Elliot Lefkowitz

I continue to be amazed at the imagination of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s mind, and thank the SF gods for his prolific output. I may need to retire simply to keep up with his forthcoming books (and catch up on the few I have missed)!

Virus species names have been standardized; virus names remain unchanged | mSphere The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV; https://ictv.global/) is a committee of the Virology Division of the International Union of Microbiology Societies that provides oversight and...

The promised ICTV paper on species names and how they differ from virus names is now published in mSphere:

“Virus species names have been standardized; virus names remain unchanged”

doi.org/10.1128/msph...

Join us for an ICTV webinar on how to find information about viruses and virus taxa using the ICTV web site

Date: March 11, 2025
Time: 10:00 AM CDT; 15:00 UTC

For more information: ictv.global/news/webinar...

Register here: uab.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

White House pauses all federal grants, sparking confusion The Trump administration has put a hold on all federal financial grants and loans, affecting tens of billions of dollars in payments.

A.M. - Oh, shit, China can science too? [US stocks crash].

P.M. - Fuck it, let’s halt all of science in the U.S [🤪😵‍💫📉… 🤷‍♂️].

Nice one.

wapo.st/4gfgcHQ

CDC staff ordered to cut off communication with WHO The directive to the CDC to halt communications with the World Health Organization was imposed to comply with President Trump's executive order.

This is not just mere stupidity, it is a death wish for the world’s population:

www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-com...

Yes!

We will be publishing a paper to explain the difference between virus names and taxon names. But this has been a decades-long battle.

I know that Eddie and likely those following this thread are intelligent and reasonable biologists, but I don't quite understand this comment and the seemingly endless difficulty and misrepresentation in any discussion of virus species names here and on other sites.

Thanks. Yes, we will look at doing that. The complication will be to
return the results to a separate page.

Before this hysteria spreads any further, a graphical explanation of what ICTV does and doesn't do. None of the virus names have been changed or will ever be changed by ICTV (it's outside the remit). Only species names have changed. This has been explained so many times... doi.org/10.1007/s007...

Please provide specific examples of what can be improved.

The ICTV web site has an app, “Find the Species” that will provide the formal taxon name, given a common name: ictv.global/taxonomy/fin...