Virus

Virus (pronounced vahy-ruhs)

(1) An sub- or ultra-microscopic (20 to 300 nm diameter), metabolically inert, non-cellular infectious agent that replicates only within the cells of living hosts, mainly bacteria, plants, and animals: composed of an RNA or DNA core, a protein coat, and, in more complex types, a surrounding envelope.  Because viruses are unable to replicate without a host cell, they are not considered living organisms in conventional taxonomic systems (though often referred to as live (in the sense of active) when replicating and causing disease.

(2) A quantity of such infectious agents.

(3) In informal use, metonymically, A disease caused by such an infectious agent; a viral illness.

(4) Venom, as produced by a poisonous animal etc (extinct in this context). 

(5) Figuratively, any malicious or dangerous entity that spreads from one place or person to another; a corrupting influence on morals or the intellect. 

(6) In computing, a segment of often self-replicating code furtively planted in a computer program, either to damage a system or for financial gain by a variety of fraudulent techniques.

(7) In computing (loosely used), any form of malware.

Late 1300s: From the Middle English virus (poisonous substance (this meaning now extinct in this context)), from the Latin vīrus (slime; venom; poisonous liquid; sap of plants; slimy liquid; a potent juice), from rhotacism from the Proto-Italic weisos & wisós (fluidity, slime, poison) probably from the primitive Indo-European root ueis & wisós (fluidity, slime, poison (though it may originally have meant “to melt away, to flow”), used of foul or malodorous fluids, but in some languages limited to the specific sense of "poisonous fluid") which was the source also of the Sanskrit visam (venom, poison) & visah (poisonous), the Avestan vish- (poison), the Latin viscum (sticky substance, birdlime), the Greek ios (poison) & ixos (mistletoe, birdlime), the Old Church Slavonic višnja (cherry), the Old Irish fi (poison) and the Welsh gwy (poison).  It was related also to the Old English wāse (marsh).  Virus is a noun & a (rare) verb and viral is an adjective; the noun plural is viruses.

The original meaning, "poisonous substance”, emerged in the late fourteenth century and was an inheritance from the Latin virus (poison, sap of plants, slimy liquid, a potent juice) from the Proto-Italic weis-o-(s-) (poison), probably from the primitive Indo-European root ueis-, thought originally to mean "to melt away, to flow" and used of foul or malodorous fluids, but with specialization in some languages to mean "poisonous fluid".  It’s the source of the Sanskrit visam (venom, poison) & visah (poisonous), the Avestan vish- (poison), the Latin viscum (sticky substance; birdlime) the Greek ios (poison) & ixos (mistletoe, birdlime), the Old Church Slavonic višnja (cherry). The Old Irish fi (poison) and the Welsh gwy (poison).  The meaning "agent that causes infectious disease" emerged in the 1790s, the medical literature of the time describing their manifestation in  especially disgusting terms (the word pus most frequent) and one dictionary entry of 1770 contains the memorable: "a kind of watery stinking matter, which issues out of ulcers, being endued with eating and malignant qualities".  As early as 1728 (borrowing from the earlier sense of "poison"), it had been used in reference to venereal disease, the first recognizably modern scientific use dating from the 1880s.  The first known citation in the context of computing was by Gregory Benford (b 1941) who published The Scarred Man (1970) although it’s often credited to David Gerrold (b 1944), who used the word in this context in When HARLIE Was One (1972).

Before the internet: ARPANET network schematic 1973.

In computing, theoretical work on the self-replicating code (which is the core of a digital virus) was published as early as 1971 and what’s regarded as the first object to behave like a virus (though technically, it would now be called a worm) was released as a harmless amusement on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) (ARPANET), the internet’s precursor network.  It was called “creeper, catch me if you can!" and, perhaps predictably, other nerds rose to the challenge and release the “reaper” their own worm which killed whatever creepers it found.  Creeper & reaper conducted their cat & mouse game on Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) PDP-10, predecessor to the famous PDP-11 mini-computer and at this point, viruses were genuinely harmless (if time wasting) activities conducted between consenting nerds in the privacy of their parochial networks.  However, it was the development of the personal computer (PC) from 1975 and especially the subsequent adoption by business of the IBM-PC-1 (1981) and its clones which created the population in which viruses could spread and while relatively harmless creations like Stoned (1987) tended to amuse because they did little more that display on the screen of an infected device the message "Your PC is now Stoned", there were many others which were quite destructive.  The first which came to wide public attention was probably Melissa (1999) which caused much economic loss and the discussion of which (by mostly male writers in the specialist press) excited some criticism from feminists who objected to headlines like "Melissa was really loose, and boy did she get around".    

The late John McAfee (1945–2021) who led an interesting life.

In medicine, the first antivirus was available in 1903, an equivalent (shrink-wrap) product for computers apparently first offered for sale in 1987 although there seems no agreement of which of three authors (Paul Mace, Andreas Lüning & the late John McAfee) reached the market first.  The adjective viral (of the nature of, or caused by, a virus) dates from 1944 as applied in medicine whereas the now equally familiar, post world-wide-web sense of stuff "become suddenly popular through internet sharing" is attested by 1999 although most seem convinced it must have been in use prior to this.

The rhinovirus (one of a group of viruses that includes those which cause many common colds) was first described in 1961, the construct being rhino- (from the Ancient Greek rhino (a combining form of rhis (nose) of uncertain origin) + virus.  The noun virology appeared in 1935 to describe the then novel branch of science and parvovirus (a very small virus), the construct being parvi- (small, little) + the connecting element -o- + virus was coined in 1965 to describe the decreasingly small objects becoming visible as optical technology improved.  The rotavirus (a wheel-shaped virus causing inflammation of the lining of the intestines), the construct being rota (wheel) + virus dates from 1974.

