Vicki Cobb: How the Coronavirus Works

June 29, 2020 //

Vicki Cobb is an award-winning science writer. She has written more than 90 science books, mostly for children, which means she is good at explaining complex ideas.

She explains here how the coronavirus works and what it is.

Categories Science

30 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

LG says:

June 29, 2020 at 10:42 am

Great explanation for the layperson. Coronavirus has also caused an immune response that overtakes other systems in the body, such as the kidneys, the heart and now the brain. This tiny little killer turns your body against you. I came across a report of research that claims people with type A blood tend to have more serious responses whereas those with type O tend to not. I will see if I can find links on this.

(If you can contact Vicki, please tell her there are three typos of small and common words in her blog post, but these things happen when dealing with information that is so detailed. I would be more interested in the big words and ideas, myself.)

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- LG says:
  
  June 29, 2020 at 10:48 am
  
  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.20058073v1
  
  Reply
Lloyd Lofthouse says:

June 29, 2020 at 10:43 am

Vicki Cobb also kept her explanation so short and concise it takes hardly any time at all to read it.

Of course, as short and concise as the explanation is, there is one Orange Organism, an invading blob of some kind living in a White House, with an attention span so tiny, smaller than the COVID-10 virus, that “it” could never read the piece or understand it.

And, even if the Orange Organism did read the piece, “it” would just call the explanation fake news while “it” swallowed a shot of bleach for protection before slipping a purifying UV light down “it’s” throat to blast his innards.

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- LG says:
  
  June 29, 2020 at 10:50 am
  
  It is a snake oil salesman peddling garbage from its brain and only accepting payment in the form of ignorant adulation. It cares about nothing else. It needed therapy about 6 decades ago.
  
  Reply
  - Lloyd Lofthouse says:
    
    June 29, 2020 at 1:31 pm
    
    I don’t think therapy would have helped even six decades ago. His racist, narcissist father and the genetics he gave his son decided who the Kremlin’s Agent Orange would become.
    
    The only way to stop that would be to have a time machine and go back to stop Trump’s father’s birth or to make sure his father was sterile when he was born.
  - LG says:
    
    June 29, 2020 at 1:55 pm
    
    If only he had never been born.
  - Lloyd Lofthouse says:
    
    June 29, 2020 at 2:36 pm
    
    I think it would be okay if he had been born without a brain. I think that is called anencephaly.
    
    Wait, he was born without a brain.
    
    Okay, you are right. We would be better off if he had never been born.
Laura H. Chapman says:

June 29, 2020 at 11:05 am

Thank you Vicki Cobb for explaining how this virus exists, why it is hard to eliminate, and equally why we have any images of the virus at all, namely the important role of technologies and color manipulations in explaining what otherwise cannot be seen.

I could follow the gist of the explanation, but not every detail. I think this is not an explanation easily understood unless you have already acquired more than basic knowledge in the life sciences, and the image captures and manipulations made possible by technologies and some artistry.

I appreciated especially the built-in and methodical explanation of each new idea in the overall narrative… a hallmark of great teaching

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retired teacher says:

June 29, 2020 at 11:07 am

There is so much we do not understand about this virus. What is terrifying is the variability of the response in different people. Generally, we know that the elderly may have a serious, potentially lethal, case. Yet, some young people without preexisting conditions are hit hard. One young woman in her early twenties needed a double lung transplant while others her age a asymptomatic. At least we have discovered some known therapies that may mitigate the severity of the infection.

Nobody also knows the long term impact on those with a severe case of Covid-19. There may be lasting cardio-pulmonary or neurological problems. There remains a lot of research that needs to be done to help survivors.

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- retired teacher says:
  
  June 29, 2020 at 11:22 am
  
  Gilead just announced its pricing for their drug, Remdesivir. The treatments will cost between $2,500 and 3100 for Americans with insurance. It will be much less in developing nations.https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gilead-prices-covid-19-drug-113705973.html
  
  Reply
Bob Shepherd says:

June 29, 2020 at 11:37 am

Great piece, Ms. Cobb! Thank you!

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LG says:

June 29, 2020 at 3:34 pm

But there is a part of me that feels another not unlike him would rise to power at one point anyway considering how the party that has enabled him has been leaning. The GOP infiltration of the alt right with origins in the Tea Party has been a very calculated operation. With Trump, have we reached the pinnacle of their movement‘s power? Pence scares me more.

