[conspire] Virus "survival" on hard surfaces / extreme environments

[Texx]

Isnt that how we finally GOT a sample of the 1918 flu?  Off Permafrost
corpses?

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 10:31 PM paulz at ieee.org <paulz at ieee.org> wrote:

> Researchers have found the 1919 flu virus on corpses buried in the
> permafrost.  I think on researcher went to Alaska and another to Norway.
> There is even a story about one project on the CDC web site.  This research
> showed that 1919 was an H1N1 type virus.
>
> On Tuesday, April 14, 2020, 8:33:19 PM PDT, Texx <texxgadget at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> Since they preserve virus in fridges and freezers, you should expect virus
> to survive just fine in cold.
> Hit em with clorine or UV radiation if you want to kill them.
> Even silver salts will work.
> US military has used silver compounds for decades as topical.
> Somewhere I have some left over Army Surplus silver cleaning stuff.
> (Silver does NO GOOD once absorbed into the body, but silver nitraate on a
> table top is a nice but expensive way to clean.)
>
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 12:00 PM Deirdre Saoirse Moen <deirdre at deirdre.net>
> wrote:
>
> I answered a comment in a thread on this post:
>
> https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/19/coronalinks-3-19-20/
>
> > How long does cv19 survive in a fridge? A freezer?
>
> "Survive" is an interesting question here.
>
> First of all, it's IMHO an error to consider a virus alive. I know some
> virologists consider them alive (and some do not). I personally, having
> gone through the arguments, consider them life-adjacent. They're made up of
> organic molecules but have no metabolism. So, in that sense, they're like
> frozen meat. Got that metaphor?
>
> It's likely safest to assume that, like frozen meat, they do not readily
> break down in the refrigerator or freezer.
>
> (end of that comment, on to more)
>
> Now onto my favorite part, the most abundant life form in our bodies,
> bacteriophages!
>
> https://twitter.com/kevinsky/status/1242091667013984256
>
> Oh wait, no, wrong slide. (Despite the title of that tweet, bacteriophages
> *are* viruses -- that eat bacteria.)
>
> If you look at animations of these little lunar landers, it's easy to
> think they're alive.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3tsmFsrOg
>
> But basically viruses work by finagling entry into the cells and then
> co-opting the cell's metabolism to make additional copies of themselves.
> Because viruses are so small, this will make many many many more copies.
>
> Ebola: 19k base pairs
> SARS-CoV-2: 29.9k base pairs
>
> Human genome: 3 billion base pairs, and that excludes other stuff in a
> human cell, e.g., mitochondrial DNA, RNA, etc., all of which can be
> co-opted by viruses. Note that red blood cells aren't nucleated, which
> makes them a) faster to make, and b) smaller.
>
> So essentially, there are several points at which you can try to nail a
> virus, but all of them have their problems. HIV is unique in that it uses
> reverse transcription (it's an RNA virus that reverse transcribes into a
> DNA virus), so that was where they tried to hit it.
>
> Usually, they try to aim at where the virus attaches to the cell, at the
> chemical messenger protein, however, that's there for some other reason,
> and is used by your own body for its own reasons. So it's hard stuff.
>
> --
>   Deirdre Saoirse Moen
>   deirdre at deirdre.net
>
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>
>
> --
>
> R "Texx" Woodworth
> Sysadmin, E-Postmaster, IT Molewhacker
> "Face down, 9 edge 1st, roadkill on the information superdata highway..."
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-- 

R "Texx" Woodworth
Sysadmin, E-Postmaster, IT Molewhacker
"Face down, 9 edge 1st, roadkill on the information superdata highway..."
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