Genetically speaking how related are influenza, corona and rhinoviruses?
And when people talk about these virii mutating it seems they impart some sort of self protection mechanism of the virus allowing it to "evolve" to thwart the immune system or vaccines.
It may be subtle and of no practical importance but these virii are not self directed or changing due to "natural selection" but rather errors are introduced into the code by the host and the virus' incompatibility due to the length of code or the hosts attempt to modify the code in self defense of itself.
The subtle difference is that lay people (of which I am one) believe the virus is mutating in response to "attacks" or "natural selection" when the host is actually "driving the bus" as virii barley meet the definition of life and are barely more "alive" than a prion.
Your thoughts if you care to opine?
Rhinovirus are approximately 8000 NT RNA Viruses
Influenzas are RNA viruses
COVID19 is an RNA virus
All our upper respiratory tract infection viruses meeting they enter the human body primarily through the respiratory system. They all cause cold like symptoms which are again related to the invasion of the nose and upper respiratory tract. Typically you will see cough, congestion, runny nose, fever, shortness of breath and generalized body aches
RNA viruses are inherently less stable than DNA viruses and therefore mutate more frequently. Mutations are simply mistakes in the reproduction of the virus. Sometimes, most the time, the mistakes are bad and lead to the death of that particular viron. Occasionally this mistake allows that particular virus to survive better and replicate more frequently and therefore that mutation starts to take hold as a more prominent feature in future generations of that virus.
Generally speaking mutations that allow the virus to infect the host, live in the house, replicate, and then shed from the host without killing the host are the most successful mutations because the more host the virus have available the better the virus does and reproduction. There is zero benefit to the virus for killing the host. Therefore more virulent strains of viruses tend to die out because they kill the host and ones that don’t kill the host to replicate more and out survive and win out over the more virulent viruses.
The thing that makes COVID-19 difficult and some patience is not the virus itself but the immune response to the virus which leads to a process known as acute respiratory distress syndrome which can be fatal if severe enough.
Interestingly enough, all viruses can cause this it’s just that COVID-19, is it more frequently than most viruses. Influenza also is a very harsh virus and can cause the same issues and in particularly destroys the long is in such a way as to allow them to get set up for a secondary infection which often is very difficult as well and usually bacterial with staph aureus.
Vaccines increase the type of immunity that prevents infection in the first place which is good immunity. The type of immunity that response to infection tends to be good for most people intends to allow us to fight the virus off in a few days but it’s those occasional ones to get the hyper immune response and have the most problems with Covid.
Vaccines increase the type of immunity that prevents infection in the first place which is good immunity. The type of immunity that response to infection tends to be good for most people intends to allow us to fight the virus off in a few days but it’s those occasional ones to get the hyper immune response and have the most problems with Covid.
Man that’s a real quick summation. I could probably wax on about this for hours but I hope that answers your question
