Lorem Ipsum

 

hat is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Why do we use it?

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It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

Where does it come from?

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

Where can I get some?

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn't anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.

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What Are Allergies?

Allergies are caused by the body's overzealous reaction to normally harmless substances. Allergies can be triggered by pollen, animal dander, mold, dust, and insect droppings, or by certain foods or insect stings. Upper respiratory allergy symptoms include runny nose, itchy eyes, coughing, wheezing, and sneezing.

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Who's currently working on a coronavirus vaccine?

Various biotech firms and scientists are currently formulating coronavirus vaccines: According to Reuters, leading British scientist Robin Shattock, head of mucosal infection and immunity at Imperial College London, will enter into the animal testing stage of one vaccine. And if proper funding is secured, he hopes to begin human studies over the summer—much faster than the average vaccine process.

“Conventional approaches usually take at least two to three years before you even get to the clinic,” he told Sky News, as reported by Reuters. “And we’ve gone from that sequence to generating a candidate in the laboratory in 14 days.”

Another vaccine, this one being formulated by Inovio Pharmaceuticals, a Philadelphia-based biotech lab, is also in the works, according to Philadelphia Magazine. The lab is reportedly using a $9 million grant to test a unique immunotherapy approach, also on an accelerated development schedule, and will have one “hopefully faster than we have with outbreaks in the past,”

Maryland-based biotech firm Novavax, who reportedly developed an Ebola vaccine in just 30 days, is also in the race. Gregory Glenn, Novavax's president of research and development, explained to Washington, DC radio station WTOP that the company has the coronavirus gene, which is the “blueprint” for their vaccine. "We’re on the way," he revealed. "I would just say 90 days from the sequence being identified to starting the clinic—that’s the speed of light for vaccines. We’re hoping to meet something close to that or exceed it if possible."

Of course, those are just a few options. Slate also recently referenced another team, from the National Institutes of Health and Moderna drug company, that's currently working on a vaccine formulation; and STAT News reported on the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which is funding four separate efforts to create a vaccine for the virus.

RELATED: 3 Coronavirus Symptoms You Need to Know—and How to Prevent the Virus

How close are we to an effective coronavirus vaccine—and will it be ready to combat this specific outbreak?

In short: probably not. While many of these companies claim to be close to formulating a vaccine, even if it is developed within the next few months, it won't be soon enough to make a difference with the current oubreak, Jeremy Brown, MD, director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health and author of Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History, tells Health.

“There are many labs across the world with the ability to do the basic research that goes into the early development of a vaccine. However, the most challenging part is testing the vaccine on humans,” he says. “That generally takes a much longer time and costs a great deal more money. Testing in people is also the part that has higher stakes. Although we can learn a great deal about vaccines in the lab, it is only when they are tested on people that we can learn whether they are effective and, just as importantly, whether they are safe.”

And even when a vaccine is ready to be tested on people, that phase of development can also be limited by unpredictable factors, like a natural decline of the disease: "Much depends on the background amount of disease at the time the vaccine is tested," says Dr. Brown. "If there is a lot of disease around and the vaccine is very effective, then we are likely to quickly see a difference between the amount of disease in those who received the vaccine and those who did not." But, if the disease begins declining independent of the vaccine, it would be more difficult to detect the possible benefits.

RELATED: No, Coronavirus Was Not Caused by 'Bat Soup'–But Here's What Researchers Think May Be to Blame

That's what happened when a new Ebola virus vaccine was tested in 2016, says Dr. Brown. “Thanks to a tremendous public health campaign the number of cases of Ebola rapidly declined and it was no longer possible to test the vaccine."

It's also important to note that vaccines vary in degree of effectiveness. "For example, the smallpox vaccine worked so well that we completely eradicated the disease from the planet," says Dr. Brown. "But our yearly influenza vaccines are only about 50-60% effective at best. They don’t work against all the influenza out there, and they need to be given every year." And at this point, there's no way to tell which category a possible coronavirus vaccine would fall under.

While none of this is necessarily good news for the current coronavirus outbreak, the research sparked by 2019-nCoV may be extremely helpful for future similar outbreaks. But, at this moment, Dr. Brown says we can all do our part in ending the current coronavirus outbreak. "[It] will be controlled by public health measures, and by each of us covering our noses when we sneeze, washing our hands, and staying away from others when we feel sick," he says. "This is good advice for the flu, and it is good advice for coronavirus."

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Scientists Are Working on a Coronavirus Vaccine—But Will It Be Ready in Time?

The 2019 novel coronavirus continues to spread throughout the world. Since it first emerged in December, 2019-nCoV has infected more than 31,400 people, and at least 630 people have died from the illness, according to the most recent numbers from CNN. While the majority of those affected remain in mainland China, coronavirus has spread to over 25 countries and territories, infecting more than 320 people in those regions—the US itself currently has 12 confirmed cases of coronavirus. 

As the outbreak heads towards possible pandemic status, scientists worldwide are on the hunt to formulate a coronavirus vaccine, with labs set up everywhere from the Philadelphia suburbs to the UK—but just how close are we to an effective vaccine becoming a reality? 

RELATED: 12 Cases of Coronavirus Confirmed in US—Here's Everything You Need to Know

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Health

Health can be defined as physical, mental, and social wellbeing, and as a resource for living a full life. It refers not only to the absence of disease, but the ability to recover and bounce back from illness and other problems

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