There was a question posted by a Tan Sri
Professor in our WhatsApp group.
He asked in
our WhatsApp group this poser:
“I am wondering why Prof
Dr. Liong Min Tze in her video from Melbourne did not explain why flu is
seasonal occurring mainly in the winter months?
How can the virus appear
and disappear only in certain months of the year? How can this be due to
mutation as Prof Dr Liong claimed?”
My Answer:
Thank you for your doubts
about mutated flu virus causing seasonal flu put forward by this Malaysian
female scientist in her video I received.
We don’t expect her
staying in Melbourne to know everything, such as why flu is seasonal especially
during the cold winter months in December, before mentioning why mutating
Covid-19 virus may also be ineffective?
She is a virologist and
virology is her specialty. Perhaps she is not familiar with other areas of
biological and space sciences.
She was probably looking
at mutation as the sole cause in the variations of infectivity and why flu
vaccines may not be effective the next year.
The same question has
been raised by a friend of mine recently in the same chat group showing me a
histogram on the varying efficacy of this vaccine over a 10 year period asking
me for an explanation. I gave a statistical answer to him.
The same dilemma was also
asked of me recently by two medical doctors’ colleagues of mine when we
were formerly working at the Institute for Medical Research in
Malaysia.
This seasonal flu
variations causing the flu vaccines ineffectiveness, or less effective
year-to-year as this Professor from Melbourne said is already well-known to
everybody, and I agree with her. There is nothing new about this.
That is why scientists
need to create another type of flu vaccine each year. This is also
well-established. Everyone knows this.
Mutation?
But why did the flu virus
change and mutate only in winter or solely on certain months of the year?
No virologist as far as I
know has ever been able to answer or explain this phenomenon till today because
they all merely look and think about strain variations due to mutation.
Such thinking is no
different from anyone looking at a problem from the angle of a single
specialty. I think we need to find the answer holistically, or at least
an alternative explanation.
The reason as why flu
epidemic is seasonal and especially during the winter months is not known to
everyone.
None so far, as far as I
know is able to explain. All we can only think of is the virus underwent
mutation in the interim.
But then how can a virus
remain in such a non-infective state especially during the hot summer months
and for so long in between winters, and then suddenly becomes active infecting
large populations at fixed times of a year?
Let me offer another an
alternative solution from other disciplines of biological sciences, especially
in astrobiology (space biology), an area I am familiar with.
I am not saying mine is
the right answer, but allows me first to offer my own thinking. This is also
not solely my own, but I gather indirectly from the work of other scientists in
other areas. I then merely put up a hypothesis
Let me explain.
Ancient Thoughts
On the
Origin of Life:
In the ancient writings
of the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras in the 5th-century BC, he and
other great Greek thinkers already suspected that life could have originated
from another world.
The Greeks came out with
this hypothesis in what we now call the panspermia on the origin of life on
Earth, including the flu and all viruses; maybe also on the origin of the
corona virus now plaguing Earth.
Over the centuries more,
and more scientific thoughts on this theory emerged, beginning with Jons Jacob
Berzelius in 1834, Hermann E. Richter in 1865, Kelvin in
1871, Hermann von Helmholtz in 1879 and finally achieving the level
of a very detailed and sophisticated scientific theory through the
labors of the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1903.
Recent Thinking:
But the most impact on
the panspermia theory came from Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001), a would have
been a Nobel Prize astrophysicist if not for his antagonism against his
colleagues at Cambridge, and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe (1939
- ), a British mathematician, astronomer,
astrophysicist and an astrobiologist.
These two scientists were
strong supporters and proponents of the panspermia theory.
Both of them were highly
respected world-renowned astrophysicists and astrobiologists and mathematicians
from the University of Cambridge who have also worked in other universities,
and whose findings took the scientific world by storms
In 1974 while working at
Cambridge, they proposed the hypothesis that some dust in interstellar
space was largely organic in composition in that they contain
carbon-based molecules on which life as we know it is established. Wickramasinghe
was later proved to be right.
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe
further contended that life forms persist to enter the Earth's atmosphere, and
may be accountable for epidemic outbreaks, new diseases, and the genetic
originality essential for macroevolution – an area I too am familiar.
They published several
papers of their findings showing how flu epidemic normally begins during
certain months of the year, and always starting from high altitudes first,
before reaching the lower plains.
They attributed this to
interstellar clouds laden with various types of flu viruses descending from
space at high altitudes first before floating down very slowly against updrafts
of winds at high altitudes prior to reaching the plains.
It took months to float
down to the sea level. Thus flu epidemic always start from higher altitudes
before spreading down to the plains.
The epidemiological
pattern each year is always the same. This would have nothing to do with
mutation of the flu virus, let alone mutating from the mountains first before
reaching sea-levels months later. How does that works then?
Neither has it got to do
with mutation of the virus only on certain months of the year which Prof Dr.
Liong did not explain, except saying it was mutation that causes the vaccine to
be ineffective, and in that sense she was right.
But let me explain why
she may be wrong in the other sense
Seasonal Position of
Earth:
Each season of the year
when Earth reaches exactly the same position in space as it revolves in
her elliptical path around the Sun she will be sprayed by this
enormous interstellar clouds hovering over that region as she collides with
them.
