![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I swore to myself yesterday that today's blog post would not be about food. So it was fortuitous that I found this very interesting article on the BBC News site this morning:
Coronavirus: What It Does To The Body
Mostly it's a user-friendly overview of the course of any viral respiratory infection: the virus gets into your body; it spends a while multiplying in secret (the 'incubation period'); it reaches a detectable level and your body triggers an immune response with inflammation and mucus; the virus either is defeated, or overwhelms your body's immune system and gets into everything, causing multiple organ failure and eventually death.
The major thing that's different about this strain of coronavirus – Sars-CoV-2 to be precise* – is that it has never been present in human populations before, so there is no resistance to it. Remember those stories about how smallpox and measles wiped out swathes of Native Americans after first contact because they'd never been exposed before? Yeah, that. We are very lucky Sars-CoV-2 is less contagious and far less fatal than those illnesses.
*the common cold is a type of coronavirus, so just saying 'coronavirus' is like identifying a particular species of waterfowl as 'duck'
The other thing that's different about Sars-Cov-2 is that it has a very long incubation period, and in many cases (50-75% depending which study you're looking at) symptoms don't manifest at all, so it spreads through a population undetected, until suddenly cases start popping up like mushrooms. Hence the lockdowns: you can't just stop the spread by avoiding people who are sick, you have to avoid everyone, in case they are sick without knowing it.
( More Interesting Science!! )
TL;DR:
EDIT 15:54 GMT
Ooooh, antibody tests should be widely available soon! SCIENCE!
Coronavirus: What It Does To The Body
Mostly it's a user-friendly overview of the course of any viral respiratory infection: the virus gets into your body; it spends a while multiplying in secret (the 'incubation period'); it reaches a detectable level and your body triggers an immune response with inflammation and mucus; the virus either is defeated, or overwhelms your body's immune system and gets into everything, causing multiple organ failure and eventually death.
The major thing that's different about this strain of coronavirus – Sars-CoV-2 to be precise* – is that it has never been present in human populations before, so there is no resistance to it. Remember those stories about how smallpox and measles wiped out swathes of Native Americans after first contact because they'd never been exposed before? Yeah, that. We are very lucky Sars-CoV-2 is less contagious and far less fatal than those illnesses.
*the common cold is a type of coronavirus, so just saying 'coronavirus' is like identifying a particular species of waterfowl as 'duck'
The other thing that's different about Sars-Cov-2 is that it has a very long incubation period, and in many cases (50-75% depending which study you're looking at) symptoms don't manifest at all, so it spreads through a population undetected, until suddenly cases start popping up like mushrooms. Hence the lockdowns: you can't just stop the spread by avoiding people who are sick, you have to avoid everyone, in case they are sick without knowing it.
( More Interesting Science!! )
TL;DR:
- Coronavirus is the family of viruses to which today's baddie belongs.
Sars-CoV-2 is the name of this particular strain.
COVID-19 is the name of the disease it causes. (I shy from all-caps so I ... don't. But it is an acronym for COronaVIrus Disease [20]19 so I am technically wrong.) - Sars-CoV-2 has a very long incubation period, during which symptoms do not show but the virus is strongly transmissable.
- Symptoms typically are a fever and dry cough, sometimes with aches and/or loss of smell.
- A German study has found that several people who tested positive had runny noses and not necessarily other symptoms.
- Many – perhaps a majority – of carriers show no symptoms at all.
- There may have been an initial wave of infections in Europe in late January.
- There may be two strains of Sars-CoV-2 in circulation
- Was it one of my FIVE COLDS this winter? We may never know!
EDIT 15:54 GMT
Ooooh, antibody tests should be widely available soon! SCIENCE!
