Dr S Ranganathan

  Except a very few pathogens, most of the pathogens known to our scientific world can cause infection only when the initial load or inoculum or dose of the pathogen is ‘sufficient enough’ and otherwise the pathogen may just make a short landfall in vast majority of people and then would disappear to nowhere.    Influenza virus certainly follows the rule of dose-response-relationship and why even the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918-1919 had followed the above rule.   Human coronavirus 229E (HcoV-229E) has also shown such relationship.   In the case of HIV, lower the viral load, longer the incubation period and higher the viral load, shorter the incubation period to make a person from HIV positive to become full blown AIDS has been observed .    In the case of Measles, higher the pathogen load, greater the spread and lower the initial dose, poorer the spread of the pathogen has been noticed.   In the case of Tuberculosis (TB), sputum positive individuals of bacilli spread the d

  COVID mutants/variants in India are being discussed and stretched beyond all permissible limits of science by our medical system and as a result, the pandemic has caused irrevocable fear among people where fear dominates over actual threat posed by the virus.   Even if COVID virus openly and loudly announces to Indians today that the virus has decided to leave not just India but the planet called earth itself, still many Indians refuse to believe and will remain adamant with the fear of COVID.   Our medical system also may not allow COVID virus to leave India and even if happens so, the ghost of COVID they might use to further the fear of people so that our medical system can profit eternally. The scientific story spun around the mutants or variants of the virus is nothing but the cognitive bias of our medical system sandwiched by utter ignorance and cut, copy & paste the western knowledge approach of our Indian medical science to a great degree.   Mutation of the virus dur

  The growing fear of mucormycosis, whether posed actually by Mucor (and or other species of Zygosporomycetes fungi) or due to poor sanitation and patient handling in most hospitals that treat COVID or the severe immune suppression by COVID is a million dollar question.   No one would admit the origin of mucormycosis is nosocomial infection and would instead argue and document only in favour of proving mucor as an emerging new pathogen of man.     The admission of mucormycosis as nosocomial or hospital acquired infection would put both the hospitals management and government in a daisy situation.    But when mucor is accused or penalized, mucor is not going to challenge or question the charge in any court of law in India. Any species of life form on earth shifting its ecosystem from abundance to scarce is quite ludicrous possibility both from common sense point of view, as well from the definition of evolution and natural selection.   COVID virus itself defeats the above possib

  Our medical fraternity in India at least partially has left COVID and have gripped their hold on mucormycosis.   Mucormycosis is talk of the town.   Habit, habitat, genetics and finally the reproductive behaviour of fungi in general tells a lot about the poor disease causing ability of most fungi and the same we can understand in detail provided if we visit a little into the world of mycology by giving special importance to mucor.   Fear-mongering and reporting of some sporadic incidences of mucormycosis need to be separated.   One might argue, why even may fight with the author, how mucormycosis can be called as sporadic incidence and close to 100 cases have been seen in India alone.   Still it is sporadic from the arithmetic of our total population or total number of COVID positive cases or total number of COVID patients got admitted into various treatment centres in India.   Among several thousands of species of fungi, only four or five species of fungi are really consider

  Before we impose lockdown and adopting several ineffective measures to contain COVID spread in a country like India which is also the safe haven of superstition, illiteracy, poverty, exploitation, great economic inequality, acute unemployment crisis, scary economy, hopeless future, we must understand one thing clearly and that is, we can at best only delay the spread and cannot prevent the viral spread in our country.    Our social, cultural, economic and educational realities are such and therefore western style or western advisory will not work for India.    Instead of adopting self-destructive and counterproductive measures politically, economically and also from human life per se, we should have allowed the virus to travel through India freely without much restrictions, e-pass or e-registration etc., and if we had done the same, by now India would have got rid of COVID.   We should have created adequate awareness among people along with some economic package and support sy

    As early as 1916, in the journal of Agricultural Research, a research article was published entitled “effect of pasteurization on mold spores” highlights the unique survival advantage of Mucor, Rhizopus and other species of fungi belongs to Zygomycetes, over many other common contaminants like species of Aspergillus, Pencillium, Fusarium etc.    Subsequently another study entitled “Survival of some medically important fungi on hospital fabrics and plastics” in the year 2001 appeared in Journal of clinical microbiology reveals once again that Mucor spores have an exalted survival advantage in most of the hospital articles when compared to other fungi like Candida or Aspergillus spp.    Both the studies clearly show that Mucor (black fungi) is one of the most abundant common contaminants in hospital wards, garden, public places, residential areas and in our well-decorated drawing room and why even in refrigerated food stuffs.   Mucor needs organic, damp, wet place to grow

  Whether COVID is really spreading in leaps and bounds in India or not, but our mind is fully filled by COVID fear and therefore it is quite easy for the medical science to declare everyone who go to hospital for treatment are positive for COVID or else must be suffering from some COVID associated complications.     The black fungus or Mucor is a well-known plant pathogen.   In fact, Mucor doesn’t even affect plants so commonly but the fungus can be easily isolated from most of the plants.   Even in our house or work place or bed room etc., this fungus will be floating around and can be easily isolated.   Now the question is why such a ubiquitous fungus infects people either during COVID infection in the hospital or after recovery from COVID?   Today it looks like, anyone dies in India is swiftly declared due to COVID by our medical system and that is the perception being created.   Those who recover from COVID and later if they get infected by Mucor, a well-known plant pathog

  Our medical fraternity has recently reported the new threat called Mucormycosis in some COVID patients where different specialities of doctors starting from pulmonologist, cardiologist, diabetologist, opthamologist, mycologist, dentist, general physician, surgeon etc., are required to treat the COVID patient with mucormycosis?   It is quite interesting to credit and crown COVID for mucormycosis because it is already been declared that COVID causes severe immune problem; some say induces hyper immunity while some claim due to poor immunity only people become susceptible to the new virus.   To support the observation of mucormycosis, steroid use has been implicated which is bound to suppress the immunity although such therapy may be required at times to save the patient. The fundamental question is why Mucor alone infect the COVID patients and not any other most common and ubiquitously prevalent other fungi like species of Aspergillus?   If immune suppression due to steroid and p

  Recently WHO (World Health Organization) has classified the Indian variant of COVID 19 as being “of concern”.     From the preview of WHO what is expected out of WHO, WHO has been done perfectly.   Now it is for India to research out why the strain of COVID 19 in India in the recent time has shown high communicability and is the high communicability of the virus is definitely also linked with its fatal nature?   We are more worried about the symptoms that we see at the surface level and are not really willing to go down to the root of the problem.   In India, we have contracted the responsibility of dealing COVID totally to the ‘epiphyte and parasite’ of the western medical science’ called allopathic system.   Most of the allopaths know only the language of western medicine and whatever findings observed in western population by the western medicos, our Indian medicos would simply cut and paste and then conclude.   In the case of non-infectious diseases or otherwise called as n

  Man is only one of the species of life form on earth.   But man has made the earth his exclusive, inherited property where his dynastic right alone has space and voice.   In a sense, man had made the earth anthropocentric, where Homo sapiens alone matter and not any other species of life.   The above lines are not some philosophical rant but an absolute truth and the truth is nothing but ‘science’.   The question of whether anthropocentrism is the cause for COVID or the disgusting science that had made the COVID hype so much does not require any great debate or research to answer.    Anthropocentrism and our disgusting science both have made COVID immortal in India.   Those who live under reasonable ‘financial immortality’ parenthesis only had made the COVID problem acute and agonizing to the world.     The so called ‘financially immortal’ people may not have bothered if there was an outbreak of cholera or typhoid or hepatitis B or other associated deadly infectious diseases