So during this Corona virus hysteria I've been wondering about how the flu comes back every year. There is some suggestions that covid19 will be a seasonal thing. What I'm really wondering is if people get it, get cured, and no one is left infected by it then how does it come back? Same thing with the flu. Is someone purposely inecting someone to get multiple people sick every year? I get sick maybe one or 2 times a year, and it's always cough, sinuses, fever, and cold sweats. I'll be sick for 3-5 days generally because I caught it from someone else. Does anyone on here have a better understanding of viruses to explain how they survive if no one has them?
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To the best of my knowledge all Viral Strains are Democrats. How they Survive remains the Mystery of Evil.
Look at it like this. When we get a virus our body basically puts out a most wanted list. On that list are pictures of all all the things that have made us sick in the past. But with something like this coronavirus it can mutate. So if this year the coronavirus has a mustache, a scar on its cheek, and black hair, next year it might have blonde hair and no mustache. So our guards just let him back in.
I actually took a microbiology course that covered this:
So theres like multiple kinds of flu
And like when flu comes around a whole generation will usually get it. So then the flu dies out. And then wayyyyy later, years and years later, it has a whole fresh crop of hosts, and it resurges. IDK, it was a long time ago I took that class, but i sort of remember a flu can sit for like 20 years. But it doesnt seem like it because so many flus are cousins and have similar symptoms, and there are always at least a half dozen floating around active at any time. They lie dormant for a long time, a single particular strain will.
I also remember the professor talking about how thats often why old people will be immune to flus when they come around.... it might be something they got a long time ago as kids.
Think your textbook was written before the hyper-incubation chamber of China was better understood
ikr... i was actually thinking that while I was typing that out too, kek!
When you say lies dormant you mean in a person? If that's the case then does something trigger a mutation which gets the host sick who passes it on to the next person etc, and it is a never ending cycle?
no no, in a population. I dont know how that part works exactly... so maybe you could be right, but I have no idea. Maybe it lies dormant like in the pigs or chickens, or
im devolving past the limits of my knowledge into dumbness. Ima cut myself off now
People get it less in summer. It is a seasonal disease. Because it is airborne weather affects it. Non airborne diseases aren't affected by weather.
There is never a “no one left affected” point in time. The flu is seasonal in both the northern and southern hemispheres but at different times (each during their winter). In the tropics it tends to be year round. So someone somewhere has a strain of the flu and it’s evolving. The next time that strain comes back to your local community it will be slightly different genetically making the community less immune to it. There’s also multiple different strains so even if you were immune to one it wouldn’t mean you were immune to another.
Well, viruses aren't technically alive so I'd suspect it's probably because they can just just "exist" anywhere and everywhere and can temporarily utilize other resources to reproduce and mutate along the way. They are prevalent and have an infinite amount of possible mutable possibilities that can cause harm to us.
Your stomach might have tons of different viruses in it just hanging out, including our amazingly overblown COVID-19 along with 20 other coronavirus strains. Same for your dog and other pets. Bugs can host viruses as well.
So, to broadly answer your question: viruses are everywhere and are a part of reality. They can be scary and they're not even technically "alive" to begin with so figuring out exactly how they persist and survive can be puzzling; this is why they'll say it "might" be recurring and use that as a justification for a vaccine when in fact it'll likely just mutate and make for another flu shot style vaccination (which is great for profiteering since now you have another annual shot to go take).
Thanks for all the answers and explanations all.
Apparently flu viruses have 8 “chromosomes” that they are able to interchange with each other which is why they are constantly new strains.
SARS CoV2 does not, so while it does mutate, it is much less likely to do so (and more likely to become less virulent with each mutation). Think of it this way, if you make a random change to the plan for an appliance, is it going to work better or worse? Muuuch more likely to break it than make a super appliance.
The short/simplified version is that both influenza and corona viruses are RNA viruses that can slightly change (mutate) any time they invade a new host cell and replicate. Because they change so rapidly, they can become so different from the previous version that your immune system no longer immediately recognizes them and has to repeat the process of creating antibodies.
That's why flu shots only protect you for a year at most, and there's still risk of a new flu epidemic such as the 2009 H1N1 epidemic that wasn't covered by that year's flu shot.
There's actually hundreds of viruses that are collectively responsible for the common cold. No one bothers testing for what kind of virus you may have because the treatment is essentially the same (rest and fluids). The fact is, there's never a point in time when no one has them. Whether or not you have any symptoms or get really sick is largely a function of your underlying health when you are exposed, but even if you barely get sick, they're around.
Eradication of this virus isn't a realistic goal. There's not going to come a day when no one has it anymore. Eventually, when the news cycle has moved on, it'll just get lumped in with the rest of the rhinoviruses, adenoviruses, coronaviruses, and influenzas that are collectively known as the common cold and unless you happen to be in the unfortunate minority that has really bad symptoms, then you'll never even know you had it.