Latest news on 2019-nCoV
Coronavirus
Unless you just got back from a trip to Mars, you probably know that there’s an epidemic going on in China. It appears to be viral in nature; viruses are tiny, much smaller than bacteria, and barely meet the definition of a living organism as it must enter the cells of a host to activate and reproduce.
Once it’s hijacked the cell’s machinery, however, it produces a lot of little viruses that enter the bloodstream, often killing the host cell in the process. The physical symptoms caused depend on the type of virus and the cells that are infected.
SARS, MERS, and now 2019-nCoV are epidemic coronaviruses
First reported December 8th in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in Hubei province, the new virus appears to belong to the coronavirus family. Coronaviridae is a family of viruses with little projections that might remind you of a crown or the corona of the sun. The genetic material is not DNA, but RNA or ribonucleic acid.
RNA viruses generally have very high mutation rates compared to DNA viruses, which leaves the possibility of genetic mistakes more frequent. When I say “mistakes”, I mean an imperfect copy of the RNA genetic material as it reproduces. In most cases, not much happens. In some cases, it may hinder the virus but just as or more often, mutations improve the ability of the virus to succeed in some way, such as letting it multiply faster or making it harder to kill. Each person who becomes a host has the potential to become patient zero for a new, improved virus.
Several coronavirus strains have made the news this century: a couple of examples are
Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Asia and
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (
MERS) in, well, the middle east, although many cases were workers of Korean descent.
SARS killed about 800 out of 8000 victims with the disease over 6 months or so.
Untreated MERS infected thousands with a 35-45% death rate. So far, the new coronavirus, named 2019-nCoV, has sickened more than 6000 and killed 132 in 6 weeks, if you can believe statistics from the Chinese government. That’s a little more than a two per cent death rate.
(
Note:
My first article on this new coronavirus occurred when there were only 200 cases and 9 deaths. There are some who believe the number of cases and, perhaps, deaths, are much higher than reported)
Two per cent doesn’t seem like much, but the death rate from
the Spanish Flu 100 years ago was also a little more than two per cent. That virus went on to infect a third of the world’s population and cause 50-100 million deaths.
Edit Post
