Viruses a wonder that holds as much promise as threat
By now, President Trump’s response to Covid-19 has gone viral: incomprehension of the science, contradicting the CDC, making up numbers, blaming President Obama, blaming Democrats, blaming the press, making it all about him and taking unwarranted credit for stopping flights from China, for example, which never fully stopped. His incoherence is revelatory, as is his greater concern for how it makes him look than for public health. There’s little to add. Happily, smarter people are still doing their jobs.
So let’s talk more generally about viruses, which are actually pretty interesting; potentially able, someday, to save more lives than they take. To appreciate them, it helps to know basic genetics and to recognize that evolution is a thing; which doesn’t describe Mike Pence, Trump’s choice to wrangle America’s coronavirus response. But God chose Trump and Trump chose Pence, so let’s move on.
Fact: In the way recipes are not food, viruses are not alive. Unlike bacteria, which are, they have no metabolism, can’t reproduce on their own, don’t, in fact, “do” anything. That’s because they’re nothing but protein-wrapped bits of DNA or RNA, the molecules responsible for speciation, reproduction, and evolution.
There’s disagreement on how viruses came to be. Based on medical school facts and personal extrapolations, this is one concept: Those delicate, helical strands of genetic information are fragile. In the process of replication during cell division, sometimes pieces break off. And sometimes DNA mis-reproduces the strands they’re in the business of copying, causing mutations.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/schwab-viruses-a-wonder-that-holds-as-much-promise-as-threat/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=d73daa59c0-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-d73daa59c0-228635337
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