Over the course of our nearly 800 posts, we have tried to give credit where credit is due to those who dedicated their lives to investigating respiratory agents. We have done so for several reasons.

Share

First, it is their due as an act of remembrance and respect for what they achieved, which is topical this week.

Second, we were struck by the crass ignorance demonstrated by some of our “colleagues”, the media, governments, and all those who pretended that influenza was the only agent and partially still do by introducing the concept of the big “three”: RSV, SARS-CoV-2 and influenza  

and using the f-word “flu” to confuse and justify fleecing the public.

Of course, this distortion of microbiology and epidemiology has nothing to do with the fact that licensed products are only available for these three agents.

Never mind good old rhinoviruses, which are continuously circulating, and their numerous groups of colleagues, including adenovirus, parainfluenza, metapneumovirus, and so on, that accompany its general circulation. They count for nothing. There's no money in them with no antivirals or vaccines to peddle.

Third, only when academics and public health bodies stop distorting messages will we make research programmes that matter and try to understand the interplay between agents. We could even find something that works in serious cases and effective interventions that prevent transmission. Of course, this is also premised on proper investigative work on the ecology and transmission of these agents, using molecular methods at our disposal.

Our esteemed predecessors did that with the means at their disposal. Their professionalism and serious curiosity led them to develop new methods for identifying agents and culturing them, starting with influenza.

So we intended to make Smith, Laidlaw, Andrewes, Tyrrel, Bynoe, Almeida, Shope, Chanok, Dochez, Gwaltney, Handley, D’Alessio, Dick, Hope-Simpson, Allen, Callow, Reed, and so many others immortal, their work cited by us over and over again. Who? You may ask. Fair enough: for example, when Tyrrel and Bynoe first isolated coronas, June Almeida gave them their name. Got it?

Apart from citing them in Trust the Evidence and in the books we are working on, there is one more strand that we can explore. In the Riddles series, we reported on the work of the MRC Common Cold Unit.

The University of Wisconsin

The University of Virginia

Because of our limited means, we intend to concentrate on making the MRC Common Cold Unit’s 1,006 studies publicly available and some personal correspondence between Tom and the late Dr David Tyrrel as background. 

In 2014, Tom sent Tyrrell’s personal filing cabinet to the Welcome Foundation so that anyone researching these giants could get a good background “fix” on how they collaborated.  They collaborated across the pond without censorship, wokery or “I was there first” syndrome. 

We’re starting by unearthing several documents that haven’t yet seen the light of day.  Wish us luck in our endeavours.

This post was written by two old geezers who believe in giving merit where it’s due.