The variant that never existed
Plus releasing mosquitoes to control mosquitoes, the question of why plants make caffeine, the Tongan volcano, and Havana Syndrome.
Hello! How’ve you been lately?
In my newsletter last week I mentioned that the deltacron variant first reported by CNBC — which, let’s face it, isn’t necessarily known for their stellar scientific and epidemiological reporting — was likely an artifact and not a real variant.
The deltacron variant does not exist
Yesterday, Nature — an outlet that is in fact, known for its stellar science reporting — indicated that the deltacron variant doesn’t exist by saying “deltacron doesn’t exist”. They went on to write the following:
The virologist who uploaded the sequences to the GISAID repository says that aspects of his original hypothesis have been misconstrued, and he has removed the data from public view. GISAID is littered with sequences that have elements of sequences seen in other variants, says virologist Thomas Peacock. “But, generally, people don’t have to debunk them because there isn’t a load of international press all over them.”
Why do we have to deal with unreliable news in the third year of a pandemic that has killed millions of people?
Everyone has been wrong during this pandemic, so it’s not a question of getting it 100% right the first time. It is a question of applying certain filters to what we hear and read that impacts important aspects of our well-being.
Had the original reporter done a fact-check or consulted with another expert, he’d have been able to add context. But we must also ask why those who propagated the story didn’t either.
Havana Syndrome: what actually happened?
This brings me to an interesting case that I’ve been following for a few years. Havana syndrome “is a set of medical symptoms with unknown causes experienced mostly abroad by U.S. government officials and military personnel. The symptoms range in severity from pain and ringing in the ears to cognitive difficulties and were first reported in 2016 by U.S. and Canadian embassy staff in Havana, Cuba.”
From the outset, there were reports of the possibility of a sonic weapon deployed by an enemy power that caused officials to become sick. The mysterious nature of the symptoms and the unknown cause are what fascinated me.
In addition, if there was indeed a sonic weapon then it would be something that the world’s most militarily advanced superpower missed. To be able to cause physical damage selectively in some people by deploying high frequency audible and inaudible sound waves would be nothing short of spectacular.
In 2020, a report by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded that the victims experienced some real physical phenomena that was probably caused by some form of electromagnetic radiation. But they also admitted that the clinical symptoms had never been seen before.
A mass attack by a hostile foreign power in most cases was ruled out earlier this week in an interim report.
There is also another possibility that was put forward by two experts in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine that most of the cases could be explained as psychogenic illness (or a form of mass hysteria). The article is worth reading in entirety, though the use of “psychogenic” is debated by many experts.
Neurologist Dr. Suzanne O’Sullivan also agrees that this is the most likely cause in her book, The Sleeping Beauties.
(Regular readers of this newsletter may remember that this was one of my popular science books of the year for 2021).
Why do plants make caffeine?
The world is addicted to caffeine. I include myself in “the world” since I love a nice cup of freshly brewed Hawaiian Kona coffee myself.
But how does caffeine benefit the plants that make it? After all, not all plants make it, and of those that do, it’s not clear that it is essential in the way that say, chlorophyll which is needed to make food is. Some plants have caffeine in their leaves. Others have it in the fruit. Yet others like citrus fruits (yes, oranges, limes, and lemons make caffeine) contain caffeine in their flowers.
This is the subject of my column this week in Hindustan Times and the answer is a bit complicated. It depends on how much caffeine the plant makes and where it makes it. Caffeine can act as a plant-killer, insect poison, or even a stimulant that makes some pollinators smarter. What a versatile chemical compound!
Release the mosquitoes!
This week, over at The Morning Context, I’ve written about a story at the cutting-edge of science. I’ve been following this for a couple of years now. There’s this idea that we can eradicate major mosquito-borne diseases by eliminating the mosquitoes that carry them. And the way to do this is by releasing more mosquitoes.
It starts before my birth with a scientist on a mission.
Edward Knipling was an entomologist who was dead set on eliminating agricultural insect pests that decimated crops of farmers in the United States. And although his name isn’t widely known today, he is credited with an idea so brilliant that in 1970 The New York Times called it “the single most original thought in the 20th century”.
Knipling’s idea was radical. Instead of killing insects with poisonous chemicals, he proposed releasing sterile insects that would compete with fertile, natural ones. Over time, these defective insects outbreed fertile ones and result in dead-ends. Knipling’s superiors at the United States Department of Agriculture didn’t take his idea seriously, but he persisted. The mathematical formulas showed that it worked, but the real test came in the field.
Knipling’s idea has spread now to the elimination of many different insect and non-insect pests. Last year, millions of mosquitoes were released in Florida. And though there are regulatory processes to follow and concerns with implementing the release of modified mosquitoes in India, the idea has been floated to control malaria.
What else I’ve read
The prince, the mayor, and the U.S. fish that ate Japan. This story about an ecological nightmare is an excellent long-read.
“China's $1 trillion 'artificial sun' fusion reactor just got five times hotter than the sun”
“Why India's fossil wealth has remained hidden”. Long-read at BBC Future.
A nuclear-test monitor calls Tonga volcano blast 'biggest thing that we've ever seen'