Speaker 1: Hello, friends out there, It's Chuck Bryant here on a
Speaker 1: Saturday to intro my select pick for this week from
Speaker 1: October four two fourteen. Virus Talk with Josh and Chuck.
Speaker 1: Not a spin off show, but as podcast episode we
Speaker 1: recorded about virus is very very interesting stuff. Give it
Speaker 1: a listen right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry Uh. And this is Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know, featuring my enormous dot up nose and
Speaker 1: how appropriate. Yeah, well that was one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why I wanted to do this one. I figured I'm
Speaker 1: a little sick right now. Yeah still, and uh, I
Speaker 1: wanted to know more about the monster inside of me.
Speaker 1: That's right, Like I'm not feeling great and knowledge is power,
Speaker 1: like we always say, exactly, Like, just from researching this,
Speaker 1: I was like starting to break a sweat and tremble
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm getting better, and then I
Speaker 1: passed out and hit my head. Yeah, and I didn't
Speaker 1: have enough time to finish studying so good, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to make a lot of this up. Chuck cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've covered we covered ebola recently, and we are definitely
Speaker 1: going to cover HIV at some point. We just haven't
Speaker 1: gotten around to it. Yeah, but both of those are viruses.
Speaker 1: So there's another one we talked about that seemed to
Speaker 1: come up in this I don't remember what it was,
Speaker 1: but um, the herpies. No, no, we never talked about herpes.
Speaker 1: Um well, you know, not mixed company what what was it?
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but there was definitely microbiome maybe Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it was. But we've talked about
Speaker 1: viruses and viral infections. But to me, I think viruses
Speaker 1: are one of the most fascinating things on the entire planet.
Speaker 1: They're jerks, like, we don't know where they came from.
Speaker 1: We don't quite know how to classify them because they
Speaker 1: really kind of operate on the line between a living
Speaker 1: in a non living thing. Yeah, this article said like
Speaker 1: most scientists agree, but I found a lot of people
Speaker 1: that said that they're not living things too, So yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but who cares really, They still definitely have an effect.
Speaker 1: You know. The weird thing is about a virus is
Speaker 1: why some people say it's living and some people say
Speaker 1: it's non living. Is that it to to be a
Speaker 1: living thing, you have to have something like arms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to have arms. Rocks rocks don't have arms,
Speaker 1: No point proven um. You have to have You have
Speaker 1: to be able to carry out the processes that keep
Speaker 1: you alive, like self sustaining. Yeah, like you A cell.
Speaker 1: A cell is the smallest living organism. It's the smallest
Speaker 1: possible living organism because you get lower than that and
Speaker 1: you have maybe the things that make up a cell,
Speaker 1: but they can't sustain themselves. A cell can sustain itself
Speaker 1: health and things can be made up of cells like us,
Speaker 1: and therefore we are a living organisms. The cells that
Speaker 1: make us up our living organisms. Plants are living organisms,
Speaker 1: but viruses they don't have any means of carrying out
Speaker 1: the processes that keep them alive, which doesn't matter because
Speaker 1: they're not alive, But more important, they don't have any
Speaker 1: processes that allow them to reproduce. Yeah, they're just like
Speaker 1: by themselves that they're not worth very much. They need
Speaker 1: to glom on. They're always gloming on to everyone else's
Speaker 1: junk exactly, which is basically what a virus does. But
Speaker 1: for something as simple as a viruses, And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about how simple they are in a second. They have
Speaker 1: devastating effects when they do start to really get busy,
Speaker 1: you know. So, Chuck I was saying, like, they don't
Speaker 1: know exactly where viruses came from. They know they're very old.
Speaker 1: But there there are a couple of theories. My favorite one,
Speaker 1: probably the one that's right, is um that they are
Speaker 1: former bits of cells that basically evolved into freelance renegades.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, which explains why certain viruses fit with certain cells.
Speaker 1: Well that makes sense. Huh. So they could have just
Speaker 1: been basically like drifting genetic material that that evolved enough
Speaker 1: to say I'm gonna learn to reproduce by hijacking renegade drifters. Yep,
Speaker 1: So are you saying that viruses or John Rambo? Pretty much?
