John Meehan
asked
Frank Ryan:
Hello, Rereading your book after 30 years, now that Covid-19 is upon us. (I remember being paranoid about Hanta when it was a current news item!) Question about the number of viruses ("Nonillions" - can't find the page at the moment) as being larger than the number of stars in the sky - how was this calculated? By permutations and combinations of the DNA/RNA bases?
Frank Ryan
Hello, John,
I presume you read Virus X. In fact I have continued to work ever since then in evolutionary virology, helping to establish a new understanding of viruses when viewed from a symbiotic perspective.
Last year I published a new book, Virusphere, which has been recognized internationally as relevant to understanding the COVID pandemic. I am of course a consultant physician and evolutionary virologist.
Back in the early 1990s, I spent four years travelling internationally spending time with virologists entering numerous perilous plague zones, I was aware that such pandemics were inevitable. That was why I wrote the bestselling book, Virus X - as a warning. A Virus X was a virus that would be so devastating it would encircle the entire globe, be resistant to any known therapy or vaccine and cause havoc. Did anybody, outside the virus world, take any notice? Judge for yourself. COVID is of course exactly that.
I have been asked to help media and readers all over the world to explain and understand what is happening. Virusphere already explained the basis of COVID. But I thought it might help further if I revised the intro and two of the chapters to deal specifically with what is going on. Thankfully, my publisher was helpful and that revised narrative will soon be available as a revised kindle and paperback.
I would like to thank my editor at Harpercollins and my agent for their help in this.
Meanwhile I'll do my best to help.
I presume you read Virus X. In fact I have continued to work ever since then in evolutionary virology, helping to establish a new understanding of viruses when viewed from a symbiotic perspective.
Last year I published a new book, Virusphere, which has been recognized internationally as relevant to understanding the COVID pandemic. I am of course a consultant physician and evolutionary virologist.
Back in the early 1990s, I spent four years travelling internationally spending time with virologists entering numerous perilous plague zones, I was aware that such pandemics were inevitable. That was why I wrote the bestselling book, Virus X - as a warning. A Virus X was a virus that would be so devastating it would encircle the entire globe, be resistant to any known therapy or vaccine and cause havoc. Did anybody, outside the virus world, take any notice? Judge for yourself. COVID is of course exactly that.
I have been asked to help media and readers all over the world to explain and understand what is happening. Virusphere already explained the basis of COVID. But I thought it might help further if I revised the intro and two of the chapters to deal specifically with what is going on. Thankfully, my publisher was helpful and that revised narrative will soon be available as a revised kindle and paperback.
I would like to thank my editor at Harpercollins and my agent for their help in this.
Meanwhile I'll do my best to help.
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