What is COVID-19? | The Coronavirus explained скачать в хорошем качестве

What is COVID-19? | The Coronavirus explained

The information contained in this video is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. All content, text, graphics, images and information contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your medical professional. Consult your own physician for any concerns that you may be having. What's up guys, Tom here and today I'm going to explain to you what the coronavirus (COVID-19) is, how it manages to spread and infect us, what is does when it infects us, and what we can do to help keep ourselves and our families safe. If you don't already know me, I work as a pharmacist in Australia, working in a hospital that has COVID-19 patients requiring care. In December of 2019, China notified the world of a novel virus that it had discovered causing flu-like symptoms and pneumonia in some of its population. It began to rapidly spread throughout Wuhan into the rest of China, where it was given the name COVID-19 (Coronavirus of 2019 aka SARS-CoV-2 or Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). Fast forwarding to now with over 2 million cases worldwide and 126,000 deaths, we can see things escalated at a rapid rate. Reports coming out of China suggest they are now somewhat controlling the spread of COVID-19, however in the US and Europe, the disease is running rampant with minimal signs of slowing down. So how does the virus get around? Well its believed to be via respiratory droplets in the air that a healthy person would otherwise inhale from the coughs and sneezes of an infected person. This allows the virus direct entry into the lungs which, along with the intestines and spleen, are the main organs it infects. The second way the virus spreads is by people coming into contact with these droplets on surfaces (think eftpos keypads, keyboards, door handles, sink taps, kitchen counter-tops, wallets and phones etc). Once the droplet are on your hands, if not washed off you may passively touch your face and allow the virus entry this way. COVID-19 is essentially a ball of fats (lipids), protein and RNA that enters our cells by using its miniature crown spikes on its surface to connect to the ACE2 receptor molecule. Once inside the cell, the virus hijacks our cells machinery and forces it to produce its own viral proteins, replicating millions and millions of the viral proteins until our cells reach a critical mass and burst. This releases the virus to go on and infect other healthy cells. This generally goes on for 5-14 days which is known as the incubation period (or the period of time before we feel unwell), before we start to develop symptoms and have an immune response. Most of the time, many people seem to experience a dry cough, fever, headache and general malaise, before recovering with little/no complications. Unfortunately in some cases, COVID-19 interrupts our immune response by interfering with our chemical messages(cytokines), sending our immune cells into a frenzy. Our cells begin to attack all body cells (namely in the lungs) at random, where eventually it may lead to perforations (wholes forming in the lung border). This allows bacteria and other microbes entry into our otherwise sterile lungs, causing many opportunistic infections. Over time, these extra infections overwhelm our immune system and inevitably leads to severe complications or even death. In general terminology, pandemics are described as either being short with many people being infected all at once, health care systems being overwhelmed, and resulting in many deaths (e.g. like the Spanish flu of 1918). Secondly, they are described as being longer, meaning that the rate of spread of the virus is somewhat controlled, allowing health care systems time to prepare and provide care for everyone who needs it, minimising an overflow occurring and leading to fewer deaths. This second outcome is the outcome we want. The best things we can do to help achieve this are through social isolation and distancing, hand washing regularly, disinfecting surfaces, and (if you're lucky enough to find some) wearing gloves and masks. This helps to minimise the spread from person to person, allowing health systems and researchers time to find treatments and vaccines to get rid of COVID-19. I plan on making more videos exploring in detail what we can do to disinfect our surfaces at home, what possible treatment options are currently undergoing clinical trials, the latest news on vaccine production and whether we should wear masks and gloves (a popular one in the media). For now, if you found the video interesting please like and leave a comment (its my first video, any feedback would be awesome!). Also, subscribe with the bell on if you're interested in further videos on this topic as well as other health related topics (feel free to post any topics you would like covered!) Thank you for watching!