Speaker 1: So let's talk about like what makes a virus? Uh? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: like you said, a cell is is on its own
Speaker 1: It can do its own thing. Viruses cannot. Viruses are
Speaker 1: super tiny, about one millionth of an inch long, which
Speaker 1: is a thousand times smaller than bacteria, which are smaller
Speaker 1: than human cells. Most of them. There are some viruses
Speaker 1: that are actually larger than the average sized bacteria, but
Speaker 1: for the the most part they are smaller, which is still
Speaker 1: super tiny. Sure it is like you need an electron
Speaker 1: microscope to view these bad boys, right. Uh. And they
Speaker 1: can infect just about any living thing. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, any living thing could be theoretically infected by
Speaker 1: a virus, like a bacteria can get a viral infection. Man,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, isn't that crazy? I don't even know what
Speaker 1: that seaweed can get viruses? Yeah, donkeys, Yeah, all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff, the whole the whole gamut from seaweed to donkeys.
Speaker 1: U a virus itself. If you just want to look
Speaker 1: at what that that little tiny particle is is. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a very on Is that how we're going to
Speaker 1: say that viron viron? Yeah? Why didn't they just leave
Speaker 1: the second eye out environ? Yeah? I don't know how
Speaker 1: much better. Basically, what it is is a set of
Speaker 1: genetic instructions. Can be either DNA or RNA, can't be both. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's you know, it's just instructions, that's all it is. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's the nucleic acid that is part of a VIRON.
Speaker 1: Like a VIRON is like a particle. It's like an
Speaker 1: individual viral particle. Yeah, and part of that is the
Speaker 1: nucleic acid. Yeah, and that's surrounded by capsid, which is
Speaker 1: just a protein coating to protect it. And then sometimes
Speaker 1: if it's an envelope virus, it will also have an
Speaker 1: envelope around that capsid. If it's naked, it doesn't need
Speaker 1: or I guess it just doesn't have that other protein code, right,
Speaker 1: And the enveloped ones are enveloped with this um a lipid,
Speaker 1: a fat of some sort um. But for a naked virus,
Speaker 1: it's can it's made up of two things. It's got.
Speaker 1: It's it's nucleic acid and it's protein coding that protects
Speaker 1: the nucleic acid. So it's not just nucleic acid floating around,
Speaker 1: that's right. And um, the nucleic acid is like you said,
Speaker 1: it's basically just a blueprint for how to make more viruses.
Speaker 1: Because if speaking teleologically, a virus is its whole purpose
Speaker 1: is to make more viruses. That's all it cares about.
Speaker 1: And you can say, well, that applies to about any
Speaker 1: living organism if you get down to the bare bones,
Speaker 1: just to put the gate. Yeah, with the virus, it's
Speaker 1: like that's it, man, it's not doing anything else. It
Speaker 1: doesn't care about playing cards. It doesn't want to do
Speaker 1: anything but reproduce and make you sick. Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1: Uh there. Their shape varies a lot, but they're basically
Speaker 1: three types helical or hell eqal. It's like a tube.
Speaker 1: You got your polyhedral, so it's sort of like a
Speaker 1: soccer ball, and then you have your complex shapes and
Speaker 1: they are complex there. You know, they can look crazy,
Speaker 1: they can have tails, they can have crazy looking spider
Speaker 1: legs like the what they both which one looks like
Speaker 1: the Apollo lunar Lander. I'm gonna go with complex, I
Speaker 1: would for sure, but yeah, yeah, I don't think it
Speaker 1: could be polyhedral. It's startling how much it looks like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like it was made to look like a
Speaker 1: cool little lunar Lander. Or that the lunar Lander was
Speaker 1: modeled after the virus maybe, which doesn't make much because
Speaker 1: they wanted to infect the Moon, which you may have
Speaker 1: astronaut jokes. Uh So, Unlike cells that can do their
Speaker 1: own thing, viruses don't have enzymes like cells do that
Speaker 1: basically allowed to operate uh independently as their own little units.
Speaker 1: Some do. Some viruses contain just enough enzymes to take
Speaker 1: their DNA or their RNA and and do something with
Speaker 1: it to basically primate to be transcribed or something like that.