Diagram of a retrovirus.

The adjective virulent dates from circa 1400 in reference to wounds, ulcers etc (full of corrupt or poisonous matter), from the Latin virulentus (poisonous), from virus; the figurative sense of "violent, spiteful" attested from circa 1600; virulently the related form.  The mysterious reovirus was a noun coined in 1959 by Polish-American medical researcher Dr Albert Sabin (1906-1993), the “reo-“ and acronym for “respiratory enteric orphan”, to describe viruses considered orphans in the sense of not being connected to any of the diseases with which they were associated.  More technical still was the (1977) retrovirus, an evolution of the (1974) retravirus (from re(verse) tra(nscriptase) + connective -o- + virus), explained by it containing reverse transcriptase, an enzyme which uses RNA instead of DNA to encode genetic information, thus reversing the usual pattern.  While these things are usually the work of committees, there seems to be nothing in the public record to suggest why “retro-“ was preferred to “retra-“, the assumption being “retro-“ more explicitly indicated "backwards."

In 2014, while in the South Pacific, Lindsay Lohan contracted Chikungunya, an infection caused by the Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), spread by two types of mosquito.  On Twitter and Instagram, she recommended the use of bug spray.  The condition was first isolated in Tanzania in 1952, the word Chikungunya from the Kimakonde language which translates literally as "to become contorted" although the World Health Organization (WHO) lists the common symptoms as a persistent headache, swollen joints, muscle pain and a rash which typically appears first on the extremities.

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) assembly and egress.

Not alive in the technical sense defined in biology, a virus is a biological agent which reproduces inside the cells of living hosts.  When infected by a virus, a host cell is forced quickly to produce thousands of identical copies of the original; unlike actual living things, viruses do not have cells that divide, new viruses being assembled in the infected host cell.  Unlike simpler infectious agents, viruses contain genes so they mutate and evolve and thousands are known to exist.  Viruses are tiny, much smaller than bacteria and it can require more than a million of them, side by side, to reach one inch (25 mm) and although a theory of viruses was constructed after French and Russian experiments in the 1880s, it wasn’t until the electron microscope became available in 1931 that the first images were captured.  Where there is life, there are viruses and it’s thought likely they have existed either since, or very shortly after, the first living cells evolved; it’s not impossible the first cellular forms would now, technically, be classified as viruses.  Viruses can be benign and bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria, used in eastern Europe since the nineteenth century to treat infection but almost ignored since the development of antibiotics.  With the growth in antibiotic resistance, there’s now renewed interest.  Viruses also perform a useful role in ecology, killing around a fifth of oceanic biomass, the increased respiration in the seas ultimately reducing the atmospheric carbon dioxide by some three gigatons per year.

During the initial 2019 outbreak in Wuhan of what is now called COVID-19, both virus and disease were mostly referred to as "coronavirus", "Wuhan coronavirus" or "Wuhan pneumonia".  There had been a long tradition of naming diseases after the geographical location where they were first reported (Hong Kong flu, Spanish flu etc) but this could be misleading.  The Spanish flu, associated with the pandemic of 1918-1920, was actually first detected elsewhere, either on the World War I battlefields of France or (more probably) a military camp in the United States but, because Spain was a neutral in the conflict, there was no military censorship to limit reporting so warnings about this especially virulent influenza were printed in the Spanish press.  From here, it was eventually picked up and publicized as “Spanish flu” although, doctors there, in an early example of contract tracing, were aware of vectors of transmission and insisted it was the “French flu” because this was where their back-tracing led.  This had no effect beyond Spain and it’s ever since been known as “Spanish flu” although the practice of using geographical references has now been abandoned, a linguistic sanitization which has extended to anything likely to cause offence, the recently topical Monkeypox now called Mpox which seems hardly imaginative.     

Representation of a coronavirus.

In January 2020, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) recommended the name 2019-nCoV & 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease as interim names for virus and disease respectively (although “human coronavirus 2019”, “HCoV-19” & “hCoV-19” also exist in the record).  The committee’s recommendation conformed to the conventions adopted after it was decided in 2015, to avoid social stigma, to cease the use of geographical locations or identities associated with specific people(s) in disease-related names.  Although well understood by scientists, the WHO must have thought them a bit much for general use and in February 2020, issued SARS-CoV-2 & COVID-19 as the official nomenclature: CO=corona, VI=virus, D=disease & 19=2019 although for a while, confusingly, documents issued by the WHO sometimes referenced “COVID-19 virus” rather than the correct SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; the name adopted because of the close genetic relationship to the first SARS outbreak in 2003 (now retrospectively listed as SARS-Cov-1).

Syndrome

Syndrome (pronounced sin-drohm or sin-druhm)

(1) In pathology and psychiatry, a group of symptoms which together are characteristic of a specific disorder, disease or the like.

(2) A group of related or coincident things, events, actions etc; a predictable, characteristic pattern of behavior, action, etc., that tends to occur under certain circumstances.

1535–1545: From the Medical Latin syndrome (a number of symptoms occurring together), from the Ancient Greek συνδρομή (sundromḗ) (concurrence of symptoms, concourse of people), from σύνδρομος (súndromos) (literally "running together" and often used in the sense of "place where several roads meet"), the construct being συν- (syn-) (with) + δρόμος (drómos) (a running, course), best understood as syn- + dramein + -ē (the feminine noun suffix).  The meaning, beginning in 1540s medical Latin, is thus derived from the Ancient Greek syndromos (place where several roads meet); the psychological sense emerging only in 1955.  In general use, the synonyms include malady, problem, disorder, ailment, sickness, complaint, sign, complex, infirmity, affection, symptoms, diagnostics & prognostics; in medical use, the term syndrome is something also used loosely but in text books or academic use use is more precise.  Syndrome is a noun and syndromic is an adjective; the noun plural is syndromes.

