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Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic

The county/province of Uusimaa (literally Newland, as it was below sea level when the last ice age ended) in Finland is in lockdown since today Saturday 28.3.2020 till at least Sunday 19.4.2020. So I guess my Easter plans to visit my family are cancelled.

In better news my, cold or flu seems to have finally progressed to the dry cough stage, might be done by May if it goes like previous colds/flus. It is at least improvement on the sore throat I had for the past month.
 
foamy said:
RNA, usually.
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If we want to get into technicalities like that... if it's an RNA virus, it's either called a Ribovirus (which only uses RNA) like influenza, or a Retrovirus (which uses *both* RNA and DNA) like HIV.

Meanwhile, the various poxes are exclusively DNA viruses. Which are generally just called 'viruses'.

But you are correct in that there are plenty viruses that don't technically have any DNA. And you might be right that there's more of them... I have personally never sat down to count literally every species of virus to determine if Riboviruses outnumber the others or not.


What's important is that Isopropyl alcohol will kill them all the same.
 
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iamnuff said:
According to stuff I saw online, I should be going to the doctors so they can cut my thumbnail open and extract it, but...
Nah, they got bigger things to worry about, and i'd rather not head into a building full of sick people.
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If your funding source and location permits, you could try going to a specialist instead.
 
TanaNari said:
If we want to get into technicalities like that... if it's an RNA virus, it's either called a Ribovirus (which only uses RNA) like influenza, or a Retrovirus (which uses *both* RNA and DNA) like HIV.

Meanwhile, the various poxes are exclusively DNA viruses. Which are generally just called 'viruses'.
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Eh, while "ribovirus" is a term it's not exclusively used; calling a non-retrovirus RNA virus a "virus" isn't wrong and is in fact pretty common unless you're very specifically talking about that attribute.

Also, while retroviruses use DNA in their lifecycle, there is no DNA in the virion (the infectious vector, the stage of the lifecycle outside a cell, and the part you're going to be killing with alcohol).

Coronaviruses, it seems, are RNA viruses that use an RNA->RNA polymerase.
 
Iran's death toll just topped 2,500 with there now being a ban on intercity travel by road with offeners via roads and fining and impounding violators' cars. This and other restrictions will remain in place till April 8th though I personally expect for them to be extended even further.
 
magic9mushroom said:
Also, while retroviruses use DNA in their lifecycle, there is no DNA in the virion (the infectious vector, the stage of the lifecycle outside a cell, and the part you're going to be killing with alcohol).
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1 - alcohol is able to denature most proteins (and many other biological components), which includes RNA and is not limited to DNA

2 - Retro-chan wants the D
 
magic9mushroom said:
(the infectious vector, the stage of the lifecycle outside a cell, and the part you're going to be killing with alcohol).
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You obviously didn't read what I said. Alcohol destroys basically all forms of protein... of which, DNA and RNA only two of many, many examples. Especially Isopropyl- with enough time and concentration, that shit will melt through tougher skin than human.

Also, destroying the virion merely neutralizes a virus. Alcohol *kills* it (in as much as something that's not quite alive can die) when it dissolves the capsid (that is, the viral equivalent of a cell wall). And alcohol is very good at destroying capsid... but, then, so are almost any reactive substances (or energy)... capsids are about the flimsiest protein structures that can still be found in nature.

evildice said:
2 - Retro-chan wants the D
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I really need to lure you into commenting on my stories again. You always make the most amusing comments.
 
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TanaNari said:
You obviously didn't read what I said. Alcohol destroys basically all forms of protein... of which, DNA and RNA only two of many, many examples. Especially Isopropyl- with enough time and concentration, that shit will melt through tougher skin than human.
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DNA and RNA are not proteins.

Also, destroying the virion merely neutralizes a virus. Alcohol *kills* it (in as much as something that's not quite alive can die) when it dissolves the capsid (that is, the viral equivalent of a cell wall). And alcohol is very good at destroying capsid... but, then, so are almost any reactive substances (or energy)... capsids are about the flimsiest protein structures that can still be found in nature.
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I think you may be confused. A virion is a free virus particle, in its entirety.

A capsid is part of the structure of a virion (either the outer shell if there's no envelope, or the middle part if there is one). It protects the virus's genetic material (and possibly prepackaged viral enzymes) and helps to inject it into a cell. Positive-sense RNA viruses can still be infectious without a capsid (i.e. in purified RNA form), although their infectivity is much reduced.

I specified virions to distinguish from the other stage of a virus's life cycle, infected cells (which for non-skin diseases will assuredly not be removed by handwashing).
 
There was a company in Shenzhen that said they made a testing kit with eighty-something percent accuracy and immediately got a license in the EU through some kind of back channel, and then when they used it in Europe, they found it had around twenty-percent accuracy. It's all over social media here, so I'm hoping to see a hammer come down.
 
magic9mushroom said:
DNA and RNA are not proteins.
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Fine. Alcohol chemically reacts with and in doing so destroys the acids that make up all important structures of a cell (or cell-like thing in the case of a virus). Is that pedantic enough for your tastes, or do I have to go into details about what sorts of salts are created in the process? Spoiler: lots of them are nitrogen based.

magic9mushroom said:
I think you may be confused. A virion is a free virus particle, in its entirety.
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Yeah, I was thinking of the chemical binders that let the virus inject itself into the host cell.
 
