A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms.
Questions tagged [virus]
34 questions
166
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Does being cold increase your chances of catching the common cold?
"Everyone knows" - a scary statement - that you get "a cold" from being cold. Now it seems to be a fact that you don't, because you get a cold from a (rhino)virus, not from the temperature.
But is there any correlation between temperature and…
Nanne
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Is 8% of human DNA from viruses?
According to 23andme's Twitter
Image reads,
Approximately 8% of DNA is originally from viruses, which infected your ancestors and became integrated into their cells.
Evan Carroll
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Has a virus ever escaped a high-level virus lab "such as the one in Wuhan"?
As somewhat unclearly related in the Daily Mail:
Dr Keusch, Professor of Medicine and International Health at Boston University's Schools of Medicine and Public Health, stressed that no release of viruses from a high-level lab, such as the one in…
Fizz
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Do studies show that viruses are contagious?
An acquaintance of mine has been very adamant that viruses can't be caught and continues to link me things like this Ickonic video, where Jaymie Icke interviews Dr. Andrew Kaufman M.D. who claims:
I lived my whole life believing we can pass these…
TheXenocide
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Was the virus which causes COVID-19 made in a Chinese lab?
This idea was discussed in the Washington Times
(no longer available at the original site: on archive.org.
The article discusses whether SARS-CoV-2 (the virus which causes COVID-19) could have been made in a Chinese bio-weapon lab:
Dany Shoham, a…
Matas Vaitkevicius
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Has the flu already killed 20,000 Americans during 2019-20 flu season?
Fox News has this article titled "Flu has killed 20K Americans including 136 children so far [as of March 2020] in this [2019-20] flu season, CDC says".
The CDC said that so far this season, 34 million people have gotten the flu, and about 20,000…
user100487
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Do surgical masks help prevent the spread of COVID-19 from infected members of the public?
One of the most politicised scientific issues of 2020 was the question about whether face-masks stop the spread of COVID-19.
Here are some specific examples:
Australian Department of Health (generalised to "masks")
Mayo Clinic
Science Daily
Tweet…
Oddthinking
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What is the cause of Brazil's microcephaly outbreak?
It has been claimed that Brazil is suffering from an outbreak of Microcephaly.
Several possible causes have been proposed.
Zika Virus
Perhaps the most popular one is the zika virus. For example, the NY Times wrote:
The possibility that the Zika…
fdb
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In February 2020, did Tencent release accurate statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus that were 10 times the official figures?
Taiwan News reported the following on February 5:
As many experts question the veracity of China's statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Tencent over the weekend seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of…
Betterthan Kwora
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Coronavirus - Is it safe to receive a package from China?
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has stated that is 'safe' to receive packages from China.
e.g. from their Facebook page
Is it safe to receive a letter or package from China?
Yes, it is safe. People receiving packages from China are not at…
Mike Seeds
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Are 40% of the oceans' bacteria killed by viruses every day?
In the March 9, 2018 column of newspaper columnist Cecil Adams' column The Straight Dope, he speaks about the possible benefits of treating bacterial infections with bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, mentioning in passing their…
Robert Columbia
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Link between runny noses and rhinoviral infections
Trying to answer another question about the link between the winter temperatures and catching the common cold, I remembered something one of my tutors said, namely that 'we catch more viruses when it is cold because our noses run and the exposed…
Steph Stephens
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Is the US government preparing to remove religiosity in the population with a virus, using vaccines as a vector?
This Vimeo video "
DOD VIRUS 'FUNVAX' Vaccine for RELIGIOUS Peoples!!!!!!!" purports to show a government presentation about the deliberate introduction of a virus.
Leaked April 13, 2005 video shows how the Pentagon intends to destroy people’s…
Isopycnal Oscillation
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Does a child die from malaria every two minutes?
A child dies from malaria every two minutes.
-- CNN article on Faso Soap
This doesn't sound right to me. I know Africa (the main location of malaria) is a big and populous place, but this seems too much. Is it true that a child dies from malaria…
AAM111
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Has SARS-CoV-2 been purified in a lab? If not, does this imply that the PCR test for it is not specific?
Dr. Sam Bailey gives a number of references in her YouTube video on PCR tests stating the virus has never been purified as in actually separated from the infected cells.
I'm curious if this is actually true, and if so is this trivially true since…
Matko
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