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SomeDaM Poet says:

June 29, 2020 at 9:34 pm

“The spikes on the surface of a COVID -19 coronavirus (you see in the first picture) are proteins that fit like a piece of jig-saw puzzle to receptor proteins on the surface of the host cell.”

Indeed.

As pointed out in a piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “The author of a newly published paper analyzing the genome of SARS-COV-2 reported that “the COVID-19 virus is exquisitely adapted to infect humans… The virus’s ability to bind protein on human cells was far greater than its ability to bind the same protein in bats, which argues against bats being a direct source of the human virus.”
https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-arise-from-a-bat-coronavirus-research-program-in-a-chinese-laboratory-very-possibly/

Whether the current pandemic is the result of a lab leak or not, it’s high time that we addressed what is going on in labs worldwide.

Virus “gain of function” research is commonplace in many virology labs these days, including in the US.

And it carries extremely serious risks that could potentially have catastrophic results.

https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/the-pandemic-risk-of-an-accidental-lab-leak-of-enhanced-flu-virus-unacceptably-high/

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- SomeDaM Poet says:
  
  June 30, 2020 at 6:26 am
  
  View at Medium.com
  
  Reply
  - LG says:
    
    June 30, 2020 at 6:58 pm
    
    I read the Nature article with much interest months ago. My biggest concern with Deigin’s POV is, if true, what will be uncovered as intent. An accident is one thing, and the author did outline U.S. concerns about security and staffing at the lab in question, however there will be some who will say a lab-created virus is a bio-weapon. Just from reading the comments, this is a claim that so many are making. GoF appears to have real value in developing treatments and vaccines, so while there is criticism, I would like for him to outline what alternatives there are to those procedures.
    
    One or two commenters claimed Deigin made certain assumptions that were not slam dunks: 1) the virus has not existed long enough to mutate for a natural human to human transference and 2) the methodology by which he uncovers similarities is indicative of specific conclusions that speak to origin as if these methods are the only. To his credit, he did cover himself by saying that this analysis was not the end-all. The commenters who have pointed out these issues were few, but I’d like to witness an honest debate between them and the author.
  - SomeDaM Poet says:
    
    June 30, 2020 at 11:06 pm
    
    This conversation with Bret Weinstein might answer some of your questions (or not).
    
    It’s worth the listen nonetheless.
    
    Deigin and Weinstein’s main point seems to be that, with the current level of information from the lab in question (or perhaps lack of information would be a better way to put it) , one can simply not make the claim that it was “definitely NOT a lab leak” as many have made.
    
    The issue demands a thorough investigation and vetting.
    
    One suggestion I have seen was that the Wuhan lab release their lab notebooks on all the research they have done on bat coronaviruses.
    
    Scientists should have no qualms with doing so.
  - SomeDaM Poet says:
    
    June 30, 2020 at 11:18 pm
    
    Or maybe this Q &A with Deigin and Weinstein
  - SomeDaM Poet says:
    
    July 1, 2020 at 12:21 am
    
    By the way, in the Q & A, the gain of function issue is addressed starting at about minute 52 in the podcast.
  - SomeDaM Poet says:
    
    July 1, 2020 at 12:54 am
    
    Bret also notes at about 1:13 into the Q&A that “scientists have become salesmen”, which means, among other things, that they tend to exaggerate the importance or even necessity of their work to ensure continued funding.
    
    This is something that occurs across fields and is certainly not exclusive to virologists.
    
    Unfortunately, you can’t necessarily trust the very people who should be giving you the unvarnished truth about their own field.
  - SomeDaM Poet says:
    
    July 1, 2020 at 7:38 am
    
    Nature magazine has been less than helpful on this issue
    
    A June 5 article by David Cyranoski makes it sound like the lab leak has-been all but ruled out and that all that remains is identifying the intermediate animal host in the jump from bats to humans (which, by the way, is absolutely necessary if one is to claim a natural origin)
    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01541-z
    
    “the lack of clarity around how the virus passed to people has meant that unsubstantiated theories — promoted by US President Donald Trump — that it escaped from a laboratory in China persist.”
    
    It should go without saying, but there are quite legitimate questions about the origin of the virus and at this stage the lab leak can NOT be ruled out.
    
