AstonJ

AstonJ

Why is Covid-19 so infectious?

I’ve not heard many outlets comment about this - but anyone else wondering why it is so infectious?

We get new cold and flu viruses every year, yet they infect a fraction of the number of people - what makes Covid-19 so much more infectious?

Most Liked

AstonJ

AstonJ

It’s also possible that we catch those but our immune systems fight them off and we don’t notice.

However:

COVID19 is 30x more deadly and almost 2x more contagious than the flu. We have no existing immunity to COVID19.

https://twitter.com/VirusesImmunity/status/1238475009712160769

This article looks really good with some good info too:

One of the few mercies during this crisis is that, by their nature, individual coronaviruses are easily destroyed. Each virus particle consists of a small set of genes, enclosed by a sphere of fatty lipid molecules, and because lipid shells are easily torn apart by soap, 20 seconds of thorough hand-washing can take one down. Lipid shells are also vulnerable to the elements; a recent study shows that the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, survives for no more than a day on cardboard, and about two to three days on steel and plastic. These viruses don’t endure in the world. They need bodies.

To be clear, SARS-CoV-2 is not the flu. It causes a disease with different symptoms, spreads and kills more readily, and belongs to a completely different family of viruses. This family, the coronaviruses, includes just six other members that infect humans. Four of them—OC43, HKU1, NL63, and 229E—have been gently annoying humans for more than a century, causing a third of common colds. The other two—MERS and SARS (or “SARS-classic,” as some virologists have started calling it)—both cause far more severe disease. Why was this seventh coronavirus the one to go pandemic?

AstonJ

AstonJ

…but I wonder why does it appear to be more contagious than other viruses such as colds and flus? Assuming it behaves like other Coronaviruses.

I’ve probably had a flu once or twice in the last 10 years and a cold a handful of times (even when people nearby have had it).

Are we likely to see a dormant-like state of it? Like with HSV - which only results in symptoms when you are run down, etc? Maybe it will reach the infection rates of other viruses such as HPV. Perhaps people will carry it from a young age, but it will only create issues as they get older…

patrickdm

patrickdm

Flu is not a coronavirus, while common Cold virus are.
This is a novel virus for humanity, only recently it made the species jump from presumably bats to humans. No one has ever encountered it yet, there is no herd immunity against it reducing its spread from person to person. It is airborne transmisible, and asymptomatic or presymptomatics can infect a large number of people without even knowing they are infected. All this can account for its high rate of contagious.

Where Next?

Popular Science Tech topics Top

AstonJ
Just started reading Ben Greenfield’s Boundless on my Kindle https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bo...
New
AstonJ
Seems like a lot of people caught it - just wondered whether any of you did? As far as I know I didn’t, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I...
New
rustkas
Welcome to the @Devtalk cooking and recipes thread! Please feel free to share recipes and/or photos or posts about things you’ve been co...
New
First poster: bot
Viruses that were on hiatus during Covid are back — and behaving in unexpected ways. For nearly two years, as the Covid pandemic disrupt...
New
First poster: bot
Landmark human study finds a link between ‘forever chemicals’ in cookware and liver cancer. Researchers at the University of Southern Ca...
New
CommunityNews
“Every time we looked at one of the inks, we found something that gave me pause.”
New
CommunityNews
Scientists think they might hold the key to helping protect us all.
New
First poster: bot
Endemic Pathogens are Making You Crazy and Then Killing You | RETURN. Nobody warned you about them, but they’re destroying your mind and...
New
New
CommunityNews
In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge | Quanta Magazine. Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system...
New

Other popular topics Top

Devtalk
Reading something? Working on something? Planning something? Changing jobs even!? If you’re up for sharing, please let us know what you’...
1023 17214 380
New
malloryerik
Any thoughts on Svelte? Svelte is a radical new approach to building user interfaces. Whereas traditional frameworks like React and Vue...
New
AstonJ
Just done a fresh install of macOS Big Sur and on installing Erlang I am getting: asdf install erlang 23.1.2 Configure failed. checking ...
New
Margaret
Hello content creators! Happy new year. What tech topics do you think will be the focus of 2021? My vote for one topic is ethics in tech...
New
Exadra37
I am asking for any distro that only has the bare-bones to be able to get a shell in the server and then just install the packages as we ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Learn different ways of writing concurrent code in Elixir and increase your application's performance, without sacrificing scalability or...
New
Maartz
Hi folks, I don’t know if I saw this here but, here’s a new programming language, called Roc Reminds me a bit of Elm and thus Haskell. ...
New
mafinar
This is going to be a long an frequently posted thread. While talking to a friend of mine who has taken data structure and algorithm cou...
New
AstonJ
We’ve talked about his book briefly here but it is quickly becoming obsolete - so he’s decided to create a series of 7 podcasts, the firs...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight: Peter Ullrich @PJUllrich Data is at the core of every business, but it is useless if nobody can access and analyze ...
New