The Coronavirus Explained & What You Should Do — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00In December 2019 the Chinese authorities
2. 0:03notified the world that a virus was spreading through their communities.
3. 0:06In the following months, it spread to other countries, with cases doubling within days.
4. 0:11This virus is the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Related Coronavirus 2
5. 0:16that causes the disease called Covid-19 and that everyone simply calls coronavirus.
6. 0:21What actually happens when it infects a human and what should we all do?
7. 0:27[Intro Music]
8. 0:34A virus is really just a hull around genetic material and a few proteins, arguably not even a living thing.
9. 0:41It can only make more of itself by entering a living cell.
10. 0:45Corona may spread via surfaces,
11. 0:47but it's still uncertain how long it can survive on them.
12. 0:50Its main way of spreading seems to be droplet infection when people cough, or if you touch someone who's ill and then your face,
13. 0:56say rubbing your eyes or nose.
14. 0:59The virus starts its journey here, and then hitches a ride as a stowaway deeper into the body
15. 1:04Its destinations are the intestines, the spleen or the lungs, where it can have the most dramatic effect.
16. 1:10Even just a few corona viruses can cause quite a dramatic situation.
17. 1:15The lungs are lined with billions of epithelial cells.
18. 1:19These are the border cells of your body, lining your organs and mucosa waiting to be infected.
19. 1:25Corona connects to a specific receptor on its victim's membranes to inject its genetic material.
20. 1:31The cell, ignorant of what's happening, executes the new instructions, which are pretty simple:
21. 1:36copy and reassemble.
22. 1:38It fills up with more and more copies of the original virus until it reaches a critical point and receives one final order,
23. 1:46self-destruct.
24. 1:47The cell sort of melts away, releasing new corona particles ready to attack more cells.
25. 1:53The number of infected cells grows exponentially
26. 1:56After about 10 days, millions of body cells are infected, and billions of viruses swarmed the lungs.
27. 2:03The virus has not caused too much damage yet, but corona is now going to release a real beast on you,
28. 2:10your own immune system.
29. 2:11The immune system, while there to protect you, can actually be pretty dangerous to yourself and needs tight regulation.
30. 2:18And as immune cells pour into the lungs to fight the virus, Corona infects some of them and creates confusion.
31. 2:26Cells have neither ears nor eyes.
32. 2:28They communicate mostly via tiny information proteins called cytokines.
33. 2:32Nearly every important immune reaction is controlled by them.
34. 2:36Corona causes infected immune cells to overreact and yell bloody murder.
35. 2:41In a sense, it puts the immune system into a fighting frenzy and sends way more soldiers than it should, wasting its resources and causing damage.
36. 2:50Two kinds of cells in particular wreak havoc.
37. 2:53First, neutrophils, which are great at killing stuff, including our cells.
38. 2:58As they arrive in their thousands, they start pumping out enzymes that destroy as many friends as enemies.
39. 3:04The other important type of cells that go into a frenzy are killer T-cells, which usually order infected cells to commit controlled suicide.
40. 3:13Confused as they are, they start ordering healthy cells to kill themselves too.
41. 3:18The more and more immune cells arrive, the more damage they do, and the more healthy lung tissue they kill.
42. 3:24This might get so bad that it can cause permanent irreversible damage, that leads to lifelong disabilities.
43. 3:31In most cases, the immune system slowly regains control.
44. 3:34It kills the infected cells, intercepts the viruses trying to infect new ones and cleans up the battlefield.
45. 3:41Recovery begins.
46. 3:42The majority of people infected by Corona will get through it with relatively mild symptoms.
47. 3:48But many cases become severe or even critical.
48. 3:51We don't know the percentage because not all cases have been identified,
49. 3:55but it's safe to say that there is a lot more than with the flu. In more severe cases,
50. 4:00Millions of epithelial cells have died and with them, the lungs' protective lining is gone.
51. 4:05That means that the alveoli - tiny air sacs via which breathing occurs - can be infected by bacteria that aren't usually a big problem.