    Furthermore, the legitimate questions and concerns should — indeed must – be separated from idiotic claims made by Trump. Unfortunately, that statement by Cyranoski does nothing to separate them and tends to do just the opposite. Not sure whether that was intentionsl or not
    
    Cyranoski continues
    
    “There is also no record of accidents at the [Wuhan] institute, but viruses, including SARS, have previously accidentally escaped from labs, including in China — although none has led to a significant outbreak.”
    
    First, the claim that no accidentally escaped virus from a lab has led to a significant outbreak is very likely false. Second, whether a lab leak caused a “significant outbreak” is irrelevant because the potential is there with ANY leak of a virulent virus.
    
    Following quotes are from
    Laboratory Escapes and “Self-fulfilling prophecy” Epidemics
    By: Martin Furmanski MD
    Scientist’s Working Group on Chemical and Biologic Weapons
    Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation
    February 17, 2014
    
    “Only since 2009-2010 did major papers begin to state directly the 1977 emergence of H1N1 influenza was a laboratory related release:”
    
    “The most famous case of A released laboratory strain is the re-emergent H1N1 influenza A virus [which caused the pandemic of 1918] which was first observed in China in May of 1977 and in Russia shortly thereafter21.”
    
    “Public awareness of the 1977 H1N1 pandemic and its likely laboratory origins has been virtually absent. Virologists and public health officials with the appropriate sophistication were quickly aware that a laboratory release was the most likely origin, but they were content not to publicize this, aware that such embarrassing allegations would likely end the then nascent cooperation of Russian and Chinese virologists, which was vital to worldwide influenza surveillance. An abundance of caution in making such suggestions was also in their own self-interest. The 1976 “swine flu” alarm and subsequent immunization program that proved to be unneeded caused 532 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome and 32 deaths. It was widely considered a misadventure, and had severely damaged the public and political credibility of the virology and public health communities. An acknowledgement of a pandemic originating from their laboratories would have only worsened it. ”
    
    // End of quotes
    
    The sort of offhand dismissal of the lab leak hypothesis (with a false statement to boot) in Nature is precisely what biologist Bret Weinstein refers to in his podcasts and such dismissal is actually counterproductive in getting to the bottom of how the latest virus actually arose.
  - Lloyd Lofthouse says:
    
    July 1, 2020 at 5:43 pm
    
    I understand that CRISPER Gene Editing must be used to manipulate and change a virus in a lab.
    
    Here is one source that explaines the “strategies to detect and validate your CRISPR gene edit.”
    
    https://horizondiscovery.com/en/resources/featured-articles/strategies-to-detect-and-validate-your-crispr-gene-edit
    
    I have read a few reports out of university labs around the world that checked the COVID-19 virus to determine if it had been CRISPR gene-edited, and so far, all of these studies reported “NO”.
    
    https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/30/crispr-pioneer-doudna-opens-lab-to-run-covid-19-tests/
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    https://www.ft.com/content/a6392ee6-4ec6-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5
    
    “A scientist at the forefront of an international effort to track the deadly coronavirus outbreak has shot down claims about the disease’s origins, including that it escaped from a Wuhan laboratory after being genetically engineered.
    
    “Trevor Bedford, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, rubbished stories circulating on social media that Covid-19 was created at Wuhan Institute of Virology or elsewhere in China, rumours that prompted the World Health Organization to warn of an “infodemic” of false news on the outbreak.
    
    “There is no evidence whatsoever of genetic engineering that we can find,” he said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle. “The evidence we have is that the mutations [in the virus] are completely consistent with natural evolution.”
    
    https://www.ft.com/content/a6392ee6-4ec6-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5
  - SomeDaM Poet says:
    
    July 2, 2020 at 6:10 pm
    
    Lloyd
    
    A lab leak need not mean the virus was engineered/edited.
    
    So that argument can’t prove the virus was not leaked .
  - SomeDaM Poet says:
    
    July 2, 2020 at 6:16 pm
    
    The reality is that one can’t rule out a lab leak unless one has detailed information about what went on in the lab(s) in question.
    
    So far, we don’t have that. Only assurances which don’t prove anything.
    
    This really is not a matter of believing authoritative assurances. It’s about seeing the data.
    