In medicine, a syndrome is a collection of symptoms (some of which clinicians sometimes classify variously as “definitive” & “indicative”) which often manifest simultaneously and characterize a particular abnormality or condition.  The term is commonly used in medicine and psychology and syndromes can either be codified as diagnosable conditions or just part of casual language to describe aspects of the human condition (such as “Paris Hilton Syndrome” or “Lindsay Lohan Syndrome”).  A syndrome describes patterns of observable symptoms but does not of necessity indicate a condition’s cause or causes.  A syndrome does not need to be widespread or even suffered by more than one patient and a single case is all that is required for a syndrome to be defined; the symptoms need only to be specific.  Diagnosing a syndrome typically involves clinicians identifying the common symptoms and ruling out other possible conditions, something often complicated by the variability in severity and presentation among different individuals, many syndromes being classic examples of “spectrum conditions”.  Like any condition, the course of the treatment regime for a syndrome will focus on (1) managing the symptoms and (2) dealing with the underlying causes when known.

COVID-19

Art inspired by the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 syndrome, created by medical professionals: Outsized, Overwhelming Impact of COVID-19 by Lona Mody.

COVID-19 is a syndrome and the name allocated on 11 February 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.  Although its origin remains most associated with Wuhan in late 2019, it may have been circulating earlier.  An acronym, COVID-19 stands for COronaVIrus Disease-2019 but the original working name for the virus causing the syndrome was 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) which the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) changed to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).  The name is from the standard nomenclature of the discipline, chosen because the virus is a genetic cousin of the coronavirus which caused the SARS syndrome in 2002 (SARS-CoV).  The public tends not to distinguish between virus and syndrome, the popular names being Covid and corona.

Art inspired by the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 syndrome, created by medical professionals: Pipetting the Sample by Ali Al-Nasser.

First discovered in domestic poultry during the 1930s, coronaviruses cause a range of respiratory, gastrointestinal, liver, and neurologic diseases and are common in both humans and animals.  Only seven are known to cause disease in humans, four associated with the common cold; these have the catchy names 229E, OC43, NL63, and HUK1.  The three coronaviruses which cause serious lung infections (related to pneumonia) are SARS-CoV (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) first noted in 2002, MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) which emerged in 2012 and SARS-CoV-2 (the COVID-19 pandemic).

Art inspired by the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 syndrome, created by medical professionals: Naturarte by Angela Araujo.

SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are zoonotic, beginning in an animal, transmitting, either directly or via another species, to people.  SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a mutated bat virus; bats host thousands of coronavirues and exist with them mostly in symbiotic harmony and it remains unclear whether the virus passed directly from bat to human or via some other creature.  Interestingly, while the nature of the COVID-19 syndrome hasn’t changed, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has mutated and now circulates in many strains, one tending to emerge as the dominant means of transmission in a given geographical area.  The dominance of the mutated strain happened because the mutation made the virus much more infectious so, in a classic example of Darwinian natural selection, the entity able more efficiently to multiply is the one which becomes dominant.  Despite early speculation, the mutation seems not to account for reductions in the COVID-19 death rate, a phenomenon virologists attribute to improved treatment the “harvesting effect”, meaning the virus first kills those easiest to kill.  There was also the effect of many dying early in the pandemic because health systems were overwhelmed and unable to provide the treatment which would have ensured their survival.  This has been noted in past wars, epidemics, pandemics and localized disasters.

Omicron

Omicron (pronounced om-i-kron or oh-mi-kron)

(1) The fifteenth letter of the Classical and Modern Greek alphabet and the sixteenth in Ancient archaic Greek; a short vowel, transliterated as o.

(2) The vowel sound represented by this letter.

(3) The common name designated (on 26 November 2021 by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE)) for the variant B.1.1.529 of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes the condition COVID-19.

(4) In English, as “o” & “O” (fifteenth letter of the alphabet), a letter used for various grammatical and technical purposes.

Circa 1400: The fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet (oʊmɪkrɒn; the symbol Oo), literally "small o" (ὂ μικρόν (ò mikrón)), the construct being o + the Ancient Greek (s)mikros (small (source of the modern micro-) and so-called because the vowel was "short" in ancient Greek.  Omega (O) was thus the “long” (O) and omicron the “short” (o).  It’s from omicron both Latin and Cyrillic gained “O”.  Depending on the context in which it’s being written, the plural is omicrons or omicra.

The fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet was derived from a character which in Phoenician was called 'ain or ayin (literally "eye") and represented by what most dictionaries record as something like "a most peculiar and to us unpronounceable guttural sound".  The Greeks also lacked the sound, so when they adopted characters from the Phoenician alphabet, arbitrarily they changed O's value to a vowel.  Despite the medieval belief, there is no evidence to support the idea the form of the letter represents the shape the mouth assumes in pronouncing it.  The Greeks later added a special character for the "long" O (omega), and the original thus became the "little o" (omicron).  In Middle English and later colloquial use, o or o' has a special use as an abbreviation of “on” or “of”, and remains literary still in some constructions (o'clock, Jack-o'-lantern, tam-o'-shanter, cat-o'-nine-tails, will-o'-the-wisp et al).  The technical use in genealogy is best represented by Irish surnames, the “O’” from the Irish ó (ua), which in the Old Irish was au (ui) and meant "descendant".

