[conspire] Enzymes and Communism

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

> On Nov 25, 2020, at 04:19, Nick Moffitt <nick at zork.net> wrote:
> 
> Enzymes are definitely slowed by cold, but can only really be stopped by absolute-zero temperatures.  Still, the shelf life of a cryogenic vaccine sample only needs to be measured in days, so this is acceptable.

One of the things I learned this year: viruses with an outer coating, e.g., coronaviruses, are less hardy when it comes to typical cleaning processes than those without, e.g., ebola. I initially found this counterintuitive.

The reason is that the outer-coat viruses rely on their surface structure to infect, and that is readily taken apart by soap, because the coat, just like cells, is a bilipid layer that soap is designed to tear apart.

Where the much stronger molecular chains in uncoated viruses like ebola are far, far harder to tear apart, so harder to destroy its infectivity.

(When it comes to things like ultraviolet degradation, though, the coated viruses win.)

Deirdre
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