On COVID Biology

Last week, my class received an email from one of the professors moving the next day's 9:30 AM lecture to 8 PM due to a family health emergency. Two days and three emails later, that lecture had been entirely cancelled, and the next class' paper discussion had been replaced with a lecture from another professor pertaining to COVID-19. So it was with great excitement tempered by worry that I joined the Zoom lecture that day. Hearing from a professor who was actively working on COVID with an international consortium would promise to be interesting if nothing else.

Listening to the professor speak about the fascinating biology of the virus, it was too easy to forget that this was the same virus that was wreaking havoc on people all over the world while causing entire countries to shut down. For example, the virus' transcription mechanism was quite fascinating, with transcription initiated from successively later points in the cDNA, so that it produces more copies of the viral capsid proteins that are found at the 3' end than the transcriptional machinery that is found at the 5' end. What struck me the most from the lecture was how lacking we were on good data. With studies being produced at astounding rates, though without peer review, finding good information is a significant challenge. Undertesting and incomplete information makes epidemiology particularly difficult, necessitating numerous assumptions to produce meaningful results. Biologically, there are numerous mysteries associated with its action, from its ability to infect neural systems to the high prevalence of asymptomatic carriers. With the scientific community worldwide focusing all its efforts on this pandemic, hopefully significant breakthroughs can be made in understanding and combating this virus.