As a connective, -o- is the most common connecting vowel in compounds either taken or formed from Greek, where it is often the vowel in the stem.  English being what it is, it’s affixed, not only to constructions purely Greek in origin, but also those derived from Latin (Latin compounds of which would have been formed with the L. connecting or reduced thematic vowel, -i).  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adds the usage note that this occurred especially when what was wanted were compounds with a sense of Latin composition, which even if technically possible, would not be warranted but, were correct under the principles of Greek composition.  Similarly, blood type-O was in 1926 originally designated “0” (zero)" denoting the absence of any type-A & B agglutinogens but the letter O was adopted to align the group with existing nomenclature.  The standardized scale in railroads (O=1:48 (1:25 gauges)) dates from 1905.

As the character to represent the numerical value "zero", in Arabic numerals it is attested from circa 1600, the use based on the similarity of shape.  The similarity would later cause a Gaëtan Dugas (1952–1984), a Québécois Canadian flight attendant, mistakenly to be identified as "Patient Zero" (the primary case for HIV/AIDS in the United States).  The error happened because of a mistake made in 1984 in either the reading or transcription of a database maintained by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which tracked the sexual liaisons and practices of gay and bisexual men, mostly those from California and New York. Dugas, because he was statistically unusual in having no relevant connections with either state, was coded as "Patient O" (indicating out-of-state) but this was at some point misinterpreted as "Patient 0 (Zero)".  Dugas was later identified as "Patient Zero" (ie the person who introduced HIV/AIDS to North America) in Randy Shilts's (1951-1994) book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (1987) which explored the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the United States.  Shilts would later dismiss the significance of the technical error, claiming it made no difference to his point that Dugas engaged in behavior by which he either carelessly, recklessly or intentionally infected his many sexual partners with HIV (a claim subsequently contested by others).  Shilts died in 1994 from an AIDS-related condition.

Flirting with risk of exposure to, inter-alia, Omicron: Lindsay Lohan in facemask during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The authorities discourage the use of masks with the one-way, non-return valves (this one a twin-valve model) during epidemics & pandemics because, while affording the usual protection to the wearer, there is a slight reduction in their effectiveness in reducing the risk of infecting others.

A variant of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes Covid-19, Omicron (B.1.1.529) was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) in November 2021 after being detected in Botswana.  Rapidly, it out-competed other SARS-CoV-2 strains to become the predominant variant in circulation, the primary transmission vector of that thought to be international air travel.  The WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) named variant B.1.1.529 “Omicron” in November 2021, skipping the Greek letters next in sequence (nu (Ν, ν) & xi (Ξ ξ)), the former not used because of the confusion envisaged by virtue of the English pronunciation (“new” virus) and the latter avoided so the feelings of Xi Jinping (b 1953; general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2013) weren’t hurt, the origins of Covid-19 being a sensitive issue among the CCP’s Central Committee.

Flirting virus: Omicron FLiRT variant.

Although a number of Omicron sub-variants have subsequently been identified, none has been found so structurally dissimilar that the TAG-VE felt constrained to allocate a different Greek letter.  Instead, such variants were tagged alpha-numerically according to the group’s established convention (BA.1, BA.2 etc; identified sub-variants of BA.5 listed in a BQ.n sequence).  By June 2024, Omicron and its sub-variants remain dominant globally although new strains continue to emerge, notably the “FLiRT" which sounds encouraging but the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) provided a rather dry explanation: “F for L at position 456, and R for T at position 346 (references to specific mutations in the virus’s spike protein).  The FLiRT variants are sub-variants of the Omicron JN.1 strain and include notable strains such as KP.2, KP.3, and KP.1.1.  The FLiRT variants now account for a significant portion of cases in the United States.

The Omicron and others: Notable Lancias

1981 Lancia Beta Spyder (Zagato).

Vincenzo Lancia (1881–1937) used letters from the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Lambda, Kappa, Omicron et al) as model names for many of his early vehicles and in 1953 returned to the practice for a one-off range based on a commercial chassis.  However, when the Beta (1972-1984) was released in 1972 it was the first time since 1945 the company had used letters from the Greek to designate a passenger vehicle.  It wasn’t Lancia’s first use of Beta, that had been the 1909 car which replaced the Alpha (also Alfa) and, although the 1972 car had been intended to be the model which would symbolize Lancia’s re-birth (il risorgimento), Beta rather than Alfa was chosen to avoid confusion with Alfa Romeo.  Over time, the Beta would be offered with two four-door saloon bodies and a coupé from which two variants were derived: (1) a three-door estate labeled HPE (high-performance estate) in the tradition of the "shooting brake" (a la the Reliant Scimitar et al) and (2) as a co-project with Lombardy-based coach-builder Zagato, a targa-style convertible with a structural arrangement vaguely similar to that used by the Triumph Stag.  In some markets, in an attempt to enhance the image, the Montecarlo sports car was badged as a Beta.  The survival rate of the Betas was low because of chronic rust but the oft-told tale the steel was of poor quality (described as “porous” and obtained in some sort of barter transaction between Italy and the Soviet Union) has been debunked, the Betas (like to contemporary Alfa Romeo Alfasud) crumbling away because of design flaws, inadequate corrosion-prevention measures and poor build quality, the latter due in part to the appalling state of the relations between capital & labor during the troubled 1970s.

