On July 15 971, the bones of St Swithin were removed from their resting place on the order of Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, and placed in a shrine inside the cathedral. The saint, it seemed, did not approve. A violent storm followed, and rain fell for 40 days. And from that story came the belief that the weather on July 15 predicted a summer of sun or rain.

St Swithin’s day if thou dost rain’
For forty days it will remain;
St Swithin’s day if thou be fair,
For forty days will rain na mair.

Following my strong belief that science dissemination, and open borders science, is too important to pursue as a goal to constrain it by fears of being stripped of good ideas and scooped by fast competitors, I am offering here some ideas on a reserch plan I am going to follow in the coming months.

The benefits of sharing thoughts early on is evident: you may, by reading about them below, be struck with a good idea which may further improve my plan, and decide to share it with me; you might become a collaborator - which would add to the personpower devoted to the research. You might point out problems, issues to address, or mention that some or all of the research has already been done by somebody else, and published - which would save me a lot of time!

Raw food, from milk to meat, can obviously bring higher risk of bacteria. The raw milk fad in the US creates risk of illness orders of magnitude higher than milk that has been pasteurized to remove harmful bacteria.

In Europe, the 'raw' dog food fad may be creating something even worse; multidrug-resistant bacteria identical to those found in hospital patients. Drug-resistant infections kill an estimated 700,000 people a year globally and, with the figure projected to rise to 10 million by 2050 if no action is taken, the World Health Organisation (WHO) classes antibiotic resistance as one of the greatest public health threats facing humanity. 

Like coronavirus, Hepatitis C was only discovered as unique a few decades ago, but in that time science took its 2 million new HCV infections every year, with an estimated 70 million carriers of the virus globally, and 400,000 deaths annually to finding a cure. 

Directly acting antivirals (DAAs) can now stop it and therefore prevent the liver cirrhosis and liver cancer that can develop. Next up, said Professor Sir Michael Houghton at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology along with three other scientists for discovering it was distinct in 1989, is a vaccine.

Two approaches in development may lead to an inhalable COVID-19 vaccine that is scalable and can be transported and stored at room temperature.

They'll be too late to help with the actual COVID-19 but since coronavirus constantly mutates, like the flu, and 2019 was the third coronavirus pandemic in the last 17 years, it could be valuable for the next iteration.

One strategy employs modified bacteriophage particles that can be inhaled to deliver protection via the lungs to the immune system. The other delivers injectable adeno-associated virus-phage particles that directly encode protection against the virus in immune cells. They're only in rodents so far but they produced antibodies.

Correlation can accomplish anything, it's how the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences consistently finds a way to endorse chemicals in the organic food process while scaring people about chemicals everywhere else.(1)  It's how the price of steel can be linked to violence in the Mid-East.

A recent paper argues that reading scores are going down and phones are to blame, and they use correlation to try and show it.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has announced the end of school “bubbles” in England from July 19, following the news that 375,000 children did not attend school for COVID-19-related reasons in June.

Under the current system, if a schoolchild becomes infected with the coronavirus, pupils who have been in close contact with them have to self-isolate for ten days. In some cases, whole year groups may have to self-isolate.

The first two COVID-19 vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) utilized mRNA technology previously unused in FDA-approved vaccines. One of its chief proponents bounced from research job to research job for low pay because government-controlled science funding prefers guaranteed success for each round of funding rather than the hit-but-we'll-mostly-miss basic research approach of the private sector.  mRNA-based vaccines provide instructions for the body to build and release foreign proteins, such as the spike protein in the case of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but prior to the pandemic government funding agencies believed mRNA was a waste of time.

Now everyone will be rushing to advance mRNA but what is yet to be known; will the benefits last?

What is UK's plan B if another more transmissible or severe or vaccine evading variant emerges at 100,000 cases a day? The UK by relaxing its restrictions even more at high cases per day encourages new variants including homegrown variants.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. The marvelous new vaccines ensure that, with new 2nd and 3rd generation even more effective vaccines on their way.

. Light at the end of the tunnel - we will get out of this pandemic, how quickly we get there is up to us - case of “vaccines and” not “vaccines only”

Starting in 1975, in defiance of Population Bomb claims of mass famine about to happen, agricultural science hit an inflection point and more people began to be fed on less land, using less water and energy, with less environmental strain than ever before.