Covid-19 -- Q&A

Electron microscope image of Covid-19 (round blue objects)

 emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab on

 March 12th from a U.S. patient.  SARS-CoV-2 is the virus

 that causes COVID-19.  Photo: NIH/AFP/Getty Images

   The Covid-19 virus is now beginning its second circling of our planet as travelers return home (if and when they can) and some countries begin to bracing for the possibility of another round of not knowing what to expect.  And in the midst of all of their (and your) worries comes news from every form of media...radio and television specials, internet posts and podcasts devoted entirely to the "latest," and even companies updating their policies and pratices.   And even as the number of people infected grows the number of people in the U.S. who consider Covid-19 a real threat continues to drop (said a poll taken last week by NPR: Just about 56% of Americans consider the coronavirus a "real threat," representing a drop of 10 percentage points from last month. At the same time, a growing number of Americans think the coronavirus is being "blown out of proportion."...new polling figures show a bit more concern emerging).  Wait, "blown out of proportion?"  Are we getting information overload?  And how can the everyday  person sort through it all or even know if the information is accurate?  As one caller to a show asked, information about Covid-19 seems to vary among the local, state, federal, and the White House...which ones should she believe since one often seemed to contradict another?  As one example, President Trump announced that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine had been approved by the FDA for treating Covid-19; well, not really -- the anti-malarial drugs had been approved for malaria but not for Covid-19.  But what does the everyday person hear?...that the drugs been approved for treating this virus.  They haven't (Nigeria has already had a few poisonings from the drugs...Science reports on the difficulty Dr. Anthony Fauci, often standing behind President Trump, deals with during press briefings).  So, in addition to my earlier Covid-19 piece on following only trusted sources, here are a few more things to consider as everyone, including scientists and infectious disease specialists, continue to enter this unknown territory (and again as a disclaimer, I have ZERO medical experience and these are only my recommendations to steer you to what I consider trusted and long-time sources which are doing their research; I cannot emphasize enough that it is important to do your own follow-up, read or listen to more than one radio show, broadcast, article or online piece...yours and other lives may depend on getting the right information out there).  Herewith, a distillation of some Covid-19 questions:

    Is corona virus the same as Covid-19?  Corona virus is the overall category and Covid-19 is a specific type of that virus.  There are seven identified types of corona viruses and scientists are attempting to discover if Covid-19 may itself have variants (picture how the influenza virus varies from year to year). 

Sign in an English pub

   Can we "kill" the virus? -- Technically no because it is not "alive."  To backtrack a bit, as Discover reported: Viruses are not alive, at least not in the classical sense.  While they're made of proteins and genes like living things, they need to interact with living host cells to reproduce...A single particle, or virion, of influenza is up to 100 times smaller than common bacteria; you could fit some 15,000 end-to-end across the head of a pin.  Viruses are not bacteria (which are affected by things such as antibiotics and anti-bacterial soaps).  That said, soaps and 60%+ alcohol santizers DO break up the outer protective shell of the virus and aid in breaking them down (said National Geographic, soap is actually better than bleach).

    How contagious is Covid-19?  That's the big question because at this point the scientists studying it don't really know.  This is a new virus, and one of many we've faced in the world.  The flu is a virus (and has many versions) but so is Ebola and smallpox and AIDS...the measles virus is among the more virulent .  To date scientists are putting Covid-19's "infectious rate" at between 2-4 (measles is thought to be 6-9x more contagious).  But even those figures are estimates since every person's body reacts differently; as STAT put it, predicting the spread of a disease can be a bit like predicting the weather since so many variable are involved (to see how difficult this is, you can take advantage of an interactive modeler from the University of Toronto).

    Can younger people catch Covid-19?  Not only can, but do: said TIME: ...new data out of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have thrust younger adults into an even brighter spotlight: it suggests adults ages 20 to 44 have accounted for nearly 30% of U.S. COVID-19 cases, and 20% of related hospitalizations.  After adding adults ages 45 to 54, the percentages swelled to nearly 50% and 40%, respectively.

    Does Covid-19 mutate?  Again, it's too early to tell but it may be possible; with the 1918 flu (which killed over 3% of the world's population), it was the 2nd and 3rd mutations that proved the most damaging (those mutations all occurred within the first year; said the Center for Disease Control: But 3 extensive pandemic waves of influenza within 1 year, occurring in rapid succession, with only the briefest of quiescent intervals between them, was unprecedented.  The occurrence, and to some extent the severity, of recurrent annual outbreaks, are driven by viral antigenic drift, with an antigenic variant virus emerging to become dominant approximately every 2 to 3 years).

    Is a Covid-19 vaccine coming soon?  Unlikely although companies have certainly accelerated their testing.  Said the scientific research development company Millipore Sigma: Developing a new drug takes between 10-to-15 years and $2.6 billion, as estimated by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, to get from conception to store shelves.  The process involves thousands of steps and input from scientists working in a range of areas, including chemistry, biology, pharmacology, and medicine.  As noted in an earlier post, rushing out a vaccine can have dire consequences...results so far have been mixed, said Bloomberg Businessweek.  Added the magazine in another article: Drug development can only be sped up so much...A protective vaccine is likely a year to 18 months away in a best-case scenario.

   Will Covid-19 go away with the summer coming?   Again no one knows since this is a new virus.  But as epidemiologist Elena Naumova (Tufts University) told Smithsonian: ...passively waiting for the virus to disappear is “nonsense.”  A population’s suceptibility to a given infection trumps all else.  And with so many vulnerable individuals around, any warmth-related wanes in disease will do little to rein in its spread.  There are many variables added the article, including studies with mice showing: ...that low humidity can compromise the germ-trapping mucus in their airways and impair the production of critical immune molecules.  Infectious disease scientists are looking at many angles in trying to understand this changing virus and its effects on our bodies.

