Finland's COVID-19 policy saved approximately 2,600 people from death

The coronavirus pandemic is far behind us, and the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused it has become just a part of everyday life. Therefore, it is a good time to look back a bit and examine the statistics related to the pandemic.

Among these, death cases are naturally the most reliable, so I will focus on that in this review. On a global level, the pandemic has been reported to have caused slightly over seven million premature deaths.

Is this then a lot or a little? This can be determined by comparing the number of deaths to previous pandemics.

The Spanish flu, caused by the influenza virus, is estimated to have killed 17-100 million people worldwide just over a hundred years ago. This is already a significantly higher number – and considering the increase in the world's population over the past hundred years – it is an astonishingly worse pandemic.

An even harsher ordeal was the bacterial disease known as the Black Death that raged during the Middle Ages. According to Wikipedia, it is "estimated to have killed 30-60 percent of Europe's population, i.e., 25-50 million people, and an equal number in the Middle East and North Africa."

The essential difference between COVID-19 and the aforementioned diseases lies in the advancement of medicine, which enabled the identification of people infected with the coronavirus – and their isolation from spreading it to others – as well as the development of vaccines and treatments that effectively reduced mortality. Therefore, it is clear that if the virus had spread to people a hundred years ago, the impact would have been significantly more devastating than what we have experienced now.

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One interesting topic of discussion has been the difference between Finland's strict and Sweden's more lenient COVID-19 policies. This can be examined by comparing the number of deaths caused by the virus in both countries.

Statistics show that a total of 27,407 people have died from the virus in Sweden. In Finland, the corresponding number is 11,958. The relationship between these numbers can be compared to the population ratios of the two countries. It is seen that about 2.1 per mille of the population died in Finland, and 2.6 per mille in Sweden.

Thus, it can be said that Finland's stricter COVID-19 policy, compared to Sweden, saved approximately 0.5 per mille – or roughly 2,600 lives – from death caused by the coronavirus. Therefore, the difference is not very large, and I do not take a position here on whether it is sufficient to compensate for the negative effects of the policy implemented.

Instead, I state that humanity should continue to prepare for the emergence of zoonotic diseases. Their occurrence cannot be predicted precisely, but it is certain that a new pandemic will occur sooner or later. And therefore, perhaps the most important lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic is that with good prior planning and preparedness, Finns can be spared the confusion witnessed during the coronavirus pandemic.

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A factory of five billion mosquitoes

The Nature magazine published a news article stating that Brazil is planning to build a mosquito factory to produce five billion mosquitoes per year, which are intended to be released into the wild.

These are not just any mosquitoes, but winged insects that carry a certain bacterial infection. As a result, these mosquitoes do not function as efficient carriers of the virus that causes dengue fever.

Therefore, the market for these mosquitoes is in places where this viral disease occurs, such as Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, and Vietnam, where it is hoped that the released insects will pass on the bacteria in a way that even their naturally occurring counterparts are no longer able to transmit viruses.

The method has been tested before the decision to build the factory was made. The best results were achieved in a trial conducted in Indonesia, where releasing bacteria-carrying mosquitoes into the wild reduced dengue fever cases by as much as 77 percent. In other trials, the number of people with the disease also decreased, but less so.

It remains to be seen whether the mosquito factory will succeed in improving human health, and what kind of market will open up for a factory producing bacteria-carrying mosquitoes.

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Evolution in action
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Evolution in action

The yellow fever mosquito is responsible for spreading yellow fever, Zika, chikungunya, and dengue viruses, leading to hundreds of millions of infections each year. Although it previously showed no interest in humans and preferred other animals, a new genomic analysis has revealed that the ancestral mosquito species split about 5,000 years ago due to a drying climate in the West African Sahel, transforming the previously prevailing grassland landscapes into a desert.

