Writing for the sciences

Prof: Brian Brennan

Nicole Valdez

May 10th,2020

The most historical outbreak of the 21st century

An invisible organism enters your body. It binds into your tissues and then takes over

your cells, replicates itself. This tiny intruder works silently and produces thousands of clones

that fill up the cell and cause it to shatter-off. The clones relentlessly continue the process of

invading, hijack, and destroying cells. The result tends to be a minor disruption to the host, or it

could result in a slow/ rapid death. It depends on which variant of this unwanted pathogen

overcomes your body's immune system. Covid-19 has been one of the worst viruses that have

existed in humanity. Viruses have been around since the beginning of living organisms. Some

have not been as deadly as of the one individuals are facing in the 21st century.

When we hear COVID-19, the first reaction human had been "it is not that serious"

Government officials and world leaders downplayed the virus that was sweeping the globe.

Countries accused each other of being an "enemies plot" to have a government shutdown. Instead

of thinking of it as a life threat, they stated that everything was safe and under control. Health

officials predicted an outbreak could occur at any given moment. There are different types of

coronaviruses; Covid-19 is known to be one of the deadliest and dangerous types of coronavirus.

The first trait of this virus is that it attacks the immune system and can lead to death. The name

COvid-19 name is known for how corona means crowns due to the spikes it contains. Those

spikes act as a critical locking onto the proteins found on the outside of many human cells. Once

broken in, the virus gives the cell instructions to produce more copies of itself. Potentially
invading more and more cells, how it is a virus and 19 for the year, it started spreading. The virus

became the first living thing on earth; they need to hijack cells in order to survive.

The virus can be spread in many ways, such as cough, sneeze, and just by a person

speaking. It enters through our eyes, noses, and mouth. It can live upon surface areas for hours.

The common symptoms are fever, coughing, and fatigue are the same as the flu. However, it is

possible to show other symptoms such as shortness of breath, sore throat, loss of appetite,

diarrhea, loss of sense of smell, and lack of taste. An individual could be infected and show no

signs of symptoms. If show sign of symptoms it could take 2-14 days after getting the virus. This

disease is so devious. The group of people that could are at a higher risk of getting the virus are

individuals that have underlying health conditions such as lung disease, heart disease, or

diabetes.

Covid-19 is a Zoonatia virus meaning it is a virus that was produced in an animal and

later on passed to humans. It causes an outbreak to occur. Experts say that COVID-19 is similar

to a virus bat have. (Mackenzie,2020)It has been proven that there have been over 1.5 million

unknown wildlife diseases that are unknown to humankind. (us.news,2019). The number of

unknown viruses is immense. Researches have stated that. Depending on the impacts of global

change, many threats arising out of the livestock industry and many zoonotic infectious diseases

display global-scale features. (Ducrot,2016). Covid-19 does fall under a Zoonatia virus, which is

difficult to contain. The origin of this virus came from China, due to how china is known for its

live markets in which farmers or individuals sell wildlife animals. This gives opportunities for

viruses to mix and mix and spread to Humans.

There are many different types of coronavirus; there is a branch of human coronaviruses.

Before COVID-19 there was SARS, and MERS those were the two most famous coronaviruses
before COVID-19.SARS emerged in a live animal market in China due to how bats were

immune to the virus and made it spread to humans. With this virus, people who had Immunity to

it will not get the virus again. (vijayanand,2004).In 1918-1919 influenza, also known as H1N1a

virus-contaminated by a bird, which then got into a pig and humans. This virus was also in the

air. (Saunders-Hastings,2016). Other viruses like smallpox killed millions of people and

ebola(people who got it got to sick even to go outside and spread the disease, so It died

down.Covid-19 is deadlier than the measles, less contagious than ebola far less deadly than

Ebola and nowhere near as harmful as smallpox.

