t’s not surprising some are confusing COVID-19 and the common cold right now because the omicron variant has symptoms just like the common cold. Why? Researchers published a study in early December in OSF Preprints that found the omicron variant has some genetic makeup similar to the common cold. In fact, the omicron variant may have picked up genetic code from the cold from someone who had been sick with the common cold. Covid 19 Symptoms : Primary symptoms to look for in a Covid 19 infected person are fever, dizziness, breathlessness, headache, dry cough ( eventually result in phlegm) and in a few cases loss in smell and taste. A few cases have also reported diarrhoea and fatigue. This means that some of the people placed in the category of asymptomatic carriers could be shifted to the mildly symptomatic category keeping these symptoms in mind. Once you start feