| Virus |
August 20, 2020
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| He turned on the TV and started to change the channels. It was for the first time in a couple of days that he had watched TV. In March, he was watching TV every day in order to check about the coronavirus. But now there was very little new information about the coronavirus, and only a few new government policies. So he didn't watch TV too often because, for him, watching TV was just time consuming. But on this day, at night, maybe he felt like he needed a change of pace. He surfed some of the regular channels and sighed. The TV shows were still just noisy entertainment. So, he moved to BS and his eyes were attracted on one scientific program, which was about the fight between human beings and viruses. He started to watch it. They used a lot of computer graphics and explained how viruses enter a human body. Viruses were thought to be born about 4 billion years ago. Viruses copy themselves and multiply in other creatures' bodies.  They can't multiply by themselves like cells. So they are not defined as 'creatures'. For viruses, animals' bodies are ideal to live because they are stable: same temperature and same environment. About 200,000 years ago human beings were born. It was the start of the fight between human beings and viruses. Human bodies have an immune system, and normally, things like viruses, are killed. But there are hundreds of thousands of viruses on the earth, so some of them will pass through a human body's immune system. Some of them changed themselves repeatedly to adjust in order to enter into a human body. It tries to deceive a human's immune system. He had heard that one researcher said that viruses are like hackers who want to sneak into people's computers. Computer owners try to make their protection systems stronger and change their passwords often; but, hackers also adjust to improve their skills, and find new ways in learning how to enter. It was like an endless game. Furthermore, the program introduced that there seemed to have been some good effects of viruses for human beings in how humans reproduce as well as grow. The program also introduced some other interesting things: ・Depending on people's race and their ancestry people have their own historical receptors (functions to decide whether or not to accept outside organisms). There are many kinds of viruses, and each has its own different kind of receptors, which make the effect from each virus slightly different. ・The novel corona viruses, COVID-19, is changing its type. One of the strands is powerful. They will break a human body's immune system 20 times more than the normal COVID-19 strand. This strong strand of COVID-19 was found in one specific area. ・Some patients will produce very strong antibodies against COVID-19. Using their antibodies, very severely affected patients would recover. ・There are 200 million immune cells in a human's body. The immune system is thought to become weakened as aging processes, but there are some elderly people who recovered with their own immune system who were in their 90s, even over 100! From the show, he learned about how broad the virus world is. He remembered that some researchers said that fighting against the coronavirus might last for a couple of years or more. Now, he could see that. Of course, he hoped that would not be the case. But, he must prepare for that. |
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No.396
*multiply :増殖する、掛ける
*cell :細胞
*define :定義する
*stable :安定した
*immune system :免疫
*reproduce :繁殖する、再生する
*ancestry :祖先、系図
*organism :有機体、生物
*strand :枝分かれした枝
*specific :特定の
*antibody :抗体
*affected :病気に侵された
*case :実際のケース