The COVID-19 pandemic has truly taken over our world, crippling our life, while we desperately hope for the containment of the novel coronavirus and our lives to go back to how they used to be.?
We know the novel coronavirus is a sibling of the original SARS coronavirus that wreaked havoc in China during 2002-2003. However, what really made the COVID-19 that much dangerous?
Twitter user Peter Kolchinski, who is also a virologist and an investor in biotech companies,?has tried to explain how COVID-19 is way smarter than 2003's SARS virus, even though both belong to the Coronavirus family, in a series of tweets,?quoting a recent study published in journal Nature.?
In case you didn¡¯t know, COVID-19 attaches to our body using its spikes, which attach on the protein on our cells called the ACE2.?
He gives a really cool analogy to make us understand how this really works. ¡°Think of it as a particular doorknob that the virus knows how to turn. Every virus has a particular type of doorknob that it attaches to and turns so it can enter (infect) a cell.¡±
He further explains, ¡°For example, HIV has to turn two doorknobs: CD4 and typically CCR5. MERS attached to one called DPP4. All our cells are covered in all kinds of proteins that make them distinctive from one another.¡±
Now many might be wondering that why our body has such doorknobs everywhere. Why such proteins exist? Well, essentially they¡¯re helpful in keeping our blood pressure in check, sugar levels, etc.?
He further explained, ¡°Viruses have evolved to grab onto one or more proteins to gain entry into cells, where they hijack the cell¡¯s machinery to make more viruses. (Viruses can't replicate on their own and hence, are not quite alive). So what viruses see are a bunch of houses with varying doorknobs & they try to spread through the neighbourhood (our bodies) looking for houses (cells) covered in the doorknobs that they know how to turn.
Now even though COVID-19 is from the SARS family, it isn¡¯t as easy to control as the original SARS. According to Kolchinsky, the ACE2 doorknob is seen in cells from our lungs and throat.?
SARS-1 would enter a person through droplets in the air (just like COVID-19), and start infecting the lungs that would immediately show that a person is sick. This would result in immediate quarantining of the patient, thus controlling the spreading.
SARS CoV-2 or COVID-19, on the other hand, marks its presence in throat cells first, but the symptoms are common, which can get ignored by many.??
Peter explains, ¡°The person can remain asymptomatic or might not think they have anything worse than a cold. And from that person¡¯s throat, it can readily spread to others. Over the course of a week, in some patients, it will move into the lung neighbourhood and replicate just as SARS-1 would, causing severe symptoms, by which point the person is quarantined, but no matter since it had successfully spread.¡±
He concluded stating, ¡°So SARS-1 was a comparatively dumb virus. It went straight for the lungs, announced itself before it could spread to others, and so got social distanced into extinction. But SAR-2, the one plaguing us now, is stealthier, spreading first before revealing itself (and causing harm).¡±
He emphasised on the fact that social distancing is the only effective precaution to contain this novel coronavirus as these will help put a ¡®roadblock¡¯ in its ¡®evil plans¡¯.?