Covid-19 Article (It's old, I just wanted to get something out there. I'll get some new stuff soon, I promise)
DISCLAIMER-THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN AUGUST. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED.
Undoubtedly, you’ve heard some of the coronavirus stories going viral on the internet. Alcohol kills coronavirus. As long as you stay out in the sun long enough, you’re immune to Covid-19. If you’ve had coronavirus before, you can’t get it again. These are all big lies. Though some stories have their roots in the truth, misinformation can be just as deadly as coronavirus. You deserve to know the truth.
How do you know if you have it?
The first thing you should know about coronavirus is how to spot it, in others and yourself. Coronavirus spreads from respiratory droplets, which is a fancy way to say that it spreads from coughing, sneezes, and even just normal talking. These droplets hover around in the air for a while, and settle on objects. People then either breathe them in, or touch an object that respiratory droplets have settled on, then touch their face. If you think about it though, this is what happens normally too, just without the disease part. Hopefully.
Gloves won’t help though, so what are you supposed to do to stop this thing? Well, hopefully you’ve heard, but I’ll say it for those of you who haven’t, wear masks! These stop the respiratory droplets an extraordinary amount. Also, practice social distancing! (I feel that I should end the important parts with an exclamation point so that you can imagine me yelling them at you.) Staying away from people stops you from giving it to people. Slow the spread! Simple measures can save lives.
Some symptoms of coronavirus are fever, chills, dry cough, headache, stomach pain, and muscle aches, to name a few. The thing is though, that the symptoms aren’t the same for everyone. Some people can even be asymptomatic, or not show symptoms at all. Why does it affect everyone so differently? 45 to 85% of people that are infected with coronavirus are asymptomatic, which is a huge number of unnoticed carriers of disease!
The reason is simple though. Everyone is different, so why should the disease affect everyone the same? It’s not as if the virus spins a wheel to randomly choose if and how it will infect someone. It’s very, very calculated. If you are obese, have diabetes, are older, or have underlying disease, you are at risk. It’s a fact. It’s simple, the less healthy you are, the easier target you are for disease and the more that disease will affect you. Sure, genetics play their part, as well as other hidden factors, but mostly it’s you that plays the main role in whether you will get disease.
What is Covid-19?
Covid-19 is a disease under the broad umbrella of coronaviruses, which is a series of viruses that when examined under a microscope seem to have a corona, or crown, surrounding them. Coronaviruses have been around for centuries, and likely even you have been infected with one before. The common cold is a type of coronavirus, though even the common cold is a definition that harbors many other specific types of disease, like 229E and NL63.
The point is though, that most coronaviruses are relatively harmless. So why is this one so scary? Why is it causing the entire world to panic? The answer lies in the origins of Covid-19. In Wuhan, China, where a cute and endangered creature called a pangolin, not a bat, caused a deadly virus to spread rapidly around the world, infecting millions upon millions.
Where did Coronavirus come from?
Now, I now you’ve all heard that coronavirus came from a bat, and are either very confused on what a pangolin is or have rapidly Googled it and fallen in love with it, donated to at least ten of it’s endangered animal funds, and have come back to see how your new favorite animal could have infected millions of people with a killer disease. (I recommend the latter, by the way.)
The bat was a big part of how we got coronavirus, but the fish and the pangolin were too. Or at least, most likely. The pangolin almost definitely got it from the bat, and it was transmitted to us humans by the pangolin in a live animal market in Wuhan, China. The fact of the matter is that live animal markets are unsanitary and harbors for all kinds of disease. Pangolins were probably being sold for their uses in traditional Chinese medicine, where they use the scales.
Fish are the origins of most types of coronaviruses, so many scientists believe that fish are what really caused this pandemic. Bats have probably lived with this type of coronavirus for thousands of years, then the virus adapted to pangolins, but they weren’t the main goal. The virus had something bigger than pangolins in mind.
Us. The virus either couldn’t mutate to be able to attack a human until it had mutated for a smaller mammal, or it needed to attack a species that had closer contact with humans than bats, or it could have been reasons that are completely different, but it was going after us.
How did it progress?