1987 Lancia Thema 8·32.

By the standards of European front wheel drive mass-production, the Lancia Thema (1984-1994 and available as a four-door saloon, a five door estate and a low-volume long wheelbase (LWD) limousine) was completely conventional and mostly unexceptional but there was one memorable diversion: the Thema 8·32.  Introduced at the 1986 Turin Motor Show, instead of the predictable variety of four & six-cylinder petrol and diesel engines used in the mainstream range, the 8·32 was fitted with a version of the 3.0 litre V8 Ferrari used in their 308 and Mondial models.  By the mid-1980s, although it was no longer novel to put powerful engines into previously nondescript saloons, the 8·32 was in the avant garde of the more extreme, pre-dating the BMW M5 (E28) by some months and the Mercedes-Benz 500E (W124) by seven years but what made it truly bizarre was it retained the Thema’s front wheel drive (FWD) configuration.  That probably sounds like the daftest idea since Oldsmobile and Cadillac in the mid 1960s decided to offer big FWD "personal coupes" (which eventually would be offered with V8 engines as large as 500 cubic inches (8.2 litre)) but journalists who tested the 8·32 declared it a surprisingly good good road car although those who tried them on racetracks did note the prodigious understeer.  Ferrari supplying Lancia with a V8 was actually returning a favor: In 1954, it was the Lancia D50 Formula One car which became the first Ferrari V8.  By 1986, even the V8-powered Cadillac DeVille range had switched to FWD but it was a very different machine from the 8·32 and many DeVille owners probably neither noticed nor cared the configuration had changed although they would have appreciated the flat floor and additional interior space.

1974 Lancia Stratos HF.

The 8·32 experiment (which Lancia opted not the repeat) wasn’t the first time Ferrari had provided engines for a Lancia. The Stratos HF (1973-1978, the HF standing for "High Fidelity", a moniker sometimes attached to Lancia’s high performance variations) was named after the Stratos Zero, a 1970 show car designed by Bertone’s Marcello Gandini (1938–2024) although, except conceptually, the production vehicle bore little resemblance to that which lent the name.  The diminutive wedge was powered by the 2.4 litre V6 with which Ferrari used in the Dino 246 (1969-1974) and it was one of the outstanding rally cars of the 1970s, winning the 1974 Targa Florio and taking the World Rally Championship (WRC) in 1974, 1975 & 1976.  Still competitive in the late 1970s when factory support was withdrawn because Fiat, the conglomerate which by then owned Lancia, wished to use its activities in motorsport to promote more mainstream models, it continued in private hands to win events into the 1980s and replicas have since been produced.  Such is the appeal of the Stratos that Torino-based coach-builder Manifattura Automobili in 2018 announced a run (said to be limited to 25) of the "New Stratos", based on the (shortened) platform of a Ferrari 430 Scuderia (2007). 

1971 Lancia 2000 Coupé.

The Lancia Flavia was in production between 1961 and 1971 before it was re-named the 2000, a reference to the two litre flat-four, introduced in 1969, an enlarged version of the power-plant which, in 1.5 and 1.8 litre form had powered the Flavia.  Although a decade old at its introduction, the 2000 was still of an advanced specification including the then still uncommon option of fuel-injection.  Although the earlier Flavias were built as four-door saloons, two-door coupés & convertibles (including a quite strange looking coupé by Zagato), the 2000 was offered only with saloon and coupé coachwork, the latter so elegant that most were prepared to forgive the FWD beneath, something the Lancia cognoscenti (a most devoted crew) inexplicably believe is a good idea.

1983 Lancia 037.

The last rear-wheel drive car to win the WRC, the 037 (the mysterious name merely a carry-over of the original project name) was a highly modified version of the Montecarlo, a Pininfarina-designed mid-engined coupé produced between 1975 to 1981 (in some markets called the Beta Montecarlo to maintain a link with the more mainstream Beta models and in North America sold as the Scorpion).  The Montecarlo had begun life as a project undertaken by Pininfarina to replace Fiat’s much admired but outdated 124 Coupé but Bertone’s X1/9 design was thought so outstanding it was instead chosen for immediate production while the 124 continued.  Pininfarina’s bigger, heavier car was then designated the Fiat X1/8, envisaged to compete as an up-market, mid-engined, three litre V6 sports car.  However, after the first oil shock in 1973, the market was re-evaluated and, now code-named named X1/20, it was re-positioned as a two litre, four cylinder car and handed to Lancia to become the Montecarlo.  In development since 1980, the competition version, the Lancia Rally 037, was released late the next year and in its first competitive season in Group 5 rallying proved fast but still fragile although, it was certainly promising enough for the factory to return in 1983 when, fully developed, it won the WRC.  It was however the end of an era, the 037 out-classed late in the season by the all-wheel-drive competition which has since dominated the WRC.  In one aspect however it remains a WRC benchmark: no competitor since has looked as good.

1971 Lancia Fulvia 1.3 Coupé.

The slightly frumpy looking Fulvia saloon was the mass-selling (a relative term) model of Lancia’s range between 1963-1976 but the memorable version was the exquisite coupé (1965-1977).  Mechanically similar to the saloon except that it was on a short wheelbase  (SWB) platform and the FWD Fulvias were only ever offered with V4 engines of modest displacement (1.1-1.6 litres), the relatively high-performance achieved by virtue of light weight, high specific output and, in the two-door versions, a surprisingly efficient aerodynamic profile, belying the rather angular appearance (except for the usual special coupes by Zagato which managed almost to look attractive, not something which could be guaranteed to emerge from their drawing boards).  The HF versions were built for competition with more spartan interior trim, aluminum doors & non-structural panels, the engines tuned for higher power.  Produced in small runs, the early Flavia HFs used quite highly-strung 1.2 & 1.3 litre engines (the last batch gaining a five-speed gearbox) but the definitive competition HF was released in 1969 with a 1.6 litre engine and nicknamed Fanalona (big headlamps), an allusion to the seven inch units which had replaced the earlier five inch versions.  Almost mass-produced by earlier standards, over thirteen hundred were build and it delivered for the factory-supported Squadra Corse team, winning the 1972 Monte Carlo Rally.  The success inspired the factory to capitalize on the car’s success, a purely road-going version, the 1600 HF Lusso (Luxury) with additional interior appointments and without the lightweight parts manufactured between 1970-1973.  This one really was mass-produced; nearly four thousand were made and they remain much coveted.

