VIRUS - SOME EXPLANATION

 

Virus – some explanation 

   Of late more people of varied societies, ethnicity, regions and all other conceivable geographic-

identity are familiar with this term – ‘the Virus’. However, what we know of this speck is quite baffling. Yes, baffling by every count in terms of its ability to target its host. It means the tiny speck [virus] is not random in host selection. So viruses are host- specific say – humans, cattle or dogs or plants and so on. Thus, there are animal viruses, plant viruses and also bacterial viruses.  Literally every known life form is vulnerable to virus infection. We hear different names like infection, contamination and pollution.                                                                                          Each of them relates to some unwanted or undesirable ‘mixing’. 

   Infection:

   A mixing of different life forms – human / bacteria, human/ virus, human/ other disease causing    

   organisms; cattle or other animals / any of the above varieties , are all instances of “Infection”.

   Contamination:

   Contamination is a state of mixing between consumable materials like water, food and non-               

   consumable material such as dirty water or sewage or similar substances. So contamination involves   

   undesirable mixing of inanimate, but usable substances.

   Pollution:

Pollution is another form of spoilage involving raw materials like water or air or reservoirs like atmosphere or mineral storehouses  in earth by toxic or unfavourable agents like vapour or chemical residues which destroy the quality of usable substances, making raw  material unfit for human consumption . They can cause disorders or diseases in humans from prolonged use of contaminated matter.

Thus, infection occurs by a ‘coming together’ of different living systems which are unrelated by biological classification. It implies that viruses are living systems. Viruses are not comparable to other systems. [They do not ‘eat’, ‘breathe’, ‘digest’, ‘excrete’ or ‘die’]The lone life character in virus is its nucleic acid [RNA or DNA] WHICH READILY SUBJUGATES THE HOST GENES and multiplies its own viral progeny [billions in number in a few hours] and keeps spreading to new  hosts. Precisely, the Corona virus did it to a telling effect [PANDEMIC] on a global scale, baffling all nations and continents alike. Science, Technology, Medicine and diplomacy were left clueless.

However, humans mustered their skill and experience to offer the best safeguard against the pandemic.  The answer was vaccine and vaccination. Why they did not attempt curatives or medicines? Virus does nothing except to command its host to make multiple copies of its own type to hunt and haunt the hosts.  If virus does any function, one may think of ‘blocking’ that function. So no immediate scope for abating the virus is known as of now.

Our brethren in the pharmaceutical industrial research sector in India, lost no time in evolving a vaccine using a time-tested technology to provide [ through injectible  vaccines]  signal proteins to sensitize and alert our immune responses to combat the real infection.  As a Nation, we can be proud that in any modern race we are among the front runners.       Prof. K. Raman