Covid-19 started being noticed way back in January where people were beginning to question if the new type of pneumonia was a new strain of coronavirus. Now think about this, America’s first case was Jan, 20. That means we had our first case before Wuhan even went into lockdown. And we didn’t even mandate masks until, well we didn’t. It was state by state. If your state didn’t mandate masks, well, sucks for you! Trump was busy promoting the use of powerful drugs to stop covid-19, and honestly was still unsure if it was real or not, despite members of the government also catching it. (It’s not political, it’s true!)
On June 10, states began to stop social distancing. Guess what happened? A huge spike happened, and the U.S’s cases hit 2 million people! Let me make that number look bigger for you. 2,000,000 people! From a little time of states easing back on restrictions! I want you to know how serious this is. Each and every state had a choice, yes, but so did each and every single person who decided that yeah, “I feel that social distancing is a bother, so I’m just gonna sidle up close to this person now. Who cares about a deadly virus killing people left and right, it’s so far away, it can’t touch me here.” All of you have a choice. Don’t let that choice be made by others for you. And I don’t mean protesting masks because ‘the government is trying to control us,’ but because endorsing masks means respect for those around you, caring to keep others safe.
Pretty much, the point of describing how it progressed is to show you that it spread really really fast, because we were kind of relaxed on precautionary measures. But there was another reason it spread so fast. It was, and still is, a completely new virus. Our immune systems weren’t ready. Haven’t you heard stories of when Europeans came here, to America, and transmitted chicken pox to the Native Americans and it was fatal? Have you wondered why then, did people way back in the 1980’s have chickenpox parties for their children? I mean, the people in the eighties must have been at least a little smarter than the Europeans invading, and I don’t remember hearing about millions dying from chickenpox in America in the 1980’s. Well, it’s because the Native Americans’ immune systems weren’t prepared for chickenpox. (Don’t give your kids chickenpox parties, by the way, they won’t thank you later if they get shingles when they’re old.) Our immune systems weren’t ready for this new virus that was transmitted by animals. That’s why scientists are hoping so much that not only will they be able to find a vaccine that works, but antibodies that work as well. (Which is kind of counterintuitive on my part, because most vaccines come from activating cells to create antibodies.)
Tracking Covid Around the World
Now, you might be wondering, how do we know when the U.S. has surpassed 2 million cases? That seems like a lot. Well it is, but you, hypothetical reader, sound like you were born in the 50’s. Computers, or course! Medical records from whenever someone gets tested or walks into the doctor's office. Death certificates. All compiled into a great big computer system, where skilled data analysts figure out what it all means and data visualizers make it easily digestible information by making it into graphs, tables, and charts.
There are four main categories that analysts sort cases into, some cases falling into more than one category. Incidence, prevalence, hospitalization, and death. Incidence is how many new cases there are in a period of time, prevalence is the number of cases at a specific time, hospitalization is the amount of people that are hospitalized, and death is, well you get it.
These methods are happening in many countries, but not all countries are truthful. (America included.) For example, North Korea reports no cases still, and is one of the only countries in the world not to. To be fair, North Korea’s borders are famously tight, but still, it is highly unlikely that they didn’t catch it, however independent North Korea is.
Is There Any Hope?
Well, yeah, there’s plenty of hope. Is that hope well placed? We can only hope so. Don’t worry, we’ve had plenty of world-wide deadly viruses, so I’m sure we can get out of this one. SARS, though it didn’t really make it to America, was fixed. Though the Covid-19 death rate surpasses SARS. Okay, but the flu, we got through that, didn’t we? Okay, not really. Tons of people still die from the flu every year. Not many people are motivated to get vaccines and it mutates so much every year that it’s bound to catch us off guard one of these times. There was an outbreak of a really bad virus in San Francisco in the early 1900s! We got through that one, and though it wasn’t worldwide, there were still tons of people protesting having to wear masks, which is kind of like this one. Though the protests in San Francisco resulted in some death, which is horrific. Okay, coronavirus is different, yes. It’s new, and it requires us to pull together, not fall apart. (Though not too close together, social distance.) Okay, we pull together virtually. And with virtual power and your newfound knowledge, you can get through this thing. We can get through this thing.
Sources:
1. https://dph.georgia.gov/what-covid-19
3. https://medicine.uq.edu.au/blog/2020/07/covid-19-why-does-it-affect-people-differently
4. https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020
5.https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/about-epidemiology/monitoring-and-tracking.html
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