COVID19, depending on the region you’re in, is either being perceived as a death sentence or a very convenient albeit cautionary way of skipping your daily work/study and staying at home. The Coronavirus, since it’s emergence in December has transformed the global mindset drastically, as it continues to ravage through the 6 continents, seemingly tightening its grip with passage of each day. As humanity faces its first pandemic of this magnitude in modern times, it has become difficult to keep track of the massive influx of information on the cause and extent of the virus, and the effect that it’s having and going to have on mankind on a global scale.

Crash Course on the Virus

Socially, Coronavirus has gone from being a meme and another excuse to exercise xenophobia, to being feared as a harbinger of doom in the western world. COVID19, a virus that usually infects bats, infected pangolins as a cross species endeavor and ended up in humans, eventually. This process is called zoonosis and is not rare when viruses are in question, in fact most of the viral outbreaks are as a result of this. Vox made a video on this, and it helps clear a lot of grey areas around why it’s China where these cross species viruses originate.

Viruses in their essence are barely living organisms. They are nature’s robots that are made of nucleic acids (DNA or RNA), and few proteins and that help in attachment/invasion, reproduction and encompassing the complete product as a package with the help of lipids. They bind to specific proteins on surfaces of cells and can reproduce only in the cells of living beings. Here, they can build literal armies of themselves, unless neutralized by the immune system. COVID19 is no different. Its surface proteins have a high affinity for receptor proteins found on alveoli sacs that are abundant in the lungs. Hence, viruses of similar nature cause respiratory illnesses of varying severity, like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), etc.

Why you should follow the rules

We know that Coronavirus spreads due to the infected person’s breath, coughs or sneezes, and also in case those droplets end up on some surface. Recent study by NIH has found that they can stay on surfaces for up to 3 days, which means that the virus is pretty stable outside the body too. Hence, disinfection of surfaces at regular basis would be a good idea for busy places.

Until then, the best way to avoid getting this passive infection is the easiest trick in the book: Washing hands. Hand sanitizers are a modern and fancy method of doing the same thing, which totally does not justify the fact that some folks might just start ordering sanitizers at hiked prizes from the black market to continue stacking them up. Moreover, hoarding tissue papers, sanitizers & soap amongst other things is only creating more problems by depriving people of the first line of defense. That needs to be stopped.

On serious note, regular soaps are almost as effective, if not better than alcohol based sanitizers, since COVID19 is enveloped in a simple lipid membrane that is easily destroyed by soap molecules.

Palli Thordarson on Twitter

1/25 Part 1 - Why does soap work so well on the SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus and indeed most viruses? Because it is a self-assembled nanoparticle in which the weakest link is the lipid (fatty) bilayer. A two part thread about soap, viruses and supramolecular chemistry #COVID19

Masks, on the other hand, are risky business and hard to comment upon, so a direct person-person infection spread is best avoided if the person who suspects they are infected just stays at home and avoids contact. Since we cannot keep washing our hands every minute, keeping your hands away from your face is also strongly recommended because if the virus particles do end up on your face, it wouldn’t take long for them to enter your body through the many exposed inlets on the face.

Roots of Pandemonium

Sheer panic has been rampantly spreading because everyone’s eyes are on the digits rather than the fundamental biology of the virus. And the 2 pans ⁠ — pandemic and panic, do not get along well. One of the reasons that contributes to crazy numbers going from single digits to triple digits in very short periods has more to do with the difficulty in diagnosis combined with the poor tools used for those diagnosis rather than the virus mutating/upgrading itself to infect larger number of people, which is the first theory that comes to mind of the lay public with a deep love for Sci-Fi.

The symptoms may manifest themselves anytime between 2–14 days which means although a person may be infected, they might be spreading the infection unknowingly until they actually start feeling the symptoms and can self quarantine. This is the primary reason for some parts of Europe’s coronavirus statistics shooting up overnight. In many regions, especially Scandinavian countries, friends and families returning home from skiing trips in Northern Italy during late February developed the symptoms in March where a sharp increase in the number of cases can be noted.

Bad testing and screening mechanisms further worsens the epidemiological data availability of the virus. The US has been having problems with its primers (short sequences that play an essential role in a molecular method of detection of the virus, called PCR) and this is aggravating the existing fear for the virus.

