Virus: the organism that always brings polemics.

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  While doing this post I started to create the first banner in Canva, but I could only find figures associated with COVID-19 figure, so here is the first polemic, do you think that all the viruses have this form? The answer is no of course. So it is crazy nowadays when we look at the COVID-19 representation we associate with a general viral representation. An in reality the spherical part of the virus is the viral envelope which is not present in all Viruses, it is a characteristic of the family Coronaviridae including the COVID-19 virus, not only that. Viruses generally have a capsid formed by proteins; inside it, you can find their genetic material. For me, the first image association of a virus remembers some school images where I first learned about them and also about bacteriophages:


pixabay picture of a bacteriophage

  For those who don't know them, they are the most abundant virus in our world, and they infect ... bacteria. Another problem that I brought in my opening is the word "bugs". This word can be used for insects or other arthropods in addition. But people tend to get sick and say " I got a bug", so if you think clearly, is the person full of spiders? full of flies? or full of viruses? However, sometimes the person is coughing due to an allergy to pollen! So this person is not even being infected or infested by anything!

The great conflict of life! What is life, are viruses alive?

  For sure this polemic for professionals and non-professionals that love to talk about virus, what is the definition of life? and how viruses are in it. There is still no standard agreement for that, it is something that I first heard in my school days and I still hear from it. Viruses don't have cells like any other organisms, however, they can multiply your genetic material (which it can be DNA or RNA, double or single-stranded, with such a great variability of it!). They aren't derived from the primordial cells from the cell theory, however, they still can have some type of hereditary changes in their genetic material like any good old living organisms. So even being a parasitic organism that still needs to invade to multiply, it has some properties of a living being. There is a well-written article here about it in the microbiology society in here . But I can say that they exist and there are proofs around there about them, being pathogenic to humans or not, that sounds silly to say, but once I read around people saying that they were invented by politics or whatever.

We use antibiotics for infections, why they don't bring a cure for popular diseases like AIDS, COVID, influenza, and hepatitis?

  antibiotics work very well to fight bacteria, which despite being cellular organisms, their structure and metabolism differ a lot from eukaryotic cell structure, like mammals, with us included. People start to bring up conspiracy theories to justify the absence of chemical treatment for viruses, but they forget that on the other hand, in the other hand after bacteria organisms, we have protists that also we have another big problem to develop a very effective treatment that doesn't bring harsh consequences for us. Because like us, protists have eukaryotic cells and their metabolism is pretty similar to our cells, most of the things that affect them, also affect us! So we have that amoeba found in lakes that goes directly to our brain and we can't do anything to fight it, or even chronic diseases caused byTrypanosomatidaes or Leishmaniosis. Coming back to viruses, the problem is that all of their metabolism is host-dependent, so they use our machinery for everything! So the perfect drug is to somehow block mechanisms from us that help them multiply, but that will probably kill us too. Because of this problem, we are still very far from the perfect anti-virals that could at least eradicate viruses from an infected person. So for now what is the best medicine for viruses? Our immune system, and yes how can we help it? With vaccines. So when people develop new technologies for vaccines they aren't trying to control you or sterilize you. It is a good attempt to improve your chances of fighting a foreign body infecting you. But I got all the recommended shots and I still got the flu or covid or whatever! That's normal, raising the chances it is not a metal shield that can't brake, even a condom doesn't guarantee you 100% the chance of not having a baby.

Conclusion

  Viruses are polemic in their own structure and survival methods, associating outbreaks to politicians figures of course creates more polemics in top of that, people start to associate a pro or anti posture against an outbreak so as fast as possible people start saying that "Truedau and the liberals in Canada or the Democrats in the US are the cause of the problem" or that virus doesn't exist and aren't real. But they are there before our lives and they will be there after for sure, infecting plants, bacteria or even the alien race that will be here instead of us.


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17 comments
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"We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party."

  • Lewis Thomas

An interesting read indeed! Carry on :)

!PIZZA
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(Edited)

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Best regards @gwajnberg, I think most people, while not professionals or students in the health field generally keep their distance from these topics. Poor what they are left with only some basic information from school, and don't delve into anything else.
The other aspect is that the strongest thing that humanity has experienced and we are still experiencing is Covid19 , so they tend to associate the image that is usually seen of Covid with all viruses. Maybe that has a lot to do with what you are talking about.

The comspiracy theories to control the human race through viruses, bacteria and so many things are there. Maybe the confinement during the pandemic somehow affected the minds of some.... (this is irony).

Viruses have survived even longer than all other animals, including humans, and will continue to do so. This discussion of whether viruses are living beings or not, is interesting, because in the end there is no absolute agreement, and I do not know if there will be at some point.

A topic that gives a lot to talk about, thanks for bringing it up.

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Thanks for the contribution!! That discussion of life or not will go on with my grandchildren for sure lol!
!PIZZA

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That discussion of life or not will go on with my grandchildren for sure

This is quite likely to be the case... ;-)

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I think the best way to visualize a virus is to visualize it as a string of DNA.

You are correct that immune health is the best way to defend against COVID19.

The problem is that our governments did a horrible job promoting immune health.

What they did instead was to impose mask mandates and shut down businesses, schools and churches in a vain attempt to control a virus.

The government censored people who were promoting immune health and they villified doctors who discussed treatments.

For example, it was known in the first weeks of the virus that that was a direct correlation between vitamin D deficiency and the severity of COVID19. We could have reduced mortality by about 25% if this was publicized.

It was known before COVID that certain corticosteroid treatments reduced the cytokine storms that took many lives. The CDC banned the use of such treatments.

The criticism that I see are aimed largely at bad policies by overbearing government that censored the debate.

!WINE

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I understand your point of view but also the people that are the policy makers were under pressure to make decisions about it . If you see around the world you see multiple ways as a response to the pandemic, china is still doing lockdowns for example! Sometimes i try to think what was right or wrong in these policies but it is so difficult for me , i dont have any responsibilities over nobody, only about my family so i try to do my best with the “policies” at home, how to educate my kids for example which is already very tough ! The line between whats wrong and right is very cloudy sometimes! But for the worst was some leaders that totally ignored the population multiple times during the pandemic! Those who didn’t try to protect the ones that are difficult to protect, poor people, people with a bad immune system, with HIV or a cancer treatment for example! It looks like that we are going forward with a better control of the disease … maybe the politicians can learn about it and maybe make changes if something similar happens in the future! I only hope that people dont abandon vaccination like they are (since before covid 19 pandemic and its vaccines) .
!PIZZA

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The decision makers have well known political theories.

They were clearly making their decisions based on their theories and not on the scientific evidence.

What is happening at the moment is that people with scientific training are seeing the extent to which the response to the pandemic was twisted by political concerns and are upset about things.

The world has a huge problem. Our medical system has become hostage to a political ideology and the world needs to find a way to counter this negative ideology.

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I will like to ask one question.

Between virus, bacteria and fungi, which one is dangerous

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I guess it depends a lot on the species that you are talking about!! Because you have edible fungi or even very important fungi to the industry, like yeast, but you also had very dangerous ones! We can try to make a list with the top 10 dangerous microorganisms, and for sure you will have examples from every biological group, and don't forget about protists :)
!PIZZA

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Do you think humanity could be extinguished by a virus

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It is possible… there is an interesting game to simulate that plague inc!
!PIZZA

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