1930 Lancia Omicron with two and a half deck arrangement and a clerestoried upper windscreen.

The Lancia Omicron was a bus chassis produced between 1927-1936; over 600 were built in different wheelbase lengths with both two and three-axle configurations.  Most used Lancia's long-serving, six-cylinder commercial engine but, as early as 1933, some had been equipped with diesel engines which were tested in North Africa where they proved durable and, in the Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya and Algeria, once petrol powered Omicron chassis were being re-powered with diesel power-plants from a variety of manufacturers as late as the 1960s.  Typically of bus use, coachbuilders fabricated many different styles of body but, in addition to the usual single and double deck arrangements, the Omicron is noted for a number of two and a half deck models, the third deck configured usually as a first-class compartment but in at least three which operated in Italy, they were advertised as “smoking rooms”, the implication presumably that the rest of the passenger compartment was smoke-free.  History doesn't record if the bus operators were any more successful in enforcing smoking bans than the usual Italian experience.

1928 Lancia Lambda series 7 tipo Siluro Bateaux (torpedo) "Casaro".

One of the most innovative designs of the 1920s, the Lamba was produced between 1922-1931 and was the first car to enter volume production using a stressed, unitary body.  It featured very effective four-wheel brakes (something surprisingly rare at the time) and independent front suspension, the competence of which was such that it was able to more than match the point-to-point performance of many cars much more powerful but with more brutishly simple solid axles attached to a chassis.  However, because it was so attractive, demand much exceeded Lancia’s capacity to build sufficient numbers and the factory was forced to offer a model with a conventional chassis so coach-builders could provide bodies to fill the supply gap.  All Lambdas were powered by advanced and compact narrow-angle aluminum overhead camshaft V4 engines between 2.1-2.6 litres and over eleven thousand were built.

Phage

Phage (pronounced feyj)

In microbiology & virology, a virus parasitic towards bacteria; a truncation of bacteriophage.

1917: from the Ancient Greek φάγος (phágos) (eater), from φαγ (phag), aorist (the tense of Greek verbs that most closely corresponds to the simple past in English) stem of ἐσθίω (esthíō) & ἔδω (édō) (to eat, to consume) and thus a combining form meaning “a thing that devours,” used in the formation of compound words, especially the names of phagocytes.  The noun bacteriophage (virus that parasitizes a bacterium by infecting it and reproducing inside it) was adopted in English in 1921, from the 1917 French original bactériophage, the construct being bacterio- (a combining form of bacteria) + -phage.

Some viruses can be helpful: A depiction of phages phaging.

Not all viruses are bad like SARS-CoV-2.  A bacteriophage, known almost always as a phage, is a virus which infects and replicates within bacteria.  Phages are composites of proteins that surround a DNA or RNA genome and may encode any number of genes from a handful to many hundreds.  Phages replicate within the bacterium following the injection of their genome into the target cytoplasm.  Phages exist naturally in the environment and are among the most common and diverse entities on earth.  Serious research began in several parts of Europe during the late nineteenth century and have been used for almost a century as anti-bacterial agents the former USSR and Central Europe.  In the West, phage therapy (using specific viruses to fight difficult bacterial infections) has been of interest for some time, attention heightened as the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (superbugs in the popular imagination) began to grow in severity (the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) attributes one death every 15 minutes in the US to superbugs).  Since the discovery of penicillin, antibiotics have been used as a reliable cure for those suffering from once lethal bacterial infections but, over decades, a handful (compared with the trillions and trillions killed) of bacteria have proved resistant to antibiotics and as these survivors multiply, new infections emerge.  Historically this had prompted the development of revised or new antibiotics but the biological arms race has reached the point where some infections caused by called antibiotic resistant bacteria cannot be treated and for many other serious infections, the number of potent “last resort” antibiotics is dwindling.

Hence the interest in phages, a type of “friendly virus” which can be weaponized to fight even the most virulent and persistent bacterial infections.  Phages work as well as they do because viruses like the tiresome SARS-Cov-2 that makes humans sick, phages can infect only bacteria and are selective about which they target, a vital aspect of their role in medicine because human survival depends on the billions of bacteria in our bodies.  These phages are far from rare, existing in the natural environment almost everywhere on the planet and scientists conducting research find dirty waterways or damp, aerated, warm, decaying soil (both areas where high bacterial growth might be expected) are good places to collect samples.  The advantages phages offer are well known but there are also drawbacks and indeed some of the features of phages manifest as both.  For example, the great specificity of phages helpful in that they can be administered safely with the knowledge that no other organisms will be harmed but this can be a practical disadvantage in clinical medicine when it’s not known exactly which bacteria need to be targeted, which is why broad-spectrum antibiotics proved so effective at scale.  Being wholly natural, the shelf-life of phages is highly variable and there’s little experience in their administration beyond some communities in Eastern Europe where they’ve been part of medical practice for over a century.  Additionally, bacteria can develop resistance even to phages and one practical impediment to deployment not well recognized until recent years is that compared to chemical molecules, phages are quite big and there are sites in the human body which will be inaccessible.