Researchers compared mosquito genomes collected across Africa and Brazil and discovered another significant migration event when the insect spread from Africa to the Americas. This likely occurred around 1800, during the period when approximately 80 000 enslaved individuals were transported across the ocean annually. Yellow fever mosquitoes laid their eggs in water barrels and fed on the people aboard the ships.

In the absence of water bodies, some mosquitoes likely adapted to laying their eggs in water storage containers in communities, subsequently developing a preference for humans as a food source due to their increased availability compared to other mammals.

The investigation also unveiled rapid and ongoing evolution within the species, allowing for more efficient transmission of diseases in African cities. These evolving mosquitoes may explain recent changes in disease transmission patterns. 

For instance, Burkina Faso experienced its first modern dengue outbreak only seven years ago, yet the problem has resurfaced every year since. Additionally, Ouagadougou's mosquitoes quickly adapted to breeding in public hand-washing services installed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It remains uncertain whether the evolving mosquito strains will spread beyond Africa. But is is clear anyway, that scientists now have an unprecedented opportunity to observe evolution in action.

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A popular hobby risks ecological balance, private property and human health in Finland

Ticks carry bacteria and viruses with them. The bacteria are causing Lyme borreliosis, which is a serious disease but can be treated with antibiotics. In contrast, some viruses may cause Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), which is a serious tick-borne disease in Europe that can only be avoided by vaccinations.

Today it was informed that the number of TBE cases has increased considerably in Sweden and Finland due to the climatic change and and COVID-19 pandemic, the latter of which has brought people for outdoor activities. At least in Finland one of the main causes was not mentioned. That is the dramatically increased number of white-tailed and also roe deer, both of which act as hosts to ticks, and therefore enable higher population sizes of disease causing agents.

Deer populations also cause major damage to young forests by eating hardwoods and pines, which result in direct losses to forest owners as well as directs forest owners to plant spruces, which in Central Europe have been attacked seriously by beetles, and the same has been predicted to happen also in Nordic countries if the climates continue warming as predicted.

Hunting is, however, a popular hobby in Finland, and people involved are bringing huge amounts of food to the deer in wintertime, which increases considerably their population sizes. That maximizes the amount of animals for hunting but also their effect on the spread of tick-borne diseases and forest damages. 

For anyone looking from the side, it should be imperative to end the feeding of deer due to the vast problems they cause. And the common sense says, that white tailed deer should be removed from the country due to its nature as an alien invasive species. It simply is not sustainable to jeopardize ecological balance with an aggressively reproducing alien animal, put the health of lay people at risk nor damage their properties because of a hobby - no matter how enjoyable that may be.

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World oceans are filled with previously unknown viruses

World oceans are filled with previously unknown viruses

COVID-19 pandemic has been ongoing for ca. 1,5 years now. It started when a new RNA virus SARS-CoV-2 learned to reproduce in humans, and to efficiently transmit between different people. Furthermore, the pandemic has had several waves due to rapid evolution of the virus from the original form to ever increasing variants with more and more efficient transmission between people.

The pandemic underlined the dangers of new viruses. The human immune systems are not prepared for their attacks and neither has evolution prepared our genes to resist their effects. As a result, such a virus may be life threatening and kill millions and millions of people.

Therefore it was interesting to read about new research showing, that oceans of the world are full of unknown RNA viruses. And not only new versions of the kinds of virus types previously known, but completely unknown virus groups rooting in the earliest history of the life itself.

These new viruses are not causing diseases of humans, but mostly multiply in lower eukaryotes, bacteria and archaea. In doing that, these viruses affect evolution of their host organisms, affect marine community dynamics, speed up the cycles of matter in the biosphere and evolve themselves.

It remains to be seen, how the research described above affects practical human life. It is, however, clear that this piece of curiously driven science affects considerably the worldview of virologists and microbiologists and adds to their creativity towards new research projects. 

History has shown that such a cumulative increase of understanding is the basic value of the scientific inquiry. Any piece of new knowledge may ultimately lead to useful practical applications. And that has raised the western part of the world developmentally above rest of the human cultures.  

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