What is the Coronavirus?
The following is my summary of this pathogen. I highly encourage you to read other sources as well. Wikipedia is a really underrated treasure for science, bio, chem, and medical information. I will link sources as they occur to me.
What is a virus?
Viruses are infectious biological particles that are sort of alive. They, along with bacteria, fungus, and parasites, are organisms responsible for causing disease. While all of the other types of disease agents are living things, viruses are not quite alive. Unlike living things, viruses do not eat, and they do not ‘reproduce’ the way other things do. Instead, viruses are like little automated sabotage kits for your cells. They are made up of a set of genetic instructions (either DNA or RNA), and proteins that let them attach to, invade, and hijack your cells. While other living things reproduce on their own, viruses make your body cells reproduce their viruses.
How do they do this?
The short answer is “The Central Dogma of Biology”. Every living cell has a “genetic code” made up of DNA. DNA is a long chain of molecules that come in four varieties: A (Adenine), G (Guanine), C (Cytosine), T (Thymine). These four letters make up your genetic code, which is very similar to computer code.
Different sections of DNA can be read off by special things in your cells and used to make proteins. Proteins are other biological molecules that make long chains. But while DNA exists only to store information, proteins do things. In fact, every living thing is made of proteins, and (almost) every biochemically interesting thing that happens in your body, happens to, by, and because of proteins.
Viruses have DNA (or sometimes RNA, which works similarily), but they don’t have the tools to turn that DNA into proteins. However, viruses are made of proteins, so where do they come from? What a virus will do is use its proteins to get inside of a different cell. Once inside, the virus spits out it’s DNA into the cell, and it tricks the cell into turning its DNA into proteins. The hijacked cell will make new copies of the virus proteins, which combine to make new viruses. Eventually so many new viruses are made that they explode out of the cell, killing the cell.
What are Coronaviruses?
Coronaviruses are a type of virus. They are enveloped viruses, which means that they steal the skin of your cells for extra protection from your immune system. They are RNA viruses, which means that they use RNA instead of DNA for their genetic code. They are called “Coronaviruses” from the Latin word “corona”, which means “crown”. They are called this because, when looked at under an electron microscope, their spike proteins (the things they use to attack your cells) fan out around them like a crown.
There are many different kinds of coronaviruses. The most common ones cause the common cold, while some others can be much more dangerous. SARS, the disease that had an outbreak in 2003, and MERS, an uncommon but extremely lethal disease from the middle east, are both caused by coronaviruses
What is this coronavirus?
Today, if someone talks about “the coronavirus”, they likely mean the new virus that was recognized as the cause of a mysterious disease pandemic currently impacting the planet. It’s official name is SARS-CoV-2, and the disease it causes is officially called COVID-19 (from “Coronavirus Disease 2019”) and colloquially called “Wuhan Flu”, from where it was first recognized.
SARS-CoV-2 is an extremely contagious, moderately lethal disease. We still do not know much about it, and much of what we do know is provisional and may turn out to be partially incorrect as we learn more. It is spread primarily by coming into contact with the mucous membranes of your respiratory tract. It can do this in a few ways:
- Droplet infection. When an infected person breathes out, coughs, or sneezes, the fluid in their breath can carry virus particles up to 2 meters (6 feet). If these droplets come in contact with your eyes, nose, or mouth, you can become infected
- Aerosol infection. This is currently suspected but not decisively demonstrated. Aerosol infection happens when the viruses in the air can float significantly farther than 2 meters. This is much more dangerous, as it means that you can theoretically catch the disease just by breathing the same air as an infected person while being nearby.
- Fomite infection. A fomite is any object with virus particles on it. Coronavirus particles can live on objects for as long as a week. If you then touch an infected object, you get the virus particles on your skin. The virus cannot infect you through your skin, but if you touch your mouth, nose, or eyes with virus on your skin, it can get in that way
- Fecal-oral infection. Significant amounts of virus particles have been found in infected individuals’ fecal matter. These virus particles can be spread in many ways. Flushing a toilet can cause clouds of virus particles to spread. Bad personal hygiene practices can get these virus particles onto your hands, where they can spread to anything you touch.
What happens when I catch coronavirus?
The short answer is that we do not know. This is a completely new disease, and we are learning about this disease as we go. All of the information we have now is uncertain. In our rush to figure this out quickly, scientists and doctors may make mistakes. Further, many governments across the world are being very secretive, and may be lying and hiding information in order to prevent mass panic. This is what we do know:
After you first get infected, there will be a period of time that can be anywhere from 3 to 24 days (but will usually be 3-7 days) called the ‘incubation period’. During this time, the virus is infecting your body, but has not infected you enough for you to be sick yet. You will likely not know that you are sick
About 3 days after you get infected, you might become contagious to others. This means that you might become contagious before you know you are sick. Scientists and doctors have not been able to prove that people are contagious before they are sick, but they worry that this might be true and are trying to get more information. Officially, the WHO says that there is no strong evidence of this happening, and most of the cases where this has happened turned out to be people who were lying about not being sick.
