Dear Reader:

Updated numbers: yesterday there were 236,921 cases of infection, today: 271,675; yesterday there were 9,829 total deaths, today: 11,299, yesterday there were 86,675 recovered cases, today: 90,618.

Yesterday there 41,036 cases of infection in Italy and 3,405 deaths; today 47,021 cases and 4,032 deaths

The virus responsible for the current pandemic is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, aconym: SARS-Cov-2 This is what Wikipedia says about it: “SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the broad family of viruses known as coronaviruses. It is a positive-sense single stranded RNA virus. Other coronaviruses are capable of causing illnesses ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)….

It is the seventh known coronavirus to  infect people, after 229E, NL63, OC43, HKU1, MERS-CoV, and the original SARS-CoV.”

The significance of it being an RNA virus vs a DNA virus, is this: “RNA viruses generally have very high mutation rates compared to DNA viruses” (Wiki, on RNA viruses).

Back to the wiki entry on the virus: “Based upon the low variability exhibited among known SARS-Cov-2 genomic sequences, the strain is thought to have been detected by health authorities within weeks of its emergence among human population in late 2019”, the earliest case of infection thought to have been on Nov 17, 2019 in China, spread to more than 100 countries, then, on Jan 11, 2020 WHO designated it as a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”, and on March 11, 2020, WHO declared it a pandemic.

“The basic reproduction number of the virus has been estimated to be between 1.4 and 3.9. This means that each infection from the virus is expected to result in 1.4 to 3.9 new infections when no members of the community are immune and no preventative measures are taken”.

Regarding “basic reproduction number”, wikipedia: “In epidemiology, the basic reproduction number of an infection can be thought of as the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection..(where there is) absence of ‘any deliberate intervention in disease transmission”.

My comment, best of my understanding at this point: the thing about viruses, and RNA viruses more than DNA viruses, is that they don’t stay the same, they keep mutating. One virus shows up in one form, infects an animal let’s say, and mutates/ changes, infect another,  mutates further, crosses species to a human, mutates some more, infects another human, mutates even more. Scientists cannot predict mutations. So even though the current SARS-Cov2 has killed way less people than the flue did, in a comparable period of time, no  one can tell if the SARS-Cov2 will become much more deadly as it continues to infect more and more people and mutate each time. This is why it is so important to isolate people/ social distance, so to severely stop the spread of infection and the mutation of the virus that accompanies such a spread.

Regarding the flu, there is a vaccine that cover a lot of the cases, none exists for the current disease; there are viral treatments approved for the flu, none for the current. But viruses responsible for the flu, they too are RNA viruses that keep mutating, and once in a while there are outbreaks of the flu, so all viral infections have to be monitored and followed at all times by heath authorities in every country and internationally.

More later.

anita