What you don’t know is that ten days ago, your friend’s father was a guest of his business partner at the University Club, where he caught the novel
Three days after that, he coughed into his hand before opening the door of his apartment to welcome his son home. The saliva of COVID-19 patients can harbor half a trillion virus particles per teaspoon, & a cough
Viruses have been multiplying inside his body ever since. And as he talks, the passage of his breath over the
One of the droplets gets drawn into the branching passages of your lungs and settles on the warm, wet surface,
As the virus drifts through the lung’s mucus,
As the spike protein bumps up against the
The viral RNA gets busy.
As soon as the viral RNA encounters a ribosome, that ribosome begins reading it and building viral proteins.
with building the components of countless replica viruses.
As they are churned out, these components are transferred on a kind of cellular conveyor belt toward the surface of the cell.
All up and down your lungs, throat, and mouth, the scene is repeated over and over as cell after cell is penetrated and hijacked. Assuming the virus behaves like its relative, SARS, each generation of infection
You don’t feel any of this. In fact, you still feel totally fine.
What she doesn’t know is that an hour before, you went to the bathroom and neglected to wash your
Like a retail chain gobbled up by private equity, stripped for parts, and left to die, your infected cells spew out virus particles until they burn themselves
Two days later, sitting down to lunch, you realize that the thought of eating makes you feel nauseated. You lie down and sleep for a few hours. When you
You’re right, of course, in a sense. For most people infected with the coronavirus, that’s as far as it goes. With bed rest, they get better. But for reasons scientists don’t understand, about 20 percent of people get severely ill.
After four days of raging fever and feeling sore all over, you realize that you’re sicker than you’ve ever been in your life. You’ve got a dry cough that shakes you so hard that your back hurts. Fighting for breath, you order an
At the ER, you’re examined and sent to an isolation ward. As doctors wait for the results of a test
With all the regular beds already occupied by the many COVID-19 sufferers, you’re given a cot in a room alongside five other patients. Doctors put you on an intravenous drip to supply your body with
That’s not the worst of it. The intensity of the immune response is such that under its onslaught,
You’re fluttering on the edge between life and death. Now that you’ve slipped into MODS, your odds are 50-50 or worse. Owing to the fact that the pandemic has stretched the hospital’s resources past the breaking point,
Lying on your cot, you half-hear as the doctors hook you up to an extracorporeal-membrane-oxygenation (ECMO) machine. This will take over the work of your heart and lungs & hopefully keep you alive until your body can find its way back to equilibrium
That’s what your mind is telling itself, anyway, as the last cells of your