After the incubation phase, typically 5-10 days after getting infected, you will get sick. The symptoms are very similar to the flu, at first. You will get a fever and a dry cough. You may have some stomach issues, but these are uncommon.
For about 80% of people, these flu symptoms will get worse for a week or two, and then you will recover. You may continue to test positive for the disease for a few weeks after you recover, but at this time I am not aware of any evidence that you can “get sick again”.
For about 20% of people, in the second week of being sick, you will need to go to the hospital. For 3/4ths of the hospitalized people (about 13% of all infected), you will have “severe” symptoms. This means that you will suffer pneumonia and significant breathing difficulties. You will need oxygen therapy, but, if you receive oxygen therapy, you will likely recover.
For about 1/4th of hospitalized people (about 4% of all infected), you will progress to “critical” symptoms. People will critical symptoms will require intensive hospital care for between 1 to 4 weeks.
Approximately 2% of people who get sick with COVID-19 will die.
Who is most at risk?
Right now, it looks like elderly people, and people with existing health problems, are at a much higher risk of dying of this disease than other people. However, these statistics are uncertain and unreliable, and nobody should think they are safe from getting very very sick.
From the WHO report, we know that the average death rate is 2%. We also know that the average death rate for people under age 40 is only 0.2% (ten times lower!). What we don’t know is how many of those younger people are severe cases. Does their lower death rate mean that they just don’t get as sick? Or do younger people need to be hospitalized just as much, but they recover more often? We just don’t know.
What’s up with those social media videos?
There have been many videos leaked on social media, from China, from Iran, and now one from New York, showing people collapsing in the middle of the street. This is very scary. But at the moment, none of these videos are confirmed. We don’t know if they are real or not (I believe they are real). We don’t know if they are common, or if they have only happened a handful of times. We don’t know if these people are fainting, or dying. We don’t know if they get rescued by healthcare workers or if they die. We don’t know if they were already very sick, or if they thought they were healthy. We don’t know what is causing them to collapse.
At the moment, all we can do is wait and see
Does everyone who catches Coronavirus get sick?
We really don’t know. This is a situation that is changing quickly, and we are trying to learn more.
There has been a lot of questions about how many ‘mild, undetected’ cases there are. That is, how many people get infected and either never get sick, or don’t get sick enough to realize that they have coronavirus. This is very important to figure out. When we say that “20% of people who get infected will need to be hospitalized”, we don’t really have a way of knowing how many people are infected, unless we test every single person. In reality, we only test people who come to the hospital, and people only come to the hospital once they are are already sick. It could be that for every person who goes to the hospital, there are 500 people who got infected but didn’t get sick. It could also be that for every person who goes to the hospital, there are zero people who got infected but didn’t get sick. The fact is that we just don’t know.
Right now, there are three sources of data that I personally think can shed some light on this:
- The WHO report. The WHO report says that they believe that there is no evidence of large numbers of asymptomatic cases. In other words: everybody who gets infected gets sick.
- The Diamond Princess. This was a cruise ship that was quarantined for two weeks off the coast of Japan. Hundreds of people on board got sick. If you assume that everybody on board got infected, then it looks like, for every person who got sick, there were 2 or 3 people who got infected but did not get sick
- The Shincheonji church in Korea. This was a church that is the epicenter of infection in Korea. Korean authorities have blanket-tested every member of this church. Of the people showing signs of illness, 80% had positive tests. Of the people NOT showing signs of illness, 70% had positive tests. If we assume the tests are accurate (note: likely not a safe assumption), and we do the relevant math, it suggests that for every person who gets sick, there is one person who doesn’t get sick
Is Asymptomatic Infection good or bad?
This is a good question. If we find out that for every infected sick person, there are five infected not-sick people, is this good or bad? Well, it’s both, and it depends on your perspective.
If it turns out that everybody who gets infected gets sick, then in one sense that could be very bad. It means that those hospitalization numbers are true, and if true, that is very, very, very bad. But it also means that this isn’t quite as contagious as we expect. It also means that we can find everybody who is sick, at least eventually
On the other hand, if it turns out that for every person who gets sick, there are lots of people who don’t get sick, it means that this is much much more contagious than we expect, and we have no hope of stopping it. But it also means it’s much much less dangerous than we expect.
What should I expect? What should I do?
I’m not going to bullshit you. I think that this is going to be bad. I think this is going to be the worst crisis in the history of the United States. I am very, very scared. But all we can do is prepare, hope for the best, expect the worst.
I believe that the hospitalization rate is broadly accurate, and I believe that this disease will not be contained. This is going to be very, very bad. It means that we will get to a point where there are hospital beds (for example) for 10 people, but 50 people need them.