The symptoms, when they do show up eventually are initially almost same as common flu: cough, fever, fatigue, and pain in muscles. The symptoms may aggravate to pneumonia, sepsis and other severe respiratory ailments which can cause death. But from the demographics it’s clear that if you’re a healthy adult aged between 18 and 50, you don’t have to worry about dying from it because even if you get infected, it’s highly improbable that it would kill you. It is of utmost importance that affected people keep a healthy and woke mindset of trying to stay balanced, by not expecting eminent death and at the same time not being reckless and infecting everyone around them. Spreading the virus farther, and even to more vulnerable populations means increasing the time it will take for us to get back to the normal track of life.

Things could have been worse

It’d be like jinxing the luck that humans have with COVID19, if we say that the coronavirus isn’t as dangerous as you’d expect. It’s not an apocalyptic virus as of now. The Bird Flu(s), the MERS, and even Ebola, had a way higher mortality rate, but a lower rate of infection as compared to COVID19. In fact, in January the argument on how dangerous Coronavirus actually is, hinged on “Number of people dying from seasonal flu is much higher!”
What sets COVID19 apart is how immensely communicable it is. It has spread rapidly, and has been detected and documented at different rates. But that’s a good thing: Being highly communicable is better than being highly fatal.

Currently, schools and colleges are being shut across different countries, while workplaces are also issuing the work-from-home advice. Countries like USA and Italy, which could not fathom the rate of infection in time are now on the verge of or have already gone in complete shutdown. Japan and Singapore, two countries that were the first signs of the virus going global have been tackling it tactically and in a timely manner, despite of being densely populated. China is also seeing signs of recovery after being devastated by it for almost 4 months now. I am currently in Sweden, and so far everyone’s been pretty chill about it. There has been no official order for shutting down universities, and Stockholm recently shifted it’s strategy by turning it’s focus towards the target group, rather than looking at every single adult who might be infected.

All this points to the fact that the Coronavirus isn’t the monster we are imagining it to be, but rather a test on how effective and efficient the authorities and we, as individuals are, in facing it.

Impact of the Pandemic

Coronavirus may not be the next black plague that wipes out massive populations from the face of the world, but it has managed to bring the daily routine to a standstill. The ongoing impact has affected almost every other aspect of life, and when we consider it with a wide perspective, only then do we realize its magnitude.

Many companies are urging working from home, schools and universities have stopped taking classes, and most of the frolicking activities like concerts and theaters have closed for the time being, to avoid large scale gatherings. Exams are being postponed, in some places students are even been asked to go home (a very extreme and uncalculated measure IMO), and researchers who haven’t received the strict order of work from home are planning on how their experiments can be realigned according to the situation. Sports events are being postponed into summer, major movie releases have also been suspended and gaming expos which have happened every year, and are a largely important economically and for pop culture, now stand cancelled.

But the larger repercussions might not catch the eye of many. The tourism industry of various countries have been hit the worst. Kyoto and Rome which ideally would be inhabited by thousands of tourists, now lay empty, with hotel prices and flight tickets at their cheapest, but no one to buy them. We are talking about businesses that are completely dependent on tourists which are making almost negligible money during these dire times. We are also looking at the commercial airlines industry which is recording large losses since traveling within the country and around the world has come to a sluggish stop. In 2020, there’s nothing wrong in accepting the existence of Youtube Industry, and although the views might see a rise because of people spending more time at home, the content creators dependent on movies, sports and even esport events will have to come up with novel ways of bypassing this drought.

So, as we continue our battle against the virus with the name of a beer, it’s good to be considerate and moderate, not jumping on the panic train while at the same time not being relaxed to the extent that you make use of your paid leaves and university holidays by going clubbing every other evening. Looking at the trajectory, I personally feel the cases are going to shoot up one last time, before they start going down, once the self quarantine results start reflecting in the demographics. Every individual now has a responsibility vested in them, and unless humanity fights as one force, we won’t be able to regain normality anytime soon. The longer the pandemic continues, along with the lives it will claim, it will also leave scars in form of socioeconomic effect that will be only come in limelight when the biological hazard has ended.

Hello reader! This was my first piece of work for Medium, any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated! If you liked this article please share it and spread awareness regarding COVID19!

Disclaimer: This is an Opinion Piece albeit with lot of facts, so my inclinations towards moderation may not be appreciated by some

I will be writing about a plethora of different topics, current affairs being one of them. Follow me on here and on Twitter (@wordybiologist) to stay updated!

References / Further Reading:

• How soap absolutely annihilates the coronavirus
• Coronavirus Age, Sex, Demographics (COVID-19) - Worldometer
• How Long Does the Coronavirus Last on Surfaces?
• COVID-19: In charts and maps
• Key Missteps at the CDC Have Set Back Its Ability to Detect the Potential Spread of Coronavirus - ProPublica
• Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2