Barry Evans answers more virus questions
Following on last week’s “Coronavirus 101,” here are a few more takeaways about the pandemic and its virus.
Q How do I know if I’m infected?
A You may not know. “… about half of those who tested positive are non-symptomatic,” said Thorolfur Guðnason, Chief Epidemiologist of Iceland, in an interview with BuzzFeed News. As of last Thursday, March 26, the small island nation, population 364,000, had tested 12,615 people, with 802 confirmed infections (/www.covid.is/data) but only half showed symptoms. That means that you or I could be walking around feeling fine and still be infected. (Iceland has tested over 3% of its entire population, compared with our rate of 0.13%.) Q
A Everything. no national boundaries, Viruses know and if ever the 200-odd countries
What’s wrong with calling it “The Chinese Virus”? of the world needed to think as one, this is the time. We need to be sharing information with everyone, particularly China, which has more experience that any country with COVID-19. (Instead of provoking the Chinese with racist comments!)
Q But…it did come from China, right? A Yes. But consider that the “Spanish Flu” of 19181919, the influenza pandemic that killed more people than died in WW1 (estimates vary between 50 and 100 million deaths), almost certainly originated in Haskell County, Kansas, spread from there to Camp Funston (now Ft. Riley), Kansas, thence to Brest in France (the main entry point for American troops) and on to virtually every country in the world. Want to call it the “United States Flu”?
Q Any useful lessons from the 1918-1919 flu?
A Probably the main one is this: the first wave of the flu, spring 1918, was mostly mild, and seemed to be on the
wane through summer. That fall it came back with a vengeance—it’s been called “the killing wave.” This is what many experts are afraid of with COVID-19, that it will ease off during the next few weeks but then return with greater virulence later in the year.
Q Soap and water or hand sanitizer?
A Hand sanitizer containing at least 60% alcohol effectively kills the virus. So does soap, which, like alcohol, breaks down the lipid (insoluble in water) membrane protecting the RNA ribbon inside the virus, but soap and water also washes the virus off your skin. Alcohol leaves the dead (you hope) virus on your skin.
Q Remind me, are viruses alive?
A In the sense they lack the means to thrive and reproduce without a host body, they’re dead. In the sense they force the hosts cells to nourish and reproduce them, they’re alive. Think of them as microscopic parasites. For what it’s worth, Wendell Stanley, the first person to crystallize a virus, shared the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry — not Physiology or Medicine. Q How were viruses discovered if you can’t see them with an optical microscope? A In 1884, French chemists Louis Pasteur and Charles Chamberland invented a filter with pores small enough to trap any bacteria (which can be seen under a regular microscope). Within a few years, Russian and Dutch biologists proved that something much smaller than bacteria could pass though a Pasteur-Chamberland filter and infect tobacco leaves with what’s now known as the tobacco mosaic virus. This was the first virus to be “seen” with the newly-invented electron microscope, in 1939.
Q Are viruses as old as bacteria?
A Yes, they probably arose about the same time as the first cells, that is, nearly four billion years ago. Q I see that the virus that causes COVID-19 is called SARS-CoV-2. Why
SARS?
A SARS is an acronym: severe acute respiratory syndrome. SARS-CoV-2 is similar to the original 2003 SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV), in that they share 80-90% genetic material, probably because they both seem to have originated in the same animal reservoir: bats.
Q Are you scared of getting COVID-19?
A Not really. The actual death rate of infected people is pretty low, even with the delay in mobilizing equipment (including protective equipment for health workers and ventilators) in the U.S. The thing I’m most concerned about right now is lack of PPE (personal protective equipment) for healthcare workers. If they get infected and/or quarantined, we’re screwed.