As a society, the best thing we can do is to slow down the spread of this disease as much as possible. The survival rate of this disease increases dramatically with proper medical care. If everybody is going to get infected, eventually, then the longer we can drag the disease out, the fewer people will be sick at the same time, and the more people will be able to get proper healthcare.
How do we do this? Follow the CDC/WHO public health guidelines, mostly. Engage in “social distancing”; stop going out in public, stop going to crowded events. Work from home, if you can. Stock up on groceries and supplies, so you don’t have to go to the grocery store as often. Practice meticulous hygiene. Avoid public restrooms if possible. Wash your hands often. Use hand sanitizers. Do not touch your face. Wear masks in public (but be smart about it. We have a massive mask shortage and it’s important to save them for the most important uses. If you only have 10 masks you don’t want to use them up before the outbreak hits your city).
Avoid hospitals as much as you can. A large percentage of infections in China were reported as hospital-acquired infections. The last thing you want to do is to go to your doctor’s office to get a prescription filled and get infected while you are there.
IF YOU ARE SICK, STAY HOME AND SELF-ISOLATE. Even if you think it’s just a cold, or just the flu, better safe than sorry. Do not go out in public when you are sick. Do not risk infecting other people. Our leaders aren’t going to give the inspirational speech, so I will: it is your duty to the human race to make personal sacrifices to help contain this. Do your duty.
If you are sick, do not go to the hospital right away. Phone them first. You do not want to risk infecting everyone else there. Be warned: there is a lot of chaos around this right now, and many hospitals and health authorities don’t seem to know what they are doing. You may phone them and they may tell you something stupid. They might play hot potato with your call, passing you between different people who have no answers. That sucks, but it is what it is.
If you are very sick, that is the time to call hospital emergency services. If you are having serious trouble breathing, or have other pneumonia symptoms, then that is the time when you need to be hospitalized.
Do not be afraid of the cost of medical care (This is not legal/financial advice). I believe it is highly likely that this pandemic will be so bad that the government will be forced to implement some kind of blanket medical debt forgiveness. Even if they don’t, medical debt collections is a problem for next year, and we need to make it through this year first. This might destroy your credit rating. Better to destroy your credit rating than destroy your life. Better to destroy your credit rating than to destroy all of our lives.
Do not politicize this issue, and do not make this a partisan issue. Do not fight over this. Do not throw blame to whichever politician you dislike. The fact is that our emergency services, our civil service, our bureaucracy, were there before our current president and will be there after he’s gone. They were there before our last president and stayed there after he was gone. They are the ones responsible for the horrendous failure that has been our society’s response to this issue. This outbreak is not Trump’s fault. This outbreak is not Obama’s fault. It is not the Democrats’ fault. It is not the Republicans’ fault. It is simply a crisis, a crisis we need to solve, and we won’t solve it by pointing fingers and fighting. Very importantly: do not make jokes about intentionally spreading this disease, as that one official did about a political rally the other day. This is a very serious situation. Jokes like that can spread confusion, destroy trust, and will make it that much harder for us to come together and fix this. There will be plenty of time to joke about Republicans or Democrats dying after this crisis is over. Put it on pause for now.
What is next?
I believe that, within the next month or two, we will start to see widespread lockdowns and quarantines like they did in China. This will be horrendously disruptive to our daily lives, and to our society. Things will break down. Your daily life will be disrupted.
You may be stuck in your home, without being able to go outside, for long periods of time. Prioritize whatever you need to do to maintain your emotional health. Stock up on some good books to read.
Avoid making any travel plans or event plans. I expect widespread travel shutdowns in the near future. It’s much better to just put those plans on pause, rather than worrying about having thousands of dollars of flights cancelled with no refunds.
Prepare for an emergency. I will write a more in-depth guide for this at a later time. For now, the important parts are: have food, water, medication, sanitation, and hygiene supplies on hand. Keep your vehicle gassed up, and consider storing some extra gasoline, just in case. Have the means to protect yourself in case of crime, looters, or riots, and be prepared to use those means. Talk to your friends about this, lay out explicit emergency plans, involving what needs to happen to put your plans into action, where you all will meet up, what you all will do, and what you expect to happen.
Cooperate with authorities. If a doctor tells you to quarantine at home, quarantine at home. If you lose your job, you lose your job. There are always going to be more jobs out there, but you only have one life, and we only have one society. If emergency services tell you not to go somewhere, don’t go there. Quarantines are there for a reason.
Do whatever you need to do to emotionally prepare for all of this. Society will be severely disrupted. People you know will die. Better to figure out ways to cope with this now, than to react in a panic when it happens.
Be prepared to step up. Our leaders and authorities are failing us miserably, and we are entering a period of time in the near future where everyday heroes will be the difference between life and death. Don’t wait for permission to act; if you know what needs to be done, do it. If nobody else is there coordinating, telling people what to do, then step up and tell them yourself. If you have special skills that will help, use them. When this is all over, we will have to return to normalcy. Be prepared to help with that work.
Last Updated: 2020.03.04 11:11 CST