Speaker 1: Or they have enzymes that go hijack the enzymes in
Speaker 1: the cell. Yeah, so some do. Most don't write. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the whole point of infecting a host cell.
Speaker 1: If all of virus wants to do is reproduce, but
Speaker 1: it can't reproduce, that's where the host cell comes in.
Speaker 1: That's right. They basically move into the factory with and
Speaker 1: say we're going to use your equipment. They're like, they
Speaker 1: don't mind. There's gonna be some big changes around here
Speaker 1: because there's a new share eriff in town. And the virus.
Speaker 1: Although all viruses don't not kill people, we should point
Speaker 1: that out, no, And so it depending on what kind
Speaker 1: of virus it is, whether it's naked or enveloped. Um,
Speaker 1: it will attach itself to the to the host cell
Speaker 1: and either inject it. If it's naked, it has to
Speaker 1: stay outside the host cell and it basically injects its
Speaker 1: genetic material into the host cell. Or if it's enveloped
Speaker 1: that fat lipid coding that that makes it an enveloped
Speaker 1: virus basically connects to the host cell's own fat lipid coding,
Speaker 1: and that protein coated virus can basically slip through, just
Speaker 1: absorb right into the cell and say tada when it
Speaker 1: makes it on the inside. Yeah. Is that what an
Speaker 1: antigen is? I think that's the protein that has to match,
Speaker 1: like the antigen looks for another uh like protein so
Speaker 1: it can get that tight bond. And if they and
Speaker 1: if they're not similar enough, they can't bond and infect
Speaker 1: that cell. Be wrong? And that is that right? I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's the it sounds right, and the
Speaker 1: reason it sounds right because I saw elsewhere in the
Speaker 1: research that, Um, that's why viruses go after specific kinds
Speaker 1: of cells. Okay there there, Um, that's they recognize the
Speaker 1: type of cells that they're capable of infecting, right, and say,
Speaker 1: I can bind to you very tightly, my friend, exactly,
Speaker 1: So let's dance exactly all right. Right after this message,
Speaker 1: we are going to get down to the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: on what happens once they have bound themselves to that cell.
Speaker 1: All right, Josh, they moved into the cell. They like
Speaker 1: the looks of it. It's a nice open concept floor plan,
Speaker 1: which everyone loves these days, right. What happens from there, Well,
Speaker 1: it depends on the virus. So let's say it was
Speaker 1: one that injected it. It's got its genetic material floating around.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's an enzyme that's assisting the genetic material, or
Speaker 1: if the virus itself showed up, Um, it's releasing its
Speaker 1: genetic material all over the place. But basically what happens
Speaker 1: is that sounds pretty crossy. Yeah, well it is pretty gross.
Speaker 1: It happens exactly like it like you think, Um, but
Speaker 1: the the once inside the cell, you'll see a lot
Speaker 1: that the virus hijacks the cells um processes. Yeah, like hey,
Speaker 1: we need to use your deal because we don't have
Speaker 1: our own. Exactly. Um, they're not. The reason people use
Speaker 1: the word hijack is because it really gets the point across,
Speaker 1: but it's also because science isn't on how viruses do it,
Speaker 1: and they they what they think basically is that if
Speaker 1: there's an accompanying enzyme or something, the enzymes, but basically
Speaker 1: wait for a line of other enzymes, the cell zone
Speaker 1: enzymes to go past, and then it grabs the last
Speaker 1: one in the line. That old trick hits it over
Speaker 1: the head hypnotizes it basically, and then sends it back
Speaker 1: out to go recruit other enzymes, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the cell is it's enzymes, it's workers. If
Speaker 1: you think of the enzymes as like the workers in
Speaker 1: the cell um, they're all working for this virus, and
Speaker 1: the cells like, what the heck is going on? It's
Speaker 1: too late. The enzymes are focused on transcribing the DNA,
Speaker 1: which ultimately just makes more DNA or RNA for the virus,
Speaker 1: and then assembling it with proteins that the enzymes are
Speaker 1: now making, so they're now making more and more and
Speaker 1: more viruses. It's a hostile takeover. It is very much
Speaker 1: a hostile takeover. That's one way to go. There's another
Speaker 1: thing called a retrovirus, which I'm a huge fan of.
