Lab Lunch: 27 February 2021 - Perdita Stevens

Title: Thinking about 2019-nCoV, again

Abstract:

On 11th February 2020 - which turned out to be the same day that the provisionally-named 2019-nCoV got its forever-name, SARS-CoV-2 - I gave the lab lunch whose title and abstract I copy below. This year I will revisit the same slides, and we can look at how things turned out. Among the thingsI did not predict is just how fast vaccine development would go: I will be giving this talk exactly two weeks after receiving my first dose of the Oxford Astra-Zeneca vaccine.

Thinking about 2019-nCoV:

Unless you've been living under a rock, you are by now aware that a new coronovirus has emerged in Wuhan, China; at the time I write this abstract,  there are about 17.5k confirmed infections worldwide, including 362 fatalities. I cannot pretend to any special expertise - if you've been following the news closely you may know as much as I - but I have long been fascinated by viruses, and besides, this one may (or may not) end up having a direct impact on our work. So I thought I would use the opportunity of a lab lunch to say something about coronoviruses, epidemics/pandemics and their control, information/misinformation, and the possible effects on the University.