52. 4:13Patients get pneumonia.
53. 4:15Respiration becomes hard or even fails, and patients need ventilators to survive.
54. 4:20The immune system has fought at full capacity for weeks and made millions of antiviral weapons.
55. 4:26And as thousands of bacteria rapidly multiply, it is overwhelmed.
56. 4:31They enter the blood and overrun the body; if this happens, death is very likely.
57. 4:37The Corona virus is often compared to the flu, but actually, it's much more dangerous.
58. 4:42While the exact death rate is hard to pin down during an ongoing pandemic,
59. 4:46we know for sure that it's much more contagious and spreads faster than the flu.
60. 4:51There are two futures for a pandemic like Corona: fast and slow.
61. 4:56Which future we will see depends on how we all react to it in the early days of the outbreak.
62. 5:02A fast pandemic will be horrible and cost many lives;
63. 5:06a slow pandemic will not be remembered by the history books.
64. 5:10The worst case scenario for a fast pandemic begins with a very rapid rate of infection
65. 5:15because there are no counter measures in place to slow it down.
66. 5:18Why is this so bad?
67. 5:20In a fast pandemic, many people get sick at the same time.
68. 5:24If the numbers get too large, health care systems become unable to handle it.
69. 5:28There aren't enough resources, like medical staff or equipment like ventilators, left to help everybody.
70. 5:34People will die untreated.
71. 5:36And as more health care workers get sick themselves, the capacity of health care systems falls even further.
72. 5:43If this becomes the case, then horrible decisions will have to be made about who gets to live and who doesn't.
73. 5:49The number of deaths rises significantly in such a scenario.
74. 5:53To avoid this, the world - that means all of us - needs to do what it can to turn this into a slow pandemic.
75. 6:01A pandemic is slowed down by the right responses.
76. 6:04Especially in the early phase, so that everyone who gets sick can get treatment and there's no crunch point with overwhelmed hospitals.
77. 6:12Since we don't have a vaccine for Corona, we have to socially engineer our behaviour,
78. 6:17to act like a social vaccine. This simply means two things:
79. 6:221. Not getting infected; and 2. Not infecting others.
80. 6:26Although it sounds trivial, the very best thing you can do is to wash your hands.
81. 6:30The soap is actually a powerful tool.
82. 6:33The corona virus is encased in what is basically a layer of fat;
83. 6:37soap breaks that fat apart and leaves it unable to infect you.
84. 6:41It also makes your hands slippery, and with the mechanical motions of washing, viruses are ripped away.
85. 6:47To do it properly, wash your hands as if you've just cut up some jalapeños and want to put in your contact lenses next.
86. 6:54The next thing is social distancing, which is not a nice experience,
87. 6:59but a nice thing to do. This means: no hugging, no handshakes.
88. 7:03If you can stay at home, stay at home to protect those who need to be out for society to function:
89. 7:09from doctors to cashiers, or police officers;. You depend on all of them; they all depend on you to not get sick.
90. 7:17On a larger level, there are quarantines, which can mean different things, from travel restrictions or actual orders to stay at home.
91. 7:24Quarantines are not great to experience and certainly not popular.
92. 7:28But they buy us - and specially the researchers working on medication and vaccinations - crucial time
93. 7:34So if you are put under quarantine, you should understand why, and respect it.
94. 7:39None of this is fun. But looking at the big picture, it is a really small price to pay.
95. 7:45The question of how pandemics end, depends on how they start;
96. 7:50if they start fast with a steep slope, they end badly.
97. 7:53If they start slow, with a not-so-steep slope, they end okay-ish.
98. 7:57And, in this day and age, it really is in all of our hands.
99. 8:02Literally, and
100. 8:04figuratively.
101. 8:06A huge thanks to the experts who helped us on short notice with this video,
102. 8:09specially Our World In Data,
103. 8:11the online publication for research and data on the world's largest problems
104. 8:15and how to make progress solving them.
105. 8:17Check out their site. It also includes a constantly updated page on the Corona pandemic
106. 8:23[Outro music]