No evil lasts a hundred years.
On the current pandemic, saturation affects the general population and front-line health care providers. There is a fed-up among people about SARS-CoV-2 and its many circumstances: political, economic, media, and health. All we need is breath!
It is not prudent playing to be Nostradamus or pretending to guess the future as a vulgar XXI Century’s seer. SARS CoV-2 has demonstrated an unquestionable capacity to surprise. From its natural origin to the ways of contagion.
About the tragedy of the elderly besieged by the coronavirus.
‘Señores’ ―said Don Quixote― no so fast because in the nests of yesteryear there are no birds this year.
Dear all: While you are at home self-protecting from the crowned virus (Are you?), I died. I am going to try explaining it. It does not matter my name, age, gender, marital status, beliefs, ideology, and profession. Let us see.
I am a grandfather, an older adult, a seasoned veteran in the existence’s war. …
In the history of medicine, some issues caused great controversy when they surged. It usually occurs in science in general. Time is a great sculptor of life’s avatars. It usually resolves the conflicts, but, occasionally, some disputes are perennial. An excellent example of a non-resolved argument is Syphilis’s geographical origin. In synthesis: there are two great groups of opinions, with a third more undefined and diverse.
We will focus our brief analysis on two antagonistic positions because of a question of limited space. …
The writing process is not always a creative art.
I want to vindicate a forgotten and excellent writer: Heinrich von Kleist.
Literature, like life, is unjust and cruel on many occasions. When I speak of literature, I am referring to the creative art of oral or written expression. I compare literature to life because, according to John, the evangelist, the origin of everything, or the beginning of all things, was the Verb (John 1: 1–3). That is to say, the word (Of course, it is a simplification of the biblical meaning’s analysis).
Once upon a time, when human beings’ communication began, literature surged through the spoken word, not throughout…
Mutations are like identity cards of many viruses.
Viruses do not mutate because they want to do it.
It is a random phenomenon of nature.
Life’s avatars live in a combination fortuitous of four letters. They are Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Cytosine ©, Thymine (T) in the DNA, and A, G, C, and Uracil (U) in the RNA. In the DNA, there is T and U in the RNA.
A virus is, as someone said, an enigma enclosed in a layer of lipids. There are thousands of species of viruses, some formed by DNA and others by RNA. …
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its way.
The current pandemic is interesting in many aspects. For example, let put focus on the close relationship among different biological worlds. In concrete, on three life forms: microbes, animals, and humans.
Coronaviruses stand out as the protagonists of the first biological group. The second one is an assembly of several animals. As bats, palm civets, Arabian dromedaries, pangolins, minks, felines, dogs, and pigs. These animals have flown and grazed by social and by media networks.
And, without leaving the animal world, humans. Remember, we, the humans, are the star genus, the most evolved species of hominids. I suppose.
Here is the curious story of a humble rural surgeon and a cosmopolitan courtesan doctor.
According to Oscar Wilde, reality imitates art. But life’s drama is the greatest of fiction.
A remote intellectual thread ─a medical book─ linked his author with a certain Dr. Lopus. He was a physician, spy, and suspect of high treason against England.
Doctor Lopus inspired William Shakespeare to build one of his famous comedy characters. It happened in the XVI century. And Lopus also is the starring of a drama about treason. A play written by a medical author in the XXI century.
Medicine and literature. Past and present.
Life.
Francisco de Arceo (in Latin, Franciscus Archaeus) was a Spanish…
Viruses, like birds, come and go.
“Dark swallows will return
To hang their nest upon your balcony…”. (G.A. Bécquer).
The title is the first verse of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’s famous poem collection, Rimas (1871). In Spanish (Rhyme nº 53), it begins: “Volverán las Oscuras Golondrinas.” My translation: “Dark Swallows Will Return.” It is a romantic poem about the transience of things and love.
G. A. Bécquer wrote it thinking of his beloved and lover Elisa Guillén. I write this article thinking of many humans unknown to me.
I use the interrogative form because I ignore the future. It is a severe personal deficiency in a time…
Let us make a horseback walk throughout the intricate webs of the power.
Introduction.
A TV commercial for Vodafone uses voice power as the axis of its advertising. It plays scenes from the famous and successful series “Game of Thrones.” The popular series is an adaptation of the set of novels by George Raymond R. Martin entitled “A Song of Ice and Fire.”
The movies are a display of imagination, of extreme fantasy. It sets in the Middle Ages and exhibits all possible human depravities. The goal in mind is to wield power.
Some psychologists think all characters are suffering from a personality disorder. Remember this aspect. The matter is the uncertain mental health…
A warning for dilettantes.
When the devil has nothing to do, he plays at combining mutations in the coronavirus genome.
(Diabolic saying anonymous).
SARS-CoV-2 pandemic causing COVID-19 appeared on the public scene in December 2020. The virus was already carrying mutations. It is a rule followed by its genome of almost 30,000 letters. A matter of chance. More viruses, the greater the chance of mutating.
According to the WHO, the coronavirus zoonotic origin is in some species of horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus spp.). It is unknown whether the coronavirus passed later through some animal intermediary. …
Agustín Muñoz-Sanz
Medical Doctor (Infectious Diseases specialist/Professor of Medicine) and writer (narrative, theater).
.jpg){kind=link}