As the Earth rear-ended
into this cloud of interstellar dusts at that point in time and position of the
year, she will be sprayed by these virus-laden dusts.
These interstellar clouds
may be carrying different types and strains of pre-life and bio-molecules which
scientists may have mistaken as mutated strains on Earth
These different types or
strains of the same pre-life bio-molecules may have already been
there between 5 - 10 thousand million years ago, and was brought here from
the Oort Cloud that surrounds the Sun at distances
ranging from 0.03 to 3.2 light-years or 2.84 x 10 11 to
3.03 x 10 13 km (2,000 to 200,000 astronomical units).
In short, their pre-life
molecules may have been the same or different strains of viruses floating in
space before Earth smashes into them as she takes her circuit around the Sun.
In such an event they
then sow and shower the Earth with different strains of viruses which
virologists may have mistaken as mutated strains of flu viruses each season
when Earth reaches a certain point in space.
At a frigid temperature
of just 3 Kelvin (3 degrees above absolute zero or minus 270 degrees Celsius)
in outer space as shown by CBM (Cosmic Background Microwave) nothing can move,
not even molecular movements, let alone viruses mutating.
These pre-life bio
molecules (perhaps viruses) can remain in outer space “lifeless” in suspended
animation for more than 5 billion years, frozen in a vacuum.
In such a scenario they
can remain inactive without needing any living host and as such, it is not
possible for them to mutate at that bitterly frigid temperatures when even
molecular activities freeze almost to zero until they can float down to the
much warmer atmosphere on Earth where they ‘sprout’ and multiply inside living
human cells
Neither was this mutation
the cause of seasonal infectivity as virologists believe. There is no human out
there in the frigid of outer space challenging them seasonally with our human
antibodies.
Space Experiments:
There were three chains
of astro-biological experiments been conducted outside the International
Space Station between 2008 and 2015 where an extensive variety
of microorganisms, and their spores were exposed to the solar
flux and vacuum of space for about 18 months?
Some organisms survived
in a motionless state for considerable lengths of time, and those samples
sheltered by simulated meteorite material make available experimental evidence
for the likelihood of the hypothetical scenario of the panspermia theory.
In November 2019, the
same time when Covid-19 first emerged on Earth, scientists reported detecting
for the first time, sugar molecules, including ribose,
in meteorites that suggest chemical processes on asteroids can
construct some fundamentally essential bio-ingredients imperative to life,
and supporting the perception of an RNA world prior to a
DNA-based origin of life on Earth, and probably the concept of
panspermia as well. Was this an accidental coincidence when Covid-19 also
surface?
That is the only probable
reason why flu, if not Covid-19 is seasonal when Earth smashes into these huge
virus-laden interstellar clouds at that point in time and position of the year
we call as seasons and hence the name seasonal flu which I believe may be the
answer.
I am of a strong opinion
that such a yearly event in outer space has absolutely nothing to do with flu
virus appearing and disappearing on Earth due to mutation, and only at certain
seasons of the year.
In order for a virus to
mutate it must be constantly challenged by the immunological surveillance of a
human host, and never only on specific time of the year. This is not the way
our immune system is activated. This would not make sense.
Thus, the theory of
seasonal flu due to mutation believed by virologists is not viable at least to
me.
There is a very strong
probability that we are surrounded by life-laden molecules from Oort clouds
circulating round the Sun and they do make seasonal visits to Earth peppering
it with their life-forming molecules. This is like a farmer sowing seeds into
the soil during post harvest
A Sudden Thought:
On this note, this bring
me to another dilemma, a sudden thought after I have just penned the above
sentence as to why during the Cambrian Period
which was the geological period that lasted
for 55.8 million years, there was a sudden explosion of all life
forms known as the Cambrian Radiation?
It seems strange to me
that all sorts of life-bearing interstellar dusts may have sowed all the
diversity of life simultaneously on this planet as described in Genesis, rather
than going through the very slow process of natural selection proposed by
Charles Darwin.
Mutation is a very slow
process and could not account for this Cambrian Explosion. It must have been an
Intelligent Designer?
Let me quote in summary
what Stephen Hawking has to say here about life.
In an Origins Symposium
presentation on April 7, 2009, the late cosmologist, mathematician and
physicist Stephen Hawking from Cambridge declared his view about what
humans may find when venturing into space, such as the likelihood of alien life
through the theory of panspermia.
He said: "Life
could spread from planet to planet or from stellar system to stellar system,
carried on meteors”
So could viruses too.
These life-giving visits by various types of viruses or the so-called “mutated”
viruses spreading periodically onto Earth may have been the cause of periodic
epidemics and pestilence that I too believe and can envisage
I believe this would be
the same variation of epidemic scenarios even if we can find an
effective vaccine for Covid-19.
My personal feeling as
scientists is, always think out of the box, and always look above the well, and
never stay forever inside a well.
We need to specialize in
multidiscipline of sciences also to consider and contemplate a theory
That is my answer Tan Sri
Professor
Lim jb
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