TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – With the trifecta of COVID-19, the flu and RSV floating around the United States as well as recently discovered polio cases, it might be unsettling to many that scientists in Europe have recently discovered “Zombie Viruses” in the frozen grounds of Russia’s Siberian region.
The study, which was published in November to the preprint repository bioRxiv has not yet been certified by peer review. It analyzes eukaryotic (protozoans or animals), viruses that were revived from ancient permafrost (permanently frozen ground) from samples taken from eukaryotic hosts since 2015.
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The researchers, who are from France, Russia and Germany, called the biohazard associated with “reanimating” the 13 new pathogens they studied from seven Siberian permafrost samples as “totally negligible” due to their targeting of amoeba-infecting viruses as compared to searching for viruses from the remains of mammoths or prehistoric horses.
The study reports that “due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decomposes into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect. Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times.”
The researchers contend that a lack of study into this field since 2015 does not suggest that zombie viruses are rare or not a threat to public health. They report that one-quarter of the Northern hemisphere is underlain by permafrost and that its thawing has “significant microbiological consequences” including releasing bacteria and fungi that were previously trapped in the permafrost and unable to decompose.
One example of those consequences reported in the study was the anthrax outbreaks in 2016 that were linked to thawing permafrost which killed a young boy, made dozens of people sick in the Arctic Circle and killed more than 2,300 reindeer.
In their summary discussion, the researchers report that their study confirms the capacity of large DNA viruses infecting Acanthamoeba (microscopic, free-living ameba) to remain infectious after more than 48,500 years in a deep freeze and that we could have a disastrous situation in the “case of plant, animal or human diseases caused by the revival of an ancient unknown virus.”
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The researchers wrote that it’s “likely that ancient permafrost will release these unknown viruses upon thawing.” They say, “How long these viruses could remain infectious once exposed to outdoor conditions, and how likely they will be to encounter and infect a suitable host in the interval, is yet impossible to estimate…But the risk is bound to increase in the context of global warming when permafrost thawing will keep accelerating, and more people will be populating the Arctic in the wake of industrial ventures.”
The researchers reported that it’s “legitimate to ponder the risk of ancient viral particles remaining infectious and getting back into circulation by the thawing of ancient permafrost layers.”
Jean-Michel Claverie, a co-author of the study, told The Washington Post, “Every time we look, we will find a virus.”
Luckily, these currently discovered Zombie viruses don’t appear to be an imminent threat to public health even after surviving for thousands of years, but many say are still worth monitoring given the fact that we don’t know what viruses are lurking out there, frozen in time, but still a possible future threat.
In an unrelated story, Michigan has been reported to be one of the worse cities to survive a Zombie Apocalypse according to lawnlove.com. Michigan ranked 194 out of 200 cities equipped to survive such an event. Factors include the age of Michigan’s population, preparedness and access to bunkers and hunting-gear stores.