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TanaNari said:
Fine. Alcohol chemically reacts with and in doing so destroys the acids that make up all important structures of a cell (or cell-like thing in the case of a virus). Is that pedantic enough for your tastes, or do I have to go into details about what sorts of salts are created in the process? Spoiler: lots of them are nitrogen based.
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Alcohols don't actually chemically react with most macromolecules. What they do is disrupt their structure (and thus function) due to lessening the hydrophobic effect. Many individual macromolecules can recover from being denatured, but larger structures typically can't because the individual molecules drifted apart.

I was honestly having a brainfart when I forgot that alcohol denatures proteins and would thus disrupt a capsid.
 
Then you must also take into account that most virrii have a rather short, shall we say, live-expectance once outside
an host.

However, i wonder what will be the politcal fallout?

Regardless, i imagine it will invovle a lot of blamings, blame-shiftings, half-truth and outright lies from any party involved.
Afterall, capitalising on a crisis to advance your agenda or to demolish your opponent is a time honnored tactict in politic.
 
Railhazar said:
Afterall, capitalising on a crisis to advance your agenda or to demolish your opponent is a time honnored tactict in politic.
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Yeah, I'm compiling a "these are people I will forever advocate against" list based upon which jackasses tried to exploit this natural disaster. I will vote for their opponents at every opportunity, even if it means voting for someone whose policies I actively despise. I'd rather a person I hate who has integrity than a person I agree with who's scum.

OverMaster said:
This one's is way longer than usual, though.
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By what measure? Outside the body, this one appears to be average, perhaps slightly below average, for the coronavirus family... which are one of the shorter-lived groups to begin with.

What's unusual about this one is the bizarrely long asymptomatic period. People can go two to three weeks after infection before showing a single symptom... as opposed to most coronaviruses which (in a healthy body) will run their entire course from infection to returning to full health within a week or two.

What's even more frustrating is that it's contagious for the majority, perhaps entirety (still some controversy there), of its cycle. Which isn't unusual for most cold or flu viruses, but has a devastating synergistic effect with that long asymptomatic period.

Guess we should just be glad it's not like HIV, which can go for years without detection.

When coupled with the effective nonexistence of herd immunity... we get ourselves a mini plague. And, yes, this is a *miniature* plague. Compared to the real monsters like Bubonic and Smallpox, we got off lucky. Sooner or later this is going to happen again with something ten to twenty times more deadly.
 
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Not looking forward to the waves of reinfections that will result from this thing. It's gonna change lifestyles and if there is not a viable treatment or vaccine in the near future we will most likely see many fields of jobs being virtually eliminated from the the work force. I'll just settle for working from home for the meantime if possible or failing that just not working for the majority of this year.

I already miss being able to go to the gym.
 
eager slacker said:
Not looking forward to the waves of reinfections that will result from this thing. It's gonna change lifestyles and if there is not a viable treatment or vaccine in the near future we will most likely see many fields of jobs being virtually eliminated from the the work force. I'll just settle for working from home for the meantime if possible or failing that just not working for the majority of this year.

I already miss being able to go to the gym.
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Too many jobs just can't be done from home.

How do you build houses from your home? How do you serve a gas station from home? How do you keep an electric plant running from home?

It gets even worse in underdeveloped countries that are far less apt at providing work-from-home options.
 
eager slacker said:
Not looking forward to the waves of reinfections that will result from this thing.
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Shouldn't be this bad the next wave. Vaccine progress is looking fine (no harmful side effects thus far, we're just waiting to see if it works against the disease in humans the way it does in animals- but there's almost no risk that it won't) and we know from the handful of reinfected that it's not nearly as harmful the second go around.

This shit's going to be relegated to the same pile as all the other seasonal bugs in a year or so.

Hell, it might even do us a minor favor of killing off anti-vaxxers before they manage to bring something legitimately scary like measles back into the industrialized world.
 
*Points to places like the Tibetan Ice Sheets and other locations*

Might be sooner then you think if those thaw out at a considerable rate.
 
MerelysSoul said:
*Points to places like the Tibetan Ice Sheets and other locations*
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Yeah... if anything comes out of there, it will undoubtedly be bacterial (with a teensy tiny chance of fungal) in nature... and in my personal opinion, bacteria are vastly more frightening than viruses. If only because it's not truly possible to eliminate bacteria, because they can live outside of the body indefinitely and vaccines don't often work on them. Sure, antibiotics are an option, but they're treatments rather than preventatives and sometimes don't work.

If we somehow did invent a biological weapon to preemptively wipe out bacteria en masse, we could never deploy it for fear of destroying the entire ecosystem (and us with it).

Viruses are scary because of their spread rates, but bacteria are functionally immortal.
 
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TanaNari said:
Yeah... if anything comes out of there, it will undoubtedly be bacterial (with a teensy tiny chance of fungal) in nature... and in my personal opinion, bacteria are vastly more frightening than viruses. If only because it's not truly possible to eliminate bacteria, because they can live outside of the body indefinitely and vaccines don't often work on them. Sure, antibiotics are an option, but they're treatments rather than preventatives and sometimes don't work.