Speaker 1: Some of the worst viruses around a retroviruses, which is
Speaker 1: ironic because they actually have the softest impact on the
Speaker 1: host cell. But a retrovirus goes in very quietly, hangs
Speaker 1: around clothing and right, Yeah, because HIV is a retrovirus. Um,
Speaker 1: so is uh. I think a flu flu is a
Speaker 1: retrovirus too, I think um. But it goes in and
Speaker 1: it it just inserts its DNA into the cells DNA alright,
Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, I go about your business or whatever.
Speaker 1: But now there's this extra sequence that when you go
Speaker 1: over it and you transcribe it and you do what
Speaker 1: this this um d NA or this genetic material is
Speaker 1: telling you to do to make you're gonna Also is
Speaker 1: a byproduct spit out um viruses, so it's just duplicating itself,
Speaker 1: it is. So that's there's a lot of different things
Speaker 1: that can go on. But it's like you said, there's
Speaker 1: a hostile takeover or the cell is tricked into making
Speaker 1: more viruses, but what happens is more and more and
Speaker 1: more and more viruses are being made within the host cell,
Speaker 1: which can be pretty bad for the hostel. Ultimately, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because eventually the virus is gonna leave, and they can
Speaker 1: either if it's a naked virus, it'll bust out and
Speaker 1: just destroy the host cell and be like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: tired of your little apartment. I'm just gonna burn it
Speaker 1: down because I'm my own thing now and I can
Speaker 1: live on my own um. Or if it's an envelope
Speaker 1: virus and it'll just kind of pinch away and keep
Speaker 1: that protective cell membrane and just be like, well, fine,
Speaker 1: I'll just take my stuff and and leave and you're
Speaker 1: free to do what you want. Right. Well, that's another
Speaker 1: reason why retroviruses are easy on the host cell is
Speaker 1: because all retroviruses are enveloped viruses. So these new newly
Speaker 1: made viruses just moved to the outside membrane and and
Speaker 1: bud off. And then what happens when they bud off
Speaker 1: or when the cell breaks open because there's so many
Speaker 1: new viruses, it ruptures the cell. Yeah, it's just pretty
Speaker 1: horrific if you think about it. Um, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you're contagious. Yeah, and it's duplicating and spreading all throughout
Speaker 1: your body at a pretty rapid rate. Lots of these guys.
Speaker 1: So let's let's look at your well, let's look at
Speaker 1: you for instance. Okay, what have you got right now?
Speaker 1: I got something some sort of viral infection cold, not
Speaker 1: the flu, probably, Yeah, you achy, fevery no, no, feverish.
Speaker 1: I mean, uh so what do you What do I have? Doc? Well,
Speaker 1: I would say you have a cold, but I had
Speaker 1: a cold that that turned into a sinus infection. I
Speaker 1: may have one of those from the color of the
Speaker 1: stuff that's coming out of my nose, I would say
Speaker 1: I probably have a size infection. Yes. Would you describe
Speaker 1: it as khaki? Uh? I would describe it as a
Speaker 1: drab all of oh Man, way worse than Khaki. When
Speaker 1: I was sick a couple of weeks ago, I had
Speaker 1: some serious, bright, bright, almost fluorescent yellow coming out, which
Speaker 1: is all very gratifying to get rid of, either with
Speaker 1: your Nettie Potter just blowing your nose or whatever. I've
Speaker 1: been Nettie Potting like a madman. Yeah. You know you
Speaker 1: can overdo that when you're sick. Apparently, Yeah, I can imagine,
Speaker 1: because this just the salt. Get too much salt up there,
Speaker 1: and I think just fluid like unless you really really
Speaker 1: get it all out. Uh, it's better like you need
Speaker 1: to dry out completely in between. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: definitely all right, We'll just take two of these and
Speaker 1: come back and see me next week. Well you're diagnosing
Speaker 1: what was going on, Well, you've got a cold, I think, um,
Speaker 1: but let's say you're in the office. I think we
Speaker 1: should make this as real as possible. I was. Let's
Speaker 1: say that I'm hanging out with my sweet little four
Speaker 1: year old niece, who herself has a cold. Uh. She
Speaker 1: the she, the the person. I don't want to name names,
Speaker 1: but I think she's she's on your list now. So
Speaker 1: all right, So your little niece probably sneezed or something
Speaker 1: or just put her dirty little hands all over your
Speaker 1: face because she loves Uncle Josh. She she has her
Speaker 1: dad would not allow her to have dirty hands. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think she an Okay, yeah, uh. And what you
Speaker 1: probably did was inhaled a virus particle, and that probably
Speaker 1: attached to your the linings of your nasal passages, your sinuses,
Speaker 1: because apparently there's basically only three ways that a virus
Speaker 1: gets into your body. You inhale it uh, attaches to
Speaker 1: your mucous membranes like your nose or your gums or something,
Speaker 1: or enters through a break in the skin. That's right.