   How long does Covid-19 last and how is it spread?  Recent lab results have shown that the Covid-19 virus can last days on some surfaces, said The New England Journal of Medicine, but bear in mind that those are results under strict lab conditions (think of all the apples and bananas you and countless others have touched before throwing them in your basket).  Jeffery K. Taubenberger, head of the viral pathogenesis and evolution section of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Bloomberg Prognosis this about how the virus spreads and why some people can fight it off and others will succumb: Covid-19 most likely spreads via contact with virus-laden droplets expelled from an infected person’s cough, sneeze or breath.  Infection generally starts in the nose. Once inside the body, the coronavirus invades the epithelial cells that line and protect the respiratory tract.  If it’s contained in the upper airway, it usually results in a less severe disease...In some more-severe coronavirus infections, the body’s effort to heal itself may be too robust, leading to the destruction of not just virus-infected cells, but healthy tissue.  As a result, the lungs are vulnerable to an invasive secondary bacterial infection...Secondary bacterial infections represent an especially pernicious threat because they can kill critical respiratory tract stem cells that enable tissue to rejuvenate.  Without them, “you just can’t physically repair your lungs,” Taubenberger said.  Damaged lungs can starve vital organs of oxygen, impairing the kidneys, liver, brain and heart.

   Did Covid-19 come from bats?  Maybe, maybe not.  This theory emerged because of some earlier SARS-like corona viruses being traced back to bats.  But that's too simple, said a report in The Conversation: The SARS-CoV-2 genome was rapidly sequenced by Chinese researchers.  It is an RNA molecule of about 30,000 bases containing 15 genes, including the S gene which codes for a protein located on the surface of the viral envelope (for comparison, our genome is in the form of a double helix of DNA about 3 billion bases in size and contains about 30,000 genes).  Comparative genomic analyses have shown that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the group of Betacoronaviruses and that it is very close to SARS-CoV, responsible for an epidemic of acute pneumonia which appeared in November 2002 in the Chinese province of Guangdong and then spread to 29 countries...Since then, many Betacoronaviruses have been discovered, mainly in bats, but also in humans...genomic comparisons suggest that the SARS-Cov-2 virus is the result of a recombination between two different viruses, one close to RaTG13 and the other closer to the pangolin virus.  In other words, it is a chimera between two pre-existing viruses.  Rupert Beale of the Francis Crick Institute put it a bit more bluntly in the London Review of Books saying this about coronaviruses in general: Their special cunning is in the huge length and complexity of their RNA genome. RNA is much less stable than DNA, so RNA viruses tend to be short.  We measure them approximately in kilobases (kb) of information.  Polio is a mere 7 kb, influenza stacks up at 14, and Ebola weighs in at 19.  Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (Sars-CoV-2), the causative agent of Covid-19, is 30 kb.  That’s quite normal for a coronavirus, but close to the chemical limits of information storage for RNA – about as long as a strand of RNA can be without collapsing.  In other words, it's complicated...

   Is there a cure available?  Despite what you may have heard or read, the answer is no, at least not yet.  There will always be people taking advantage of the system and scammers trying to convince you to part with your money by playing to your fears (most end-of-times survival shops have sold out of many of their supplies), even members of Congress selling off millions of dollars of stocks after attending a closed intelligence briefing on Covid-19 and before the market crashed (wait, who has millions of dollars of stock to sell?).  ZD Net reported that scammers using fake CDC or WHO pages are not only targeting your computer but your smartphone as well (clicking on a coronavirus "tracker" link locks your phone); intelligence firm RiskIQ did a search for new domains that featured the words coronavirus, covid, pandemic, virus, or vaccine and this is what it discovered: RiskIQ saw more than 13,500 suspicious domains on Sunday, March 15; more than 35,000 domains the next day; and more than 17,000 domains the day after that.  Even STAT reported that automated chatbots may not be as accurate as hoped if asking about you possibly having symptoms of the virus.  And as a reminder, the FDA has warned that at-home tests are NOT approved, despite what you're hearing....

   Is now a good time to get out of the house and head to a national park? The short answer is no but not for the reason you may think.  Certainly the hiking and fresh air would alleviate the "trapped" feelings of being house-bound; but many of parks are quite remote or located near smaller towns and their hospitals simply do not have the beds or ventilators to treat you if you begin to show symptoms.  That said, Arches alone still expects some 6000 visitors this weekend; "stay away" said the medical director of the nearby town of Moab.

   So wow, what a load of information and at the rate that this virus is being studied, much of this information will be outdated within a week or so.  It is now up to YOU to stay current and to follow the changes...if you are interested.  That said, many sites are opening up their subscription-only archives to all readers, each trying to do their part (you may have also noticed banks, stores and other companies also contacting you about easing their own policies as they recognize the difficulties many are facing).  National Geographic, Bloomberg, TIME, and The Atlantic have produced daily updates in addition to their archived pieces.  Of course, the CDC (Center for Disease Control), WHO (World Health Organization) and the NIH (National Institutes of Health) all try to not only present factual information but also work to try and dispel rumors and false reporting.  And online sites such as STAT and The Conversation continue their dedicated efforts.  Please do your OWN research and ignore the trolls making the rounds (such as the fake ibuprofen scare or the faked "clear" waters of Venice).  These are indeed changing times and it may be more important than ever to stay updated with factual and accurate information, as well as to try and slow or stop the flow of misinformation.  It is YOUR health and a time to think of those around you as well...don't become an unwilling carrier of this virus and infect others.  Stay calm, stay aware, and stay healthy...and buckle up as we enter even deeper into a world of unknowns.