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The science behind the coronavirus

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  • The science behind the coronavirus

    The purpose of this thread is to follow the science behind the coronavirus. First a little background on the relationship between viruses and their relationship with humans.

    There is along history of the relationship between these viruses and humans. Relationship and history of coronavirus types:

    Source: https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/infectious-diseases/respiratory-viruses/coronaviruses-and-acute-respiratory-syndromes-covid-19,-mers,-and-sars



    Coronaviruses and Acute Respiratory Syndromes (COVID-19, MERS, and SARS) - Infectious Diseases - Merck Manuals Professional Edition

    "Numerous coronaviruses, first discovered in domestic poultry in the 1930s, cause respiratory, gastrointestinal, liver, and neurologic diseases in animals. Only 7 coronaviruses are known to cause disease in humans.

    common cold. Coronaviruses 229E and OC43 cause the common cold; the serotypes NL63 and HUK1 have also been associated with the common cold. Rarely, severe lower respiratory tract infections, including pneumonia, can occur, primarily in infants, older people, and the immunocompromised.

    SARS-CoV2 is a novel coronavirus identified as the cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that began in Wuhan, China in late 2019 and spread worldwide.

    MERS-CoV was identified in 2012 as the cause of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
    SARS-CoV was identified in 2002 as the cause of an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
    These coronaviruses that cause severe respiratory infections are zoonotic pathogens, which begin in infected animals and are transmitted from animals to people."

    © Copyright Original Source

    Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
    Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
    But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

    go with the flow the river knows . . .

    Frank

    I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

  • #2
    You might want to take a gander at an article in the New Yorker about its history: From Bats to Human Lungs, the Evolution of a Coronavirus.

    Here's a taste:

    Scientists first discovered that coronaviruses originate among bats following the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (sars) in 2003. Jonathan Epstein, an epidemiologist at the EcoHealth Alliance in New York who studies zoonotic viruses—those that can jump from animals to people—was part of a research team that went hunting for the source in China’s Guangdong Province, where simultaneous sars outbreaks had occurred, suggesting multiple spillovers from animals to people. At first, health officials believed palm civets, a mongoose-like species commonly eaten in parts of China, were responsible, as they were widely sold at markets connected to the sars outbreak, and tested positive for the virus. But civets bred elsewhere in Guangdong had no antibodies for the virus, indicating that the market animals were only an intermediary, highly infectious host. Epstein and others suspected that bats, which are ubiquitous in the area’s rural, agricultural hills, and were, at the time, also sold from cages at Guangdong’s wet markets, might be the coronavirus’s natural reservoir.

    The researchers travelled through the countryside, setting up field labs inside limestone caverns and taking swabs from dozens of bats through the night. After months of investigation, Epstein’s team discovered four species of horseshoe bats that carried coronaviruses similar to sars, one of which carried a coronavirus that was, genetically, a more than ninety per cent match. “They were found in all of the locations where sars clusters were happening,” he said.

    After years of further bat surveillance, researchers eventually found the direct coronavirus antecedent to sars, as well as hundreds of other coronaviruses circulating among some of the fourteen hundred bats species that live on six continents. Coronaviruses, and other virus families, it turns out, have been co-evolving with bats for the entire span of human civilization, and possibly much longer. As the coronavirus family grows, different strains simultaneously co-infect individual bats, turning their little bodies into virus blenders, creating new strains of every sort, some more powerful than others. This process happens without making bats sick—a phenomenon that scientists have linked to bats’ singular ability, among mammals, to fly. The feat takes a severe toll, such that their immune systems have evolved a better way to repair cell damage and to fight off viruses without provoking further inflammation. But when these viruses leap into a new species—whether a pangolin or a civet or a human—the result can be severe, sometimes deadly, sickness.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      You might want to take a gander at an article in the New Yorker about its history: From Bats to Human Lungs, the Evolution of a Coronavirus.

      Here's a taste:

      Scientists first discovered that coronaviruses originate among bats following the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (sars) in 2003. Jonathan Epstein, an epidemiologist at the EcoHealth Alliance in New York who studies zoonotic viruses—those that can jump from animals to people—was part of a research team that went hunting for the source in China’s Guangdong Province, where simultaneous sars outbreaks had occurred, suggesting multiple spillovers from animals to people. At first, health officials believed palm civets, a mongoose-like species commonly eaten in parts of China, were responsible, as they were widely sold at markets connected to the sars outbreak, and tested positive for the virus. But civets bred elsewhere in Guangdong had no antibodies for the virus, indicating that the market animals were only an intermediary, highly infectious host. Epstein and others suspected that bats, which are ubiquitous in the area’s rural, agricultural hills, and were, at the time, also sold from cages at Guangdong’s wet markets, might be the coronavirus’s natural reservoir.

      The researchers travelled through the countryside, setting up field labs inside limestone caverns and taking swabs from dozens of bats through the night. After months of investigation, Epstein’s team discovered four species of horseshoe bats that carried coronaviruses similar to sars, one of which carried a coronavirus that was, genetically, a more than ninety per cent match. “They were found in all of the locations where sars clusters were happening,” he said.

      After years of further bat surveillance, researchers eventually found the direct coronavirus antecedent to sars, as well as hundreds of other coronaviruses circulating among some of the fourteen hundred bats species that live on six continents. Coronaviruses, and other virus families, it turns out, have been co-evolving with bats for the entire span of human civilization, and possibly much longer. As the coronavirus family grows, different strains simultaneously co-infect individual bats, turning their little bodies into virus blenders, creating new strains of every sort, some more powerful than others. This process happens without making bats sick—a phenomenon that scientists have linked to bats’ singular ability, among mammals, to fly. The feat takes a severe toll, such that their immune systems have evolved a better way to repair cell damage and to fight off viruses without provoking further inflammation. But when these viruses leap into a new species—whether a pangolin or a civet or a human—the result can be severe, sometimes deadly, sickness.
      Interesting information! Thanks!
      Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
      Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
      But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

      go with the flow the river knows . . .

      Frank

      I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

      Comment

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