Potential phage research subject:  In 2014, while on holiday in French Polynesia, Lindsay Lohan was infected with chikungunya, a virus spread by mosquitoes which causes debilitating joint pain and flu-like symptoms.  The World Health Organization (WHO) notes it was first identified in Africa in the 1950s and has since spread to the Indian Ocean region, southeast Asia and the Pacific islands, cases emerging for the first time in the Caribbean in 2013 while a small number have been reported in the US and Europe, mostly in travelers from affected areas.  The role of climate change in the geographical spread of Chikungunya has not been discounted and the symptoms include severe joint pain, headache, fever, nausea, fatigue and rash.  There is no cure or vaccine, and the illness can last from several days to as long as a few weeks, Ms Lohan advising all in susceptible regions to use bug spray and posted on Instagram a photo from the beach, captioned "I refuse to let a virus effect (sic) my peaceful vacation."

However, looming over the treatment of bacteriological infection is the economics of the pharmaceutical business (the big-pharma).  It was the ability in the twentieth century of the industry to mass-produce antibiotics at scale and at astonishingly low cost which meant what little research on phages was being undertaken was quickly abandoned; antibiotics truly were miracle drugs.  However, the economics which made antibiotics attractive to the public health community meant they added comparatively little to the profits of big-pharma compared with something lucrative like a blood-pressure drug which a patient would be required to take every day for the rest of their lives.  A cheap antibiotic, needed disproportionately in low-income countries was a less attractive path for the billions of dollars (and usually years of trials) required to bring a new drug to market.  What the industry likes are drugs which can be mass-produced to treat the “curse of plenty” diseases of first world customers.  Unless there’s some sort of molecular breakthrough (presumably at the level of DNA), phages seem likely for the foreseeable future to remain a niche treatment.

Little killing machines: Matt Cirigliano's graphical depiction of phages in action.

Pox

Pox (pronounced poks)

(1) In human & animal pathology, a disease characterized by multiple skin pustules, as smallpox, associated with the pockmarks left by the purulent skin eruptions.

(2) Historically, a reference to syphilis and sometimes to other venereal diseases (now called sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)) (archaic).

(3) In plant pathology, a disease of sweet potatoes, characterized by numerous pitlike lesions on the roots, caused by a fungus, Streptomyces ipomoea (also called soil rot and distinct from the condition root rot).

(4) In idiomatic use (usually as "a pox on (someone or something)"), an interjection to express distaste, rejection, aversion etc and thus a synonym of curse; the adjective poxy is a variation of the idea.

(5) As the acronym POx, variously Pulse Oximetry, Pressure Oxidation, Partial Oxidation, Point of Exit, Plain Old XML & Purgeable Organic Halogens.

(6) As the acronym POX (or PoX), proof of X.

Circa 1480s: A spelling variant of pocks, the plural of pock, from the plural of the Middle English pocke.  Pox in the sense of “a disease characterized by eruptive sores" emerged in the late fifteenth century, a spelling alteration of pocks & pockes (used since the late thirteenth century in this context), the plural forms of the Middle English pocke (pustule).  From the sixteenth century, it became the common word with which to refer to syphilis.  Pock (pustule raised on the surface of the body in an eruptive disease) was from the Middle English pok, from the Old English poc & pocc (pock; pustule; ulcer), from the Proto-Germanic pukkaz & pukkǭ (pock; swelling) and puh & puhh (to swell up; blow us), from the primitive Indo-European beu & bew- (to grow; swell).  It was cognate with the Middle Dutch pocke, the Dutch pok, the East Frisian pok, the dialectal German Pfoche, the Low German & German Pocke, the French pocque was also from Germanic sources.  The present participle is poxing and the past participle poxed; the noun plural is poxes.

As surnames, Pox & Pocks both long pre-dated the use in pathology and were of Germanic origin, recorded in Bavaria & Austria as a variant Of the Bavaria Böck) and the North German Beck (Baker).  Pox may in some cases have been an alternative spelling of these but is documented as a nickname for a “short man”, from the Low German Pōk (young child; Dwarf).  In some regions it may have been a Germanized form of both the Hungarian Pók and the Slovenian & Croatian Pok common in the Balkans.  In the US, Pox appears to have been an Americanized version of Pocks, most prevalent in the north-eastern states during the nineteenth century.

Coincidently, the Proto-Turkic bok means “dirt, dung” and was cognate with the Turkish bok & Chuvash пӑх (păh); in vulgar slang used predictably in the same sense as “shit” (solid excretory product evacuated from the bowel); the word persists in modern Azerbaijani.  The now idiomatic deprecatory adjective poxy entered English in the late nineteenth century as terms of distaste and disapprobation, having been in the medical literature sin 1853 in the sense of “infected with pox; pocked-marked”.

The noun pock-mark (pockmark later prevailed) dates from the 1670s and was used to describe “the scar or pit left by a pustule" after an infection, particularly after smallpox where the effects were most severe and it was noted as a verb & adjective after 1756.  The earlier word in this sense was the mid-fifteenth century pokbrokyn.  Pock-marked was used by astronomers to refer to the craters visible on the surface of the moon.

Cow-pox (also cowpox), was a disease of cattle, noted from the 1780s and the fluid of the vesicles made it transmissible to humans.  It played an important role in the history of inoculation because it was noted milkmaids (with much exposure to cowpox) enjoyed an almost complete immunity to smallpox.  Chicken-pox was first described circa 1730 and the name is thought either an allusion to the mildness of the condition (compared to syphilis (the pox) or smallpox) or it being most associated with children, or the resemblance of the lumps on the skin to chick-peas.  In medical Latin, the circa 1765 varicella (chicken-pox) was an irregular diminutive of variola, the adjectival form varicellous.  Smallpox, the acute, highly contagious disease and frequently (fatal in a quarter to a third of unvaccinated cases) deadly disease was first so named in the 1510s, as small pokkes, which distinguished the symptoms from the great pox (syphilis).

