the.com/pathogen
a microscopic freeloader that crashes your body and acts like it owns the place
means A microorganism — such as a bacterium, virus, or fungus — that causes disease in its host.
from From Greek pathos, 'suffering' or 'disease,' joined to the suffix -gen, 'producer of' (from gignesthai, 'to be born' or 'to come into being'). So a pathogen is literally a 'disease-maker.' The word is a relatively modern scientific coinage, assembled in the late 19th century as germ theory took hold and scientists needed a name for the tiny culprits behind illness. Its cousin pathos still lives on in 'pathology,' 'sympathy,' and 'pathetic.'
- name origin
- Greek for birth-of-suffering, basically truth in advertising
- size
- viruses can be smaller than a wavelength of light
- arms race
- they evolve faster than we make vaccines
- hidden majority
- most microbes never make you sick at all
- deadliest ever
- smallpox killed roughly 300 million in one century
plasmodium falciparum — malaria parasite infecting 249 million people in 2022, mostly in africa
sars-cov-2 — coronavirus causing covid-19 pandemic, first identified in wuhan december 2019
mycobacterium tuberculosis — bacteria causing tuberculosis, infecting approximately 10 million people annually worldwide
vibrio cholerae — bacterium causing cholera, responsible for 2023 outbreak in haiti and dominican republic