What I understand: - This author has a lot of alarmist material... and this one's warranted. :I - H5N1 is the avian flu that is an analog for past disease spread, but not related to Coronavirus. Both H5N1 and Coronavirus are spread first through animals - much like Swine Flu (H1N1), Ebola, and Zika (latter two esp. through bugs). - MERS and SARS are related to Coronavirus. The strain we are hearing about on the news is COVID-19. What I don't understand: - So what is SARS-CoV-2? Is that even MORE specific to the strain on the news?And coronaviruses could present a particular challenge in that at their core they are, like influenza viruses, a single strand of RNA. This viral class is likely to mutate, and vaccines may need to be in constant development, as with the flu.
From the CDC :The virus has been named “SARS-CoV-2” and the disease it causes has been named “coronavirus disease 2019” (abbreviated “COVID-19”)
Seems like such an arbitrary pseudonym Coronavirus disease 2019 = COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 = CORDIS-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 = CVD Coronavirus disease 2019 = CD-2019 Not that I'm against COVID-19 as a name, I just wonder how they picked it out of a list of equally arbitrary names
If I had to guess: - CVD got nixed because it's three syllables that all sound stupidly similar; over any sort of deprecated audio communication pathway it would have ended up being "charlie victor delta" which would have had everyone calling it "Wuhan" - CORVID got suggested (CORona VIrus Disease) until someone pointed out that it'd get called "crow flu" and someone else pointed out that half the world can't say the letter "r" I'ma guess we're going with COVID "19" because if they could back out to call SARS COVID-02 and MERS COVID-12 and COVID-14 they would. In fact, I'll wager you'll start to see that. This is our third coronavirus outbreak in 20 years so it's likely that WHO thinks they oughtta do whatever they can to keep people from calling it "Wuhan." By calling it COVID-19 there will be less freakout when we're dealing with COVID-26 (or whatever). The virus is called "SARS-CoV-2".