If in 2020-21 there was only one single pandemic story in the world, then in 2022 the planet will be overwhelmed by several apocalyptic storylines at once, ranging from new, more terrible pandemics, the threat of nuclear war, social loans, and ending with the most timely invasion of aliens. We now have a new kid on the block: Ancient bacteria with natural resistance to antibiotics and antimicrobials in Antarctica.
There are ancient bacteria and viruses dormant in the permafrost, and their return to the historical arena can lead to catastrophic consequences for humanity. This has been repeatedly warned by scientists, including Nobel laureate Re Kwon Chung. There are several dangerous centers in the world where there is a risk of the appearance of mutants from the past. Siberia and Antarctica, where millennial ice is melting, are one of them.
A group of scientists from the University of Chile was in different areas of Antarctica from 2017 to 2019, where they collected soil samples to study microbial communities, as a result of which a huge variety of microorganisms was revealed in these soils. This was stated on May 26 in a message on the website of the University of Chile.
“However, scientists were even more surprised when they found that many of the bacteria in these samples had unexpected abilities, including high resistance to many classes of antibiotics and other toxic substances ,” the report says.
At the same time, as Andrés Marcoleta, academician of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Chile , whose words are quoted in the message and who took part in the study, pointed out, such resistance abilities can appear in pathogenic microorganisms that cause various diseases. According to the scientist, this can lead to serious health problems in the world.
Marcoleta also noted that some of the “superpowers” that these microorganisms developed during evolution to withstand extreme conditions are in “movable fragments” of DNA, and this may allow them to be transferred to other bacteria.
“So the idea that these genes could eventually reach bacteria that cause infections in humans or other animals, giving them significant resistance abilities, does not seem crazy ,” the scientist noted, adding that as a result, “resistance genes” can increase other pathogens by coming into contact with them, which can then contribute to the spread of infectious diseases.
At the same time, Marcoleta added that the researchers did not want to cause alarm, but to show the importance of studying Antarctica and their impact on the planet.
“Knowing the details of the resistance genes present in Antarctica and other environments with high microbial diversity may point the way to the development of possible new antibiotics that will be ‘prepared’ to overcome these resistance mechanisms,” the Chilean scientist explained.
Just another Apocalyptic scenario
The coronavirus, whose outbreaks are still being observed in some countries (China, North Korea), has been replaced by monkeypox. The new infection, as it were, confirms the words of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who said at the beginning of last year, that the world should prepare for new pandemics. The cinematic nature of the images born by the very name of the new disease is hardly accidental. “Rise of the Planet with Monkeypox” is an absolute media image that easily introduces fear and horror to a huge part of the world’s population.
The WHO says the new virus has not mutated enough to spread quickly, but many countries have already made decisions to stockpile smallpox vaccines, sowing the first seeds of future panic.
As for the scientific publication by the Chileans, it could be a factual preparation for some new super-pandemic, the source of which would be known, but resistant to all existing antibiotics and disinfectants.
However, if we discard conspiracy theories and assume that the Chilean scientists who found the bacterium are not involved in the world conspiracy, then everything becomes even more interesting and even more terrible.
Nature does not tolerate any excesses, and any species contains exactly as many genes as it needs and no bacterium that exists in nature has antibiotic resistance genes. Such genes appear only after the bacterium encounters an antibiotic and, in the course of a short evolution, a drug-resistant strain is born.
There are such cases of rapid mutation in every hospital where some kind of staphylococcus is regularly appearing, resistant to one or another new generation antibiotic.
This is a normal and natural phenomenon that forces pharmacists to invent new drugs every year. But the question arises: if an antibiotic and a microbe are needed for the emergence of a new antibiotic-resistant strain, then where did antibiotics come from in Antarctica? Where was the contact of the microbe with the antibiotic for the microbe to develop resistance genes?
If some kind of mutant microbe appears, then at an average annual temperature of minus fifty, it will take millennia, if not even millions of years, to spread across the mainland.
Therefore, the microbe found by the Chileans is some kind of prehistoric microbe. It came into contact with an antibiotic and developed resistance which means that already in those days there was some kind of civilization in Antarctica that used antibiotics and poured tons of them into the soil.
We do not know what kind of civilization it was, but we assume that among the artifacts it left behind not only mutant strains. Perhaps archaeologists will find these artifacts soon, if they have not found them already.
