green house gases and releasing vast amounts of  agricultural chemicals into the environment.
• Every lung full of air that you take is refined by the natural world,oxygen breathed out by plants.If you can't  breathe and you can't eat,you don't exist.
• We are going into largely undisturbed places and being exposed more and more. We are creating habitats where viruses are transmitted more easily , and then we are surprised that we have new ones.
• We cut trees,we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets.
• We disrupt ecosystems and we shake viruses from their natural hosts. When that happens they need a new host. Often we are it.
• Altered habitat leads to changes in the number of vector breeding sites or reservoir host distribution.
• Ecosystem change incuding forest placing at risk the sustainability of human well - being and development 
• Ill health is directly or indirectly a result of excessive consumption of ecosystem services(eg; food and energy). Substantial reduction in consumption would have major health benefits and simultaneously reduce pressure on life-support systems.

Scientists warn worse pandemics are on the way if we don't protect nature.Three co-authors of the comprehensive 2019 IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services explained that there are 1.7 million unidentified viruses known to infect people are estimated to exist in mammals and water birds. Anyone of these may be more disruptive and lethal than COVID-19.

CONSEQUENCES OF COVID 19

• COVID 19 led to exreme global hunger. According to world food program 265 million people could be pushed into acute food insecurity by COVID 19 doubling last year's total.(77 million). In 2019 acute food insecure people lived in countries affected by conflict, climate change(34 million),economic crisis (24 million),2019 closed with 135 million food insecure across 55 countries.
• Unemployment caused by COVID 19 in UK 9%
• British economy could shrink 14% this year.
• GDP could plunge 25% in the second quarter.Interest rates hold at 0.1%.It is first time in the history of the Bank of England. Eurozone likely to shrink 7.75%in 2020. Unemployment  9.5%
• Greece to shrink its economy by 9.7%
• GDP of Italy  & Spain to contract by 9.5% and 9.4% respectively.
• In China the pandemic has caused 15% to 40% reduction in key industrial outputs, leading to 25% drop in carbon emissions.

LIVE ANIMAL EXPORTS

• Global trade in live farm animals quadrupled over the past 50 years.
• Two billion animals a year is truckedand shipped around the world.
• In 1988 global trade in live animals was amonted to  716million dollar .
• In 2017 it has risen to 21 billion dollar.
• In 2016 Saudi Arabia alone imported live animals worth one billion dollar(but mostly sheep)
• Nearly two billion pigs,chickens,cattle, sheep,and goatrucked around the world in 2017
• The increase in the previous decades is like this: 1967(130 million),1977(260 million),1987(440 million),1997(680million),2007(1billion),20171.9 billion).

FOREST FIRES 

• Recent forest fires in Australia burned 10 million hectares of land which killed 800 million animals.
• Bush fires killed 100,000 cattle and sheep.
• 1320 farm animals euthanised or confirmed dead due to bush fires in New South Wales.
• Last year fires in Amazon made international headlines.It would have dramatic implications  for regional rainfallleading to drier conditions across South America's bread basket and major urban areas.
• Amazon forests store and recycle vast amount of carbon.When trees go the climate alters not only in the Amazon region but over a much wider area.