The new coronavirus from China is starting to slowly spread. Another new/undiscovered disease waiting to infect and claim lives.
To someone with knowledge on medicine, particularly epidemiology, how did diseases like SARS, MERS-COV, Swine Flu, and this new coronavirus get formed?
How do we contain them and how do we cure them as well?
And why does it seem that many kinds of diseases emerge from China?
Black plague was said to have originated from there
In: Biology
A virus is almost life. It has DNA that uses host cell machinery to make copies of the virus. Like other forms of life, it evolves from generation to generation, both random mutations and recombination if the cell has more than one virus inside it.
New viruses are defined by humans studying disease when the new version is sufficiently different from other versions.
Once it’s been determined that there is a new virus out there, doctors start working on a cure/vaccine/… . We’re more successful with some than others. The common cold is very flexible and we’re not been able to cure it. Influenza is better, we make flu shots every year for what we predict the most common 3-4 strains will be; which works imperfectly but it’s better than nothing.
Latest Answers