COVID-19: The Mysterious Virus

From Worldometer, I have adjusted this table to show how new deaths best determine the phase of COVID-19:

DAY     China   Italy   USA   Spain   Germany   S. Korea  WORLD

May   1         0    269   1897      281          113               1        5624
          2         0    474    1691     276            76               2        5215
          3         0    174    1154     164            54               0        3481
          4         0    195    1324     164          127               2        4096
          5         0    236    2350     185              ?               2        5787
          6         0    369    2528     244          282               1        6811

          7         0    274    2129     213          117               1        5589
          8         0    243    1687     229          118               0        5550
          9         0    194    1422     179            39               0        4248
        10         0    165      750     143            20               0        3510
        11         0    179    1008     123            92               0        3403
        12         0    172    1630     176            77               2        5328

Summary:

• Not a good day, as the World, USA and Spain all experienced rather large increases in new deaths.
• India had a troublesome 3,524 new cases and 121 new deaths. 
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi just announced a $260 billion economic rescue package.
• The population of India is 1.35 billion, compared to 328 million for the USA, a factor of four less.
• Frankly, I've lost track of how much money the U.S. Congress has passed for economic recovery, but, at least $3.5 trillion, with an additional $3 trillion proposed by the House.  Say the Senate trims this back to half that amount, or a total, then, of $5 trillion.  The per capita assistance then would be:
• USA =   $15,244/person
• India =   $      74 /person

From The New York Times this morning:

• Last week, the share of Americans staying home fell to 36 percent, down from 44 percent a few weeks ago, as a Times graphic shows.
• California State University, the nation’s largest four-year public university system, canceled in-person classes for the fall.
• The virus came late to Latin America, but death rates there are now comparable to those in Europe.

They also showed a graph that shows that the national testing rate is improving:

Except for Donald Trump, most people allow science to help drive decision-making.  But here we have a field of study that hasn't yet found 95% of what is in the Universe, and just guesses that there was something called a Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago.  They have no idea what is the shape of the Universe.  I've always thought, like say a bomb, when it explodes, the shape of the moving particles would be the surface of an expanding sphere.  Which means that should be the shape of the Universe.  Since the days of Einstein, most astrophysicists insisted the actual shape was flat, or a saddle or some other weird shape.  Then last year a few, outliers really, came around to a brilliant idea.  Why not the surface of an expanding sphere?  But that's science for you.

Worse, scientists don't know if a virus is alive or not.  Here are two opposing arguments, and accompanying quotes:

In many ways whether viruses are living or non-living entities is a moot philosophical point. There can be few organisms other than humans that have caused such devastation of human, animal and plant life. Smallpox, polio, rinderpest and foot-and-mouth viruses are all well-known for their disastrous effect on humans and animals. Less well known is the huge number of plant viruses that can cause total failure of staple crops.  (The COVID-19 virus is colored yellow above, as taken by a scanning and transmission electron microscope.)

The question of whether viruses can be considered to be alive, of course, hinges on one’s definition of life. Where we draw the line between chemistry and life can seem a philosophical, or even theological argument. Most creation stories involve a deity that imbues inanimate matter with the ‘spark of life’. From a scientific perspective, attempting to find a working definition for ‘life’ seems to me to have little practical value, but it is fun to think about. (Here captured with a transmission electron microscope, which shows those spikes on the surface, showing the crown image.)

These two scientists say the answer is philosophical, or, even theological.  This is science?  Yes, the foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt.  Knowledge is constantly improved.  A good scientist is never certain.  So a third point of view is that viruses are a unique form of life.

The last thing I wanted to do was lose your confidence about science, for that field of study is a lot safer to heed in a pandemic than that fatuous nincompoop running the USA.  But I thought that backdrop would be fun to share.  Seriously now, let me proceed to tell you what you should know about viruses (mostly from Wikipedia).  To first quote:

• A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses can infect all types of life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.^[1]
• Discovered in 1892 by the father of microbiology, Antony van Leeuwenhoek.
• There are only 6,000 or so described viruses.  But there are, actually millions of different types.
• It is the most numerous biological entity, more than everything else combined.
• There are ten times more viruses than bacteria in the ocean.

• There are ten million active viruses in a teaspoon of seawater, as salty as it is.
• Viruses kill 20% of all ocean biomass daily.
• 800 million viruses, mainly from the sea, are deposited on each square meter of land every day.

• Their activity in seawater is important in checking global climate warming, for viruses sequester carbon in the deep ocean.
• Viruses will become more and more important as vectors in genetic engineering.
• Being so small, they are key to the future of nanotechnology.

• They can become instruments of biological warfare.
• When not inside a living thing, viruses are called virions.
• They are one hundredth the size of most bacteria.

• One theory is that bacteria and viruses evolved separately from plasmids (pieces of DNA), but the former became more complex, while the latter became simpler.
• Another theory is that they formed 1.5 billion years ago.
• They cannot replicate, they invade a living thing and trick them into doing this for them.

• They seem like pests, but scientists said that more than 100 million years ago, a viral infection in a primitive mammal uploaded a gene that helped the placenta to evolve.  Human beings would not be here if not for that.  You've seen this evolutionary march of human progress many times...but it should start on the left with a virus.

• A virus has either DNA or RNA genomes.
• We all know that smoking and what we eat can cause cancer.  However, viruses also cause cancer.
• There is NO vaccine for ANY coronavirus, and the SARS Pandemic was 17 years ago.  And no vaccine for virus-caused colds and cancer.

• Vaccines eliminated smallpox, and checks polio measles, mumps and rubella.
• The HIV virus came from an ape in Africa, began to cause in 1982 what became (and still is) a pandemic,  has killed more than 25 million and today infects 38.6 million people. Almost 40 years, and still no vaccine for this disease.  Incidentally, there are globally today "only" 2.5 million active COVID-19 cases with 0.3 million  deaths.

I was planning to close with one final statement about this amazing organism called a virus.  This will be my posting tomorrow, for it will blow your mind.

I'm now into 1981 and not particularly enjoying a work day that began by commuting two hours/per day roundtrip, as parking was impossible.  There was almost always a nightly reception or dinner as part of the job, being entertained by lobbyists.  Mind you, this was not all that terrible.  The usual day ended being home at 10PM.  Worse, the safety factor at night in DC was a concern.  The weather was mostly too cold or too hot.

The Year 1981:

• In January Iran released 52 Americans held for 444 days.
• U.S. President Ronald Reagan shot in chest.  John Hinckley, now 65, is out of jail.
• China opens first Coco-Cola bottling plant.

• Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial beats out 1,421 other entrants.  She was then a Yale undergraduate student and now, at the age of 60, has built a career of blending nature with architecture.
• First music channel, MTV.

Here is the Billboard list of 1981 #1 songs, in less than two minutes.  Finally, you've all heard about Tiger King, and how Nicholas Cage will play Joe Exotica.  Well, that whole matter was a mess.  But the real life Lion King, Dean Schneider, is something else:

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