If we somehow did invent a biological weapon to preemptively wipe out bacteria en masse, we could never deploy it for fear of destroying the entire ecosystem (and us with it).

Viruses are scary because of their spread rates, but bacteria are functionally immortal.
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Either way, Nature has many, many darts to throw at the dartboard named humanity. So it's not a matter of if but when and how much are going to die. The future is going to get more dangerous.
 
MerelysSoul said:
The future is going to get more dangerous.
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Eh, it's been getting progressively less dangerous for a very long time. At this point, we're comfortably insulated.

The future grows ever more stable, as we increase in numbers, knowledge, and genetic diversity with every new generation... we've reached a point where no disease can ever threaten the entire species ever again.

zup said:
We have managed to breed ahead of things killing us so far. Life goes on, if not necessarily for everybody.
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Yep. At this point, there are only two true threats to humanity. The first being ourselves (we have gotten very good at killing each other over the last century) and the second being celestial events. One unfortunate space rock and all are works are for naught.
 
TanaNari said:
Eh, it's been getting progressively less dangerous for a very long time. At this point, we're comfortably insulated.

The future grows ever more stable, as we increase in numbers, knowledge, and genetic diversity with every new generation... we've reached a point where no disease can ever threaten the entire species ever again.
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Long Term, you are right. Short Term, we will have to deal with waves of new diseases. Plus, I still factor in the other crisis and how the diseases will affect them. Kinda the whole 'Darkest before the Dawn' type scenario. Overall, not good projections.
 
MerelysSoul said:
Kinda the whole 'Darkest before the Dawn' type scenario.
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Yeah, we've been through that, already. Somewhere in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. We're sitting at roughly 7:30 in the morning in this particular metaphor. Noon would be right around the time we have self-sustained off-world colonies. Sunset is the first interplanetary war.
 
TanaNari said:
Guess we should just be glad it's not like HIV, which can go for years without detection.

When coupled with the effective nonexistence of herd immunity... we get ourselves a mini plague. And, yes, this is a *miniature* plague. Compared to the real monsters like Bubonic and Smallpox, we got off lucky. Sooner or later this is going to happen again with something ten to twenty times more deadly.
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Yeah, as far as historic plagues it is far away from the worst. Black death killed about 30% to 50% of population.

Plagues brought by Europeans into America killed 70-90% of population (and collapsed societies so thoroughly that it had plenty of bizzare results).

And I am glad that it has quite limited death rate. Still high enough to kill (hopefully temporarily) economy. And have "For your own and your family safety. Please remain within your homes" recordings blasted out of loudspeakers of police vans cruising through my city.

TanaNari said:
The future grows ever more stable, as we increase in numbers, knowledge, and genetic diversity with every new generation... we've reached a point where no disease can ever threaten the entire species ever again.
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Sadly, technology base/communities/culture becomes more and more fragile. And I would argue that threat of wiping out species was lowest when we reached Australia/Americas. We were already the apex predator, able to kill any animal.

And our advances since that time (especially travel-related) made us more fragile to plagues. Yes, medicine improved - but slower than our ability to travel. And as far as species-extinction our advances made situation worse. We were multiple times decisions away from nuclear war.

And we are still unable to deal with cosmic-level threats (major impacts, or more theoretical ones like aliens)...
TanaNari said:
Yep. At this point, there are only two true threats to humanity. The first being ourselves (we have gotten very good at killing each other over the last century) and the second being celestial events. One unfortunate space rock and all are works are for naught.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst is my favorite

"a typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime"

For bonus irony "GRBs were first detected in 1967 by the Vela satellites, which had been designed to detect covert nuclear weapons tests; this was declassified and published in 1973."
 
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wichajster said:
Yeah, as far as historic plagues it is far away from the worst. Black death killed about 30% to 50% of population.

Plagues brought by Europeans into America killed 70-90% of population (and collapsed societies so thoroughly that it had plenty of bizzare results).

And I am glad that it has quite limited death rate. Still high enough to kill (hopefully temporarily) economy. And have "For your own and your family safety. Please remain within your homes" recordings blasted out of loudspeakers of police vans cruising through my city.


Sadly, technology base/communities/culture becomes more and more fragile. And I would argue that threat of wiping out species was lowest when we reached Australia/Americas. We were already the apex predator, able to kill any animal.

And our advances since that time (especially travel-related) made us more fragile to plagues. Yes, medicine improved - but slower than our ability to travel. And as far as species-extinction our advances made situation worse. We were multiple times decisions away from nuclear war.

And we are still unable to deal with cosmic-level threats (major impacts, or more theoretical ones like aliens)...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst is my favorite

"a typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime"

For bonus irony "GRBs were first detected in 1967 by the Vela satellites, which had been designed to detect covert nuclear weapons tests; this was declassified and published in 1973."
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Well the answer is still spread and breed. If planetary travel is too fast, easy and cheap, go interplanetary. If we somehow manage interplanetary mass tourism, go interstellar and keep going.
 
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