Speaker 1: So your host cell is going to break open, your
Speaker 1: virus is gonna move in there with and say I'm
Speaker 1: gonna use your equipment like we talked about. Then maybe
Speaker 1: travel to your bloodstream, travel to your lungs uh, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna end up getting Let's say, maybe one of
Speaker 1: the first signs is a running nose because you're losing
Speaker 1: cells and your sinuses, and now that fluid is gonna
Speaker 1: be loosened up as a result. Yeah, the nasal, the
Speaker 1: literal cellular lining of my sinuses is being is rupturing
Speaker 1: to attack. Because here's the thing. When you go through
Speaker 1: and look at like what a virus does, you're looking
Speaker 1: at what one individual virian is doing. You don't necessarily
Speaker 1: just pick up one individual viron. You can be exposed
Speaker 1: to many, many, many virians and they are each reproducing,
Speaker 1: producing thousands more just in one cell. So all this
Speaker 1: is going on, it can have a pronounced effect. Like
Speaker 1: if you just lost one cell your in your nasal lining,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna do much. You're probably never ever going
Speaker 1: to notice. But if you lose a ton of the
Speaker 1: cells at the same time, you're gonna have a runny nose,
Speaker 1: or if it happens in your throat, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: a sore throat. That's right, that's just fluid. You know,
Speaker 1: it's attacking those cells in your throat and the lining,
Speaker 1: and it's dripping and just causing like a usually some
Speaker 1: sort of inflammation. Yeah, and those because that those ruptured
Speaker 1: cells are being carried down by your nose juice to
Speaker 1: the back of your throat, which is turn That's what
Speaker 1: I was raised on. It's in turn um nose juice okay,
Speaker 1: which in turn U and they attach an attack to
Speaker 1: the cells lining your throat and then this whole thing
Speaker 1: is just going on and on and on again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've ever had aches and pains because of maybe
Speaker 1: a flu, that's because your muscle cells are being attacked.
Speaker 1: And it sucks because you don't know that this is
Speaker 1: going on at first, like it's just this war being
Speaker 1: waged inside your body and you're like, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to the grocery store and I'm feeling
Speaker 1: pretty good exactly, and by the time you start to
Speaker 1: feel it's too late, it is too late. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you brought that up because I did a don't be
Speaker 1: dumb on when you're actually contagious. Yeah, what's the final
Speaker 1: on that? So it depends on it does it vary?
Speaker 1: The how long you're contagious varies, But when you start
Speaker 1: is a about a day before you start showing symptoms.
Speaker 1: So like remember how I said, if you have one
Speaker 1: cell burst and and you're not gonna notice it, it's
Speaker 1: gonna take many many cells to burst before you finally
Speaker 1: have a sore throat. Well, while those things are bursting.
