Coronavirus Notes from Talk w/ Dr. Vincent Racaniello

respiratory illness
80% of the infections are mild - you may not know you're infected
serious complications often have other health issues
viruses can be detected 3 hours IN THE AIR - but it drops to the ground
24 hours on cardboard
2-3 days on plastic and stainless steel

How doomed are we? -> 3-4% (if you take all numbers - but)
Korea has had thousands of cases and it's 0.4%
Up till 50 years of age - very few people die - over 60/70 is bad

Dr. compares flu, 15,000,000 cases in US so far compared to c-virus
Dr. does not suspect high degree of evolution due to virus being already easy to transmit

incubation period - some can transmit, some can't
you gain immunity to the virus, it does not re-infect (except on mutation)
coronavirus (and SARS, MERs) does not appear to mutate in a meaningful way to avoid immunity once someone is infected - ie if you're infected once you'll probably be immune a long time

there is no more lethal strain - zero base for this

vaccine might take two years - antivirals may be sooner

does coronavirus display any seasonality?
- does it go away with the warm weather? we don't know

we essentially get all of our viruses from animals
"it's not as bad as you think it is" - mainly older people, most younger people without prexisting conditions will be ok - the real issue is this will keep happening

"we've never seen a virus become more deadly as it passes through humans, it becomes more transmittable"
doctor believes transmission drives evolution <- important

is this virus man-made? -> you can look at the genome sequence, you can compare it against all other SARS/coronavirus type viruses, the closest relative to COV2 circulated in bats in 2013 - it's 96% identical - the sequence also doesn't look engineered

this will happen again -> animals will infect people again,



HOW WE CAN PREPARE:
- we can develop vaccines (we have ebola vacccine, avian flu, etc)
- the military funded the ebola vaccine and that's the only reason we have it
- we can make an anti-viral that deals with sars viruses relating to bats

WHAT WE AS INDIVIDUALS CAN DO:
- don't touch your face with your hands unless you've washed them - have incredible hand hygiene
- any public area is likely to be contaminated
- don't use those bathroom blowers they're a huge meme and they attack you with clouds of viruses
- masks work well with healthcare professionals, under CORRECT USAGE, masks can inhibit the spread of influenza - droplets get hung up in masks and that may reduce transmission - we cannot make any conclusions about mask efficacy ultimately

WHERE IS GOOD INFORMATION AVAILABLE
- virology blogs (such as Dr. Vincents)
- bioarchive (lots of papers in review) (not all papers are legitimate because it's recently submitted)
- "I distrust all news, I don't think the news is a good source"
- NPR is pretty good as they're not driven by profit
- WHO / CDC websites are usually reliable, USA is pretty good
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