    The Virology community should be the very ones demanding release of all the data from the Wuhan lab.
  - SomeDaM Poet says:
    
    July 2, 2020 at 7:51 pm
    
    Not incidentally, anyone who was minimally knowledgeable about the issue would understand that “lab leak” is NOT synonymous with and does not even imply “genetically engineered”, so it’s curious (to say the least) that anyone who claims expertise would imply as much.
  - SomeDaM Poet says:
    
    July 2, 2020 at 9:16 pm
    
    Specifically, any so called expert would be familiar with the lab technique known as “passaging”, which is NOT genetic editing/engineering and which yields a result that is indistinguishable from a “natural” zoonotic transfer–rapid adaptation of a bat coronavirus to a human host.
    
    Critically, it would NOT be possible to detect any difference from the lab virus and a virus that developed in nature.
    
    From
    https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/the-case-is-building-that-covid-19-had-a-lab-origin/
    
    Was Sars-CoV-2 created in a lab?
    In his statement, [virologist Nikolai] Petrovsky goes on to describe the kind of experiment that, in principle, if done in a lab, would obtain the same result as the hypothesised natural zoonotic transfer–rapid adaptation of a bat coronavirus to a human host.
    
    “Take a bat coronavirus that is not infectious to humans, and force its selection by culturing it with cells that express human ACE2 receptor, such cells having been created many years ago to culture SARS coronaviruses and you can force the bat virus to adapt to infect human cells via mutations in its spike protein, which would have the effect of increasing the strength of its binding to human ACE2, and inevitably reducing the strength of its binding to bat ACE2.
    
    Viruses in prolonged culture will also develop other random mutations that do not affect its function. The result of these experiments is a virus that is highly virulent in humans but is sufficiently different that it no longer resembles the original bat virus. Because the mutations are acquired randomly by selection there is no signature of a human gene jockey, but this is clearly a virus still created by human intervention.”
    
    In other words, Petrovsky believes that current experimental methods could have led to an altered virus that escaped.
    
    Passaging, GOF research, and lab escapes
    The experiment mentioned by Petrovsky represents a class of experiments called passaging. Passaging is the placing of a live virus into an animal or cell culture to which it is not adapted and then, before the virus dies out, transferring it to another animal or cell of the same type. Passaging is often done iteratively. The theory is that the virus will rapidly evolve (since viruses have high mutation rates) and become adapted to the new animal or cell type. Passaging a virus, by allowing it to become adapted to its new situation, creates a new pathogen.”
    
    // End of quotes
    
    And as I noted above, this is very basic stuff that anyone familiar with current virology lab techniques would know about.
    
    So why would they imply that a lab leak meant genetic “editing/engineering”.
  - Lloyd Lofthouse says:
    
    July 2, 2020 at 9:40 pm
    
    Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the virus was being studied and managed to escape from a lab in Wuhan, how would anyone prove that – have Gibb’s NCIS team investigate?
  - SomeDaM Poet says:
    
    July 2, 2020 at 10:58 pm
    
    I don’t disagree that it would/will be difficult to get WIV to open up their books for inspection, especially if they know or even suspect that the virus had leaked from their lab.
    
    But that does not mean one should not ask the question. The issue demands further investigation because dealing with the virus requires knowing details about it. (And, BTW, it shouldn’t be a political issue because the lab in question was collaborating with labs throughout the world, including in the US and was even receiving NIH grant money).
    
    And no actual expert could honestly make the claim that
    “the virus was NOT leaked because there is no evidence of genetic engineering”.
    
    In fact, any claim that “the virus was definitely NOT leaked from a lab” is unscientific at this point because the necessary information simply does not exist to conclude that it didn’t (or that it did, for that matter.
    
    More information is needed and the virology community should be demanding investigation on all fronts, including information from the WIV and it’s sister lab in Wuhan and should certainly not be trying to shut down that avenue by claiming the lab leak hypothesis to be a conspiracy theory (as some have done).
  - Lloyd Lofthouse says:
    
    July 2, 2020 at 11:05 pm
    
    The Chinese have already mapped the genome for the virus and shared that with the world. If the virus was found in a bat cave near Wuhan as is suspected, and it was being studied in a lab and then escaped through carelessness, what would that serve if we already have the DNA mapped?
Tom says:

January 30, 2021 at 8:10 pm

You’re spreading false science by Weinstein. This is poor vetting.

Reply
- Lloyd Lofthouse says:
  
  January 30, 2021 at 9:35 pm
  
  TOM,
  
  Where is the evidence and links to back your allegations that this is poor vetting? If you have no evidence from reputable sources (not sites that post conspiracy theories), then your allegations are worthless.
  
  Reply