The famous exchange…

“You sir shall die either on the gallows or of the pox (ie from a STD)”.

“That sir, will depend on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress”.

.. has been attributed to many over the last two centuries odd so the ultimate source is uncertain but the first known record of what may anyway have been an apocryphal exchange appears to have been published in 1784 the London periodical The European Magazine.  Supposedly, protagonist and antagonist were the fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792) and Samuel Foote (1720-1777) who met at a dinner held in his house by Sir Francis Blake Delaval. (1727–1771).

In the decades which followed, frequently the tale was re-told, sometimes with different participants (although Lord Sandwich was often named) and although occasionally embellished, what’s more interesting is that euphemisms and niceties were sometimes adopted; “the halter” replacing references to nooses and gallows and “p-x and “certain disease” substituting for pox.  Whether the changes reflected editorial taste or changes in what readers thought acceptable in print isn’t clear but by the early nineteenth century the anecdote was published with the punch-line but not the setup sentence.  That may however have been because, being well-known, by then a mere allusion was probably more funny still, a technique used to effect in the House of Commons as recently as 1968.  Whether or not the exchange ever happened or between who will never be known with certainty but the rejoinder is of such voltairesque quality it’s been attributed to more than half-a-dozen political notables.

Monkeypox

Little political energy could be summoned in the West to deal with climate change while it appeared to afflict only Africans, Arabs, Asians and animals (those inhabiting the places Mr Trump would have called “shithole countries”).  It took Europe & North America roasting, flooding and burning to focus minds.  Similarly, monkeypox (a zoonotic virus in the genus Orthopoxvirus) although for decades endemic in parts of Africa, attracted little interest in the West until outbreaks in 2022 and most people had probably never heard of it until a rapid spread of cases began to be reported in the UK, Europe and the US.  On 23 July 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) with cases reported in 77 countries and territories, similar declaration in the past issued for Swine flu, polio, Ebola, Zika and Covid-19.

Monkeypox movement out of Africa 2022 tracked by the US Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Monkeypox gained its name in 1958 when scientists in Denmark isolated the virus in laboratory monkeys in 1958, when two outbreaks of the disease occurred in monkey colonies.  It’s since become clear that a number of rodents are much more efficient vectors of transmission and the virus is neither exclusive too nor most prevalent in monkey populations but, in the way of these things, the name stuck.  This is not a new phenomenon; the famous Spanish flu linked to the pandemic of 1918-1920 picked up the name only because cases there were reported in the press in 1918 whereas news of those already detected in the US, Europe and the UK were suppressed by wartime censorship which wasn’t applied in neutral Spain.  Another case is Rubella which came to be known as “German” measles, simply because it was scientists in that country which identified and first describe the cause and there are many more, most associated with countries not the source of the disease which bears the name.  It’s not known where and where a person first was infected but a human case of monkeypox was first documented in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1970.  Since then, the DRC has always recorded the majority of infections although between then and 2022, it had spread to a number of African countries, cases beyond the continent rare until 2022.

Example of regional variations in reported transmission: Nigeria 2017-2022.

Other associations linked to the name monkeypox have also become controversial and the WHO announced it is to receive a new name, noting comments from scientists and public health officials that the current name is "discriminatory and stigmatizing" and it’s also inaccurate to name versions of the virus after parts of Africa.  Accordingly, the WHO has already renamed two clades (from the Ancient Greek κλάδος (kládos) (shoot, branch, family) of the virus to avoid the stigma associated with geographical names: The variant formerly known as “Congo Basin'' will now be referred to as “Clade I” and the “West Africa” variant will be known as “Clade II”.  The first suggestion of a new name is hMPXV, to denote the human version of the monkeypox virus and rather than anything geographic locations, letters and numbers should be used, based on order of discovery. In that system, the lineage behind the current international outbreak would be dubbed hMPXV-B1.  Some local authorities have acted preemptively, Chicago public health authorities for example using the bland “MPV”.  Whatever it ends up being called however, in the West, like COVID-19, monkeypox may be here to stay.

Take-off point of 2022 spread charted by the Lancet.

One aspect of the epidemiology of monkeypox in the West is that some 95% of those diagnosed are gay or bi-sexual men (“men who have sex with men” now the preferred and most accurate terminology).  Activists from the relative LGBTQQIAAOP faction are among those advocating a change of name although this is unlikely to remove the stigmatization based on the rate of transmission among men who have sex with men; presumably a stigmatization associated with hMPXV-B1 (or whatever) must be thought less offensive than one linked with monkeypox, probably because  an alpha-numeric string is a step removed from any link with animals and thus the slur of bestiality.  In the 1980s, that was one of the complaints once it was revealed HIV/AIDS was probably a mutated monkey virus from Africa and, even in the pre-internet era, unsubstantiated theories soon circulated that the entry of the virus into the human system was linked to men having sex with monkeys, a slur on both African men and the gay community who at the point constituted the bulk of infections, almost all as a result of sexual contact.  The consensus now is that HIV/AIDS entered human circulation (perhaps even as long ago as the nineteenth century) because of blood-blood mixing while monkeys were being butchered as part of the bush-meat trade.  The monkeypox vector may have been the same.

Naming virus species is the responsibility of the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) (the expert group which brought us COVID-19) but the WHO has decided to ask for the public’s help, announcing an “…open consultation for a new disease name for monkeypox.  Anyone wishing to propose new names can do so”.  A portal will soon be provided.