In order to fo a pandemic, a virus needs to have extraordinary balance in order to spread

and contaminant millions. It has been stated that three weeks before china began any

containment measures against COVID-19, a 33-year-old doctor from Wohan central hospital,

Dr.Li Wenliang, sent a group chats to other doctors alerting them of the outbreak. He had a

patient came into the hospital ill, and his analysis was unclear.however, he had to sign an NDA

related document to keep this secrecy. If he broke it, he was facing legal consequences. By the

time the WHO(world health organization ) spoke about the outbreak that had occurred in China

on Jan 30th,2020, Dr. Wenliang had passed a week after getting the virus.(BCC,2020).3 weeks

after the outbreak 114,000 individuals were infected in china, if china officials had implemented

its containment a week earlier, the outbreak would not be so large. (world meters,2020)No

government official knew how badly the virus is. China locked down the country in Feb 2020;

however, The spread of the disease went from china to Italy. Once Italy knew of how badly the

virus was, they lock down the country in Feb 2020. That did not help much because U.S.A

became the next epicenter, and the country did not go on lockdown until March. This epidemic

has moved on to smaller countries who cannot afford a lockdown, and with lockdowns being
placed, it can indeed affect a nation's economies. This was a virus many experts feared off.

Internation health regulations made several nations sign a treaty in which said that they must

informed the who, if any, outbreak that can occur. It has been said that In September 2019, 3

months before the first case in China, the world health organization reported that "There is a

genuine threat of a rapid moving highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen, the world is

not prepared for." (WHO,2020).

Hospitals had issues at first due to how they knew the virus was, and they had no research

nor information on it, so many healthcare workers became ill trying to treat the patients that were

infected by COVID-19. Until a vaccine is created, there are limited options. One must start

taking precautions and follow ground rules such as: cleaning hands frequently, stay 6 feet away

from people, social distancing, if traveling must have been under self-quarantine for 14 days.

(Mackenzie,2020).The number of cases has increased on an exponential curve (doubling every

several days) since people were not social distancing. In order to defeat a virus, Immunity is

critical. When there are certain viruses, the immune system is trying to fight it off. When a lot of

individuals' immune systems try doing that, its harder for the virus to spread. (herd Immunity)

the rate of infected slows, and the virus tends to die out. Now, if we wait for the herd immunity

to occur naturally, millions will die off of COVID-19(Dowdy,2020).

The key to stopping this pathogen and pandemic is vaccinations. Immunizations and

vaccinations are given by injecting a small sample of the known virus into the human arm so it

can strengthen the immune system. The body will then fight off and become immune to the

virus, and will no longer get the virus again. Vaccines are hard to develop, and it can take a year

or more to develop. There need to be participants who are willing to get tested on for the

vaccinations, the results of the vaccination, and the production of them, the then allow health
care workers to vaccinate the population. This takes time and patience, and that what the world

needs.

History has shown that a pandemic can come to an end. One reason for this relegation of

epidemics in history has been that they have tended to be viewed as exceptional occurrences.

With technology, science, and humans, the process of vaccinations can be produced and found

quicker. Testing has become a significant aspect of doing once many nations became an

epicenter. This is so the pandemic can come to a closure, and with the development of the

vaccinations, it could save current lives and prevent people from getting this virus again.There is

always light at the end of the tunnel.

Christian Ducrot.(2016).Scientific literature on infectious diseases affecting

livestock animals, longitudinal worldwide bibliometric analysis. 47: 42.

doi: 10.1186/s13567-015-0280-2

Pandurangan Vijayanand, Ed Wilkins,and Mark Woodhead,(2004). Severe acute

respiratory syndrome (SARS): a review. 4(2): 152–160.

doi: 10.7861/clinmedicine.4-2-152

Patrick R. Saunders-Hastings, Daniel Krewski(2016). Reviewing the History of

Pandemic Influenza: Understanding Patterns of

Emergence and Transmission. 5(4): 66. doi: 10.3390/pathogens5040066

John S Mackenzie. David W Smith(2020). COVID-19: a novel zoonotic disease

caused by a coronavirus from China: what we know and what we don’t.

doi: 10.1071/MA20013

None peer reviewed articles

WWW.WHO.int

Coronavirus.health.ny.gov

www.bcc.com