Speaker 1: After that first one bursts, you're contagious, buddy. So for
Speaker 1: a day before you even know you're sick, you're walking
Speaker 1: around infecting other people. With a cold, you go from
Speaker 1: the day before symptoms to about four days after. And
Speaker 1: with the flu, you go from the day before symptoms
Speaker 1: to five to seven days after, so you can still
Speaker 1: be It is true when people are like, I'm not
Speaker 1: contagious anymore, they're usually probably totally wrong. But say they're
Speaker 1: flu last eight days. If they say that on day eight,
Speaker 1: they're they're actually right. Most people say it by like
Speaker 1: day three or four or whatever. That's it's not right. Well,
Speaker 1: they need to watch Don't Be Dumb. Josh's award winning
Speaker 1: web series so many awards, man, I think the next
Speaker 1: award is gonna win. Is the most divisive web series
Speaker 1: because half the people, more than half the think, are like, man,
Speaker 1: this is the best thing ever. People I don't good it.
Speaker 1: Why is Josh acting so weird? And I'll just respond with, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't get it, And I mean it's definitely not
Speaker 1: for everybody. I've learned, Well, it's very funny. I think
Speaker 1: it turns out. You asked me if I if I
Speaker 1: feel feverish, and I don't, Apparently my body is slacking
Speaker 1: on the immune response. Well, I think you don't always
Speaker 1: get the fever. But fever is a good thing because
Speaker 1: your body is wired to operate optimally at ninety eight
Speaker 1: point six, even though I heard that was nine eight
Speaker 1: point seven. Now is that right? Yeah? I heard that
Speaker 1: they kind of abandoned that as like an average body
Speaker 1: temperature because it varies enough between human beings that they're
Speaker 1: they're like, now it's this between this rather than point six,
Speaker 1: and if you don't have that, you're sick. So somewhere
Speaker 1: in that range, let's say, uh, chemical reactions and basically
Speaker 1: anything going on your body just that's the temperature it likes.
Speaker 1: So when you get a fever, it's actually slowing all
Speaker 1: those processes down, including the virus is spread. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's like, oh man, it's hot, I can't can't work
Speaker 1: as much, that's right, Uh, which is kind of a weird, indirect,
Speaker 1: roundabout way of slowing a fever down or slowing an
Speaker 1: infection down. Yeah. I mean, I guess if it works,
Speaker 1: So it's good to have a fever it is good
Speaker 1: to have a fever. And it's it actually makes sense
Speaker 1: in a strange way because some infections, some viruses attack
Speaker 1: the very cells that are meant to mount the immune response.
Speaker 1: Like remember a bola, it goes right after like every
Speaker 1: immune response cell that can find. HIV goes after T cells,
Speaker 1: which attack and destroy foreign bodies, so to to slow
Speaker 1: them down and just the spread so that the immune
Speaker 1: response can continue and mount a full attack is kind
Speaker 1: of clever. Yeah, And and since you mentioned HIV, it's
Speaker 1: it's another scary one because it's one of those viruses
Speaker 1: that can just lay in wait and they even call
Speaker 1: it sleeping it some sometimes, you know, like it's not
Speaker 1: obvious you could have HIV and be spreading HIV without
Speaker 1: ever feeling any kind of sick or any kind of symptoms,
Speaker 1: and um, basically eventually that virus is gonna do its thing.
Speaker 1: You know, it could lay in wait for years even
Speaker 1: without without acting right and then it depends on the virus.
Speaker 1: But they figure that there's some sort of environmental trigger.
Speaker 1: One I saw was like exposure to UV light or
Speaker 1: something like that. It's the same thing. Herpies is a
Speaker 1: virus like that, it sleeps which is why people who
Speaker 1: have like say herpie simplex don't always have um cold source.
Speaker 1: It'll just flare up, right, it will flare up. And
Speaker 1: they often say, like in times of stress or something
Speaker 1: like that, Well the virus isn't like this person is
Speaker 1: stressed out, let's go. There's probably cortisol triggers the virus
Speaker 1: to start reproducing. But one of the one of the
Speaker 1: devious aspects of this is when that when that virus
Speaker 1: sneaks in and inserts its d n A or RNA
Speaker 1: into the DNA of the cell and just hang back
Speaker 1: and wait. Well that cell is dividing as like normal
Speaker 1: again the virus unwittingly right without the virus even being reproduced,
Speaker 1: and now set up to be reproduced rather than in
Speaker 1: just one cell now four or eight or sixteen or
Speaker 1: thirty two. And then all hell breaks loose when all
Speaker 1: of them start going at the same time because they
Speaker 1: were all exposed to cortisol. That's what I'm saying. Viruses
Speaker 1: are amazingly interesting and wicked, wicked, wicked things they are. Um,
Speaker 1: So here are some tips the way on you know,
Speaker 1: if your office is sick, or you're around your four
Speaker 1: year old niece, Uh, here's some tips from your buddies
Speaker 1: here to keep you from getting sick. You know that
Speaker 1: there are carrier organisms like mosquitoes and fleas. They can
Speaker 1: spread viruses. We know it can be airborne. We already
Speaker 1: talked about bodily fluids, whether that's nose juice or saliva
Speaker 1: or blood or semen or vaginal secretions as one way
Speaker 1: you can get a direct transfer. Uh, surfaces on which
Speaker 1: bodily fluids have dried, which is kind of scary to
Speaker 1: think about. Yeah, you know you wanted to keep all
Speaker 1: those secretions like off of surfaces because the virus can
Speaker 1: live outside of the body for a while. Apparently flu
Speaker 1: virus can live for seven days just on the surface. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why, like you sneeze in your hand and you
Speaker 1: open the door to your office, then there's there could
Speaker 1: be little virus on that door knob and um, that's
Speaker 1: why they super advise. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: we're advising now is to wash your hands a lot
Speaker 1: if you're sick or if you know that there are
Speaker 1: sickness around you. Like I wouldn't be Howard Hughes about it,
Speaker 1: but I wash my hands a lot when I know
Speaker 1: that there's viruses going around. I started washing my hands
Speaker 1: a lot more once I've found out or was told
Speaker 1: what you're actually doing when you're washing your hand, Um,
Speaker 1: you're not actually killing anything on your hands, any germs.
Speaker 1: What you're doing by introducing soap is you're creating something
Speaker 1: that will basically go and cling to germs on your hands.
Speaker 1: And then when you wash off the soap, you're washing
Speaker 1: off the germs. So you're not like waging war or
Speaker 1: anything like that. You're basically just rinsing your hands clean. Literally.
Speaker 1: So once once I realized that, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: washing washing hands makes a lot of sense, because before
Speaker 1: that I was like some doesn't do anything. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: and I don't even use antibacterial soap as a rule.
Speaker 1: But so I was like, it's definitely not doing anything.
Speaker 1: Now like it is doing something. So let's wash our
Speaker 1: hands as often as possible. That's a good idea and
Speaker 1: a really long T shirt. If you are sick, you're
Speaker 1: going to want to cover your mouth when you sneeze
Speaker 1: and cough, because that's just common decency. Um, you want
Speaker 1: to avoid contact with anyone else's bodily fluids, whether you're
Speaker 1: sick or not. And whether they're sick or not. It's
Speaker 1: just you don't want to have anyone else's bodily fluids
Speaker 1: on you, r in you unless you know you're like
Speaker 1: married or something. Right then, unless you really love that person,
Speaker 1: the fluids are welcome. Uh. And antibiotics and this this
Speaker 1: thing's gotten blue a few times. It's a very sexy show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sexy virus. Uh, antibiotics aren't gonna help with um a
Speaker 1: viral infection that is obviously for bacterial infections only. Yes,
Speaker 1: But it occurred to me, Chuck that if you you
Speaker 1: could cure a viral infection, if a in a bacteria
Speaker 1: with antibiotics would be kind of like euthanasia, but it
Speaker 1: would cure the viral infections. Good point, bacteria infected with
Speaker 1: the virus. That's how tough viruses are. And we have
Speaker 1: no idea how they originated or where they came from.
Speaker 1: We don't. We just know they're super old and the
Speaker 1: ones that are the oldest are the ones that kill
Speaker 1: the least. Yeah, if you think about it, a virus
Speaker 1: would just, by right of natural selection, evolved to be
Speaker 1: able to reproduce without killing the host, because if the
Speaker 1: host survives, then that just increases the chances of the
Speaker 1: virus to be spread from most host Right, So a
Speaker 1: really deadly virus is probably newer as far as humanity
Speaker 1: is concerned. And a virus that can infect more organism,
Speaker 1: more types of organisms, like one that could make grass
Speaker 1: sick but also make a human sick, that's probably a
Speaker 1: pretty old virus. Old virus just sounds intimidating. Well, we
Speaker 1: have like basically what amounts to fossilized viruses in our
Speaker 1: DNA from all those viruses as retroviruses that came in
Speaker 1: inserted as genetic material, and our body learned to mount
Speaker 1: a defense against them. But that that stuff is still
Speaker 1: in the human genome. Crazy viruses. Uh. There. There are
Speaker 1: also immunizations, of course, and you know how they work.
Speaker 1: They pre infect your body so it knows, you know
Speaker 1: how to mount the the fight against it to make
Speaker 1: sure it has all the right equipment. It's like putting
Speaker 1: up wanted posters in your body. Yeah, but those virus
Speaker 1: has changed slightly, ever so slightly enough to where you
Speaker 1: have to keep updating these vaccines so you know it
Speaker 1: keeps working well, Yeah, you know, yeah, they evolve fairly quickly. Um. Lastly, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I want to address something. There is a I guess
Speaker 1: a misconception or urban legend or whatever that you can
Speaker 1: tell where there you have a viral infection or a
Speaker 1: back sterial infection um or what kind of virus you
Speaker 1: have based on the color of your mucus. We talked
Speaker 1: about fluorescent or something like that. They they don't in
Speaker 1: and of themselves relate to a specific type of virus
Speaker 1: or bacterial or viral infection or anything like that. It's
Speaker 1: not true. So that's viruses. Yeah, I got nothing else.
Speaker 1: It is good to know how this stuff works out because, um,
Speaker 1: you know, when you get sick, you understand a little better.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can mentally fight the stuff more effectively. I'm
Speaker 1: doing it right now. You see how I'm bleeding from
Speaker 1: my scalp. Oh my god, I'm using a lot of
Speaker 1: mental power. It's amazing. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about viruses, you can start by typing that word into
Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: it will bring up this cool article. And I said
Speaker 1: how stuff works. So it's time for listener mail. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this Headstones. My name is Georgia Gilbert. I'm
Speaker 1: a new but enthusiastic fan from the University of Washington Huskies.
Speaker 1: I was listening to your Tombstone's podcast, and I want
Speaker 1: to say that the move to churchyard burials is a
Speaker 1: bit more complicated than you implied, uh If I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: burials in churchyards began mostly as a common practice because
Speaker 1: of the plague. Churches would sell spots for burial within
Speaker 1: the church itself, in the walls and the floors, etcetera,
Speaker 1: because there was a common belief during the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: that being buried in the church was being very closer
Speaker 1: to God, and if you're very closer to God, the
Speaker 1: better off you're going to be in the afterlife, the
Speaker 1: reasoning goes. Many people would actually get spots within their
Speaker 1: local church to be buried, or at least very close
Speaker 1: to the walls outside. During the plague gears, however, the
Speaker 1: amount of bodies accumulated to be buried became too much,
Speaker 1: and they began to bury people further outside the church,
Speaker 1: even if they had paid for a spot inside. I
Speaker 1: read a great book on death in London through the
Speaker 1: Ages that talked about it that was called Necropolis. Highly
Speaker 1: recommend it. So thanks for teaching me such awesome Stuff guys,
Speaker 1: I can now ask my mother in law intelligent questions
Speaker 1: about growing up in Germany during the Cold War thanks
Speaker 1: to your Berlin Wall program. Nice and that is from Georgia.
Speaker 1: That was fascinating. The plague, by the way, it was bacterial,
Speaker 1: not viral, in case anybody was one doing like me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did one in the plague, right we did? Yeah,
Speaker 1: black death or black plague. Yeah, anyway, who is that again, Georgia.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Georgia. We appreciate that. That was a
Speaker 1: great email. If you have a great email, you can
Speaker 1: try to tweet it to us if it's short at
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast. You can post it on
Speaker 1: Facebook if you like, at Facebook, dot com slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know, or you can send us an email
Speaker 1: like a normal person to stuff podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com and as always, in the meantime, hang
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