How can we cope with the tricky coronavirus now rampant worldwide? As the pandemic tightens its grip on the world, there are important unanswered questions about this novel virus: Why does this infection spread so rapidly from people with no symptoms? Why do some people become critical while others don't? Will a definitive treatment be found? The underlying key to these questions lie in our immune system. Immune cells are microscopic warriors, combating viruses and another pathogens. Through the high-tech 'eyes' of next-generation microscopes and computer-generated imagery, we will see how our immune defense corps combat against microbes and what mechanism is expected to help develop treatment.
It is 1918 and the end of WWI. Millions have died, and the world is exhausted by war. But soon a new horror is sweeping the world, a terrifying virus that will kill more than fifty million people - the Spanish flu. Using dramatic reconstruction and eyewitness testimony from doctors, soldiers, civilians and politicians, this one-off special brings to life the onslaught of the disease, the horrors of those who lived through it and the efforts of the pioneering scientists desperately looking for the cure. Narrated by Christopher Eccleston, the film also asks whether, a century later, the lessons learnt in 1918 might help us fight a future global flu pandemic.
The extraordinary inside story of the biggest scientific challenge of our age – following a small band of vaccine scientists around the world who took on Covid-19 and ultimately delivered the weapon to beat it. As news of the coronavirus broke around the globe, a small group of scientists jumped into action to tackle one of the greatest medical challenges of our time: to create a vaccine against a virus no-one had ever seen before and to do so in record time, all during a deadly, global pandemic.
Dawkins opines that the moral framework of religions is warped, and argues against the religious indoctrination of children. He discusses specifically the idea of religion seen as a virus in the sense of a meme. He begins by explaining how a child is genetically programmed to believe without questioning the word of authority figures, especially parents – the evolutionary imperative being that no child would survive by adopting a sceptical attitude towards everything their elders said. But this same imperative, he claims, leaves children open to infection by religion.
Through the high-tech 'eyes' of next-generation microscopes and computer-generated imagery, we will see how our immune defense corps combat against microbes and what mechanism is expected to help develop treatment.