Update on Coronavirus
This is in response to a few of my friends.
In other words if one takes a vegetarian diet at least in old age without beef is actually the best way of healthy living.
1. This virus originated in China and those incubating the disease landed in Singapore and entered Europe most likely by Singapore Airline or its subsidiary Airline.
2. Airline pilots and cabin crews, incubating this disease had been traveling all over world before the travel restriction, including USA.
3. It is very difficult to quarantine a patient in a plane in pressurized atmosphere and it is very common to catch a flu on a long haul flight.
4. Few airlines going bust due to credit crisis is welcome and most of the charter flights, the quality of service plummeted but the their income went up exponentially.
5. My last flight by Singapore airline was hopeless and I could not get a extra glass of water from the cabin crew.
It was the young passenger who was seated next to me who came to my rescue and offered me a glass of water.
6. China for its own part tried to suppress the information and one of its doctors who tried to exposed the secrecy succumbed to the virus.
7. Now 7 doctors in USA had died and another 20 infected due to poor coordination of public health information of and its potential danger.
8. Now even Africa is affected (most likely India, too) due to lack of testing agents.
9. In Ceylon they allowed the Chinese travelers free entry and they are allowed (not Ceylonese passport officers) to process their own passports- (nowhere in the world, there is a scheme like this) and only quarantine plane load of our students.
10, Our health officers are not divulging the true facts (bungling by the present governments) about “how late in handling’ the quarantine issue.
11.Closing the schools and universities came too late and I bet our election commissioner will hold elections in spite of the risks involved to the voter and public who would not bother voting.
12. Most of our sports facilities (schools,too) do not have proper washrooms and toilets and the sharing the towel and water bottle, habit of J.V.P. camaraderie is a high risk in this country.
13. In my opinion a face mask is a big risk both of collecting a viral load and disposing (burning) after use DUE to relatively big size of the virus which is 120 nm.
A high quality face masks are not available even in our surgical theaters, not allowing 15 to 20 nm (that is the size of the small branches of the bronchial tree) particles that penetrate the virtual lung barrier.
14. Most optimistic preventive measure is by washing of hands up to the elbow with soap and water.
The mounting and standing bars of buses and staircase elevators are never cleaned)
14. Not to share cutlery and utensils even at home (how many can afford).
15. Stay at home with early signs of any infection (it is too late in most infections, disease is spread during the incubation period which is six weeks in infective hepatitis).
16. Take Vitamin C (cheaper than fruits) as a habit.
17. No western medicine available but there are lot of Aurvedic remedies.
18. Coriander seeds as a drink and coriander leaves as a curry.
19. Garlic, Ginger, Lime, Lemon, Turmeric (not Wada Kaha) and Vinegar.
20. If you can find Perumkayam!
21. In other words if one takes a vegetarian diet at least in old age without beef is actually the best way of healthy living.
22. Egg is allowed as a default vitamin store.
Below is a reproduction from Wikipedia and I want to make few comments even though, I am not a virologist.
There are roughly three types of viruses, DNA, RNA and Retrovirus (AIDS is an example).
Coronavirus is a RNA virus that hijacks the cell protein production factory the Ribosomes with its own RNA dependent RNA polymerase.
1. It hijacks cell protein factory the ribosome
2. Its receptor is cells own protein component.
3. CD (Cell Definition) classification is yet not well defined.
4. What cells have this CD specificity is unknown.
5. It uses a poly-protein of its own creation and a protease to dissect its own protein components. That leads to relative protein deficiency for cells that are affected.
6.We do not know the homology of the viral protein with the normal cell proteins.
7. If the homology is great the body won’t mount an active antibody production to avoid autoimmunity.
8. Whether it causes protein deficiency and autoimmunity needs to be worked out.
9. My belief is that it is an animal virus that causes no problem for in the animal kingdom but once it enters the humans population it can create havoc.
10. If it originated from a bird avoid eating chicken (starve the virus of its base protein hijacking ability) similarly if it originated from pigs (bigger animal) avoid eating pork and beef (to starve the virus of is base protein hijacking ability).
11. If it originated from bats (most likely), I do not have any worthwhile suggestion to contribute.
12. It is better to revert to vegetable protein like TOFU (amino acid composition is different to animal protein) instead of animal proteins.
13. My prediction is because this virus has a RNA dependent RNA polymerase which can mutate at its own will the epidemic will last at least a decade until the herd immunity takes its toll but by then another virus more potent than this will emerge from a viral laboratory that do do not have rigid protocols and closely not monitored by a regulatory authority.
14. I believe all developed countries and China may be developing biological weapons secretly and science (biological) may be killed by its own science initiative.
Regulation is mandatory!
Coronavirus Morphology
Coronaviruses are large pleomorphic spherical particles with bulbous surface projections.
The diameter of the virus particles is around 120 nm.
The envelope of the virus in electron micrographs appears as a distinct pair of electron dense shells.
The viral envelope consists of a lipid bilayer where the membrane (M), envelope (E) and spike (S) structural proteins are anchored.
A subset of coronaviruses (specifically the members of Betacoronavirus subgroup A) also have a shorter spike-like surface protein called hemagglutinin esterase (HE).
Inside the envelope, there is the nucleocapsid, which is formed from multiple copies of the nucleocapsid (N) protein, which are bound to the positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome in a continuous beads-on-a-string type conformation.The genome size for coronaviruses ranges from approximately 27 to 34 kilobases.
The lipid bilayer envelope, membrane proteins, and nucleocapsid protect the virus when it is outside the host cell.
Coronavirus Replication
Infection begins when the virus enters the host organism and the spike protein attaches to its complementary host cell receptor. After attachment, a protease of the host cell cleaves and activates the receptor-attached spike protein. Depending on the host cell protease available, cleavage and activation allows cell entry through endocytosis or direct fusion of the viral envelop with the host membrane.
On entry into the host cell, the virus particle is uncoated, and its genome enters the cell cytoplasm.[
The coronavirus RNA genome has a 5′ methylated cap and a 3′ polyadenylated tail, which allows the RNA to attach to the host cell's ribosome for translation.
The host ribosome translates the initial overlapping open reading frame of the virus genome and forms a long polyprotein.
The polyprotein has its own proteases which cleave the polyprotein into multiple nonstructural proteins.
A number of the nonstructural proteins coalesce to form a multi-protein replicase-transcriptase complex (RTC).
The main replicase-transcriptase protein is the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp).
It is directly involved in the replication and transcription of RNA from an RNA strand. The other nonstructural proteins in the complex assist in the replication and transcription process. The exoribonuclease non-structural protein for instance provides extra fidelity to replication by providing a proofreading function which the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase lacks.
One of the main functions of the complex is to replicate the viral genome. RdRp directly mediates the synthesis of negative-sense genomic RNA from the positive-sense genomic RNA. This is followed by the replication of positive-sense genomic RNA from the negative-sense genomic RNA.
The other important function of the complex is to transcribe the viral genome. RdRp directly mediates the synthesis of negative-sense subgenomic RNA molecules from the positive-sense genomic RNA. This is followed by the transcription of these negative-sense subgenomic RNA molecules to their corresponding positive-sense mRNAs.
The replicated positive-sense genomic RNA becomes the genome of the progeny viruses.
The mRNAs are gene transcripts of the last third of the virus genome after the initial overlapping reading frame. These mRNAs are translated by the host's ribosomes into the structural proteins and a number of accessory proteins.
RNA translation occurs inside the endoplasmic reticulum. The viral structural proteins S, E, and M move along the secretory pathway into the Golgi intermediate compartment. There, the M proteins direct most protein-protein interactions required for assembly of viruses following its binding to the nucleocapsid.
Progeny viruses are then released from the host cell by exocytosis through secretory vesicles.
