The short science behind the hot specs.
You’ve heard of COVID-19: It’s the new discovery, the new disease, and the fastest-growing on the market, despite the recent dips on Wall Street!
Legend has it that in the 1960s, some stuffy old White Boomers thought they had finished; they thought they had found the coronavirus species, the modern precursor of COVID-19. But no! (How more “OK, Boomer” can you get?) And now, almost 70 years after cross-species development, we have COVID-19!
Scientists had even warned as recently as 2019 of a global pandemic most likely caused by a coronavirus, given their RNA-sequencing ways or something like that, to make endless copies of themselves––mutating so as to always be correcting errors! This means that chances are, when the virus comes to you, it’ll already be several stages into post-production. Think of all the layers of editing before it lands on you––be it in the form of slobber, or sneeze dust, or coughed-up air. Or from a doorknob. It literally lived three days on that doorknob just for you! An impressive endurance and journey.
But how did it develop in the first place? With the coronavirus’s diligent patience and exhausting leaps between species, it has made itself available to humans! We think that in either bats, or an exotic animal known as the civet, or both, this new strain was able to go viral!
You cute little tiger skunk fox.
What’s not exactly clear is how the strain passed from these animals to humans––maybe in the form of human consumption of bat, maybe in the form of bat poop on fruit that civet ate, maybe by way of karma for the Uruguayan fashion designer Carmela Hontou, who brought the virus to her country, and who also uses animal skins in her designs. Again, the source isn’t clear as to how it went viral––but what is clear is that it sure did!
Now with worldwide recognition of COVID-19, it’s becoming more probable by the minute that you, too, will get your own version of the hot new virus.
But fas tempting as it can be to get your hands on it, be patient and wash those fingers. We can’t all have it all at once! As your Boomer mother said, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”