Thread by @fascinatorfun

How CV19 Could Take Over Your Body

This is essential reading as science writer, Jeff Wise spells out the journey of CV19 through the air & into & thro’ bodies explicitly & (too?!) colourfully.

Social distancing takes on a colourful meaning, Tim Martin nymag.com/intelligencer/…

It starts off like a normal day in Covidland
You try to be good, decide to meet a fried outdoors.
Used hand sanitiser
Keep a distance.

But, unknown your friend’s Dad had contracted COVID 10 days ago.

When your friend, his son was visiting, the Dad, breathed in 32456 particles

Altho’ it transmits in droplets & other waste, it aerosols eg when coughed out before settling on surfaces.

So the virus makes its way inside your friends body, multiplying ever since. Virus-ladened droplets wafts over your table & settle on your uneaten food.

312405 particles

One of those transmitted particles gets drawn into the branching passages of your lungs..depositing virus particles into the mucus coating the tissue.

The tiny knobbily, sticky virus bumps into one of the cells that line the surface & that provides a back door, an anchor.

The shape of the virus matches the ACE2 present in the lung cells it sticks to it like adhesive. The membrane fuses with the membrane of the cell spilling the RNA content into the interior of the lung.

The virus is in.

Copying and transmitting like Santa’s workshop.

When the viral RNA encounters a ribosome off it goes, cooying itself, hijacking MORE of the cell’s ribosomes, travelling along a kind of cellular conveyor belt into the next factory processes, bursting open, multiplying and fusing.

As it settles into your lungs, throat and mouth the scene is then played on repeat, probably pouring through your digestive system.

You don’t feel a thing.
You feel bored but fine.
So bored you think you will lose your mind.

You call your ex & arrange to meet up.

She’s wearing a mask.
But she gives you a hug on leaving

You hadn’t washed your hands
Transfers to her coat
She scratches her nose
9404 particles

It the 5 days before she is whipped off to Mount Sinai hospital you’re virus factory is hotting up and your immune system tries to go to battle trying to slain the Big Berthas in its home.

Your temperature rises and the infected areas become inflamed.

As you sit down to lunch your feel a bit nauseous.

You lie down to sleep & wake up feeling worse.
Chest tight, unstoppable dry cough. Temp 102.
Thinks: Might be flu. I’m young. Healthy.
Nope.
You order a an Uber. 376, 345, 090 particles deposited
+ 345 mill aerosol

Whilst mostly the elderly and those with other comorbidities are the ones that fall into the 20% a small proportion are the young.

Doctors say they have not seen anything like it before.

I’m going to leave it up to you to decide whether you read to the end.

Not bedtime reading.

But understanding it might save your lives.

And the young understanding it in this way might mean they don’t pass it on to someone who would otherwise die.

I think it is worth flagging up that many people who are +ve CV19 present without a fever and many do not have abnormal radiologic findings.

nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

That dry persistent cough seems to be the primary early symptom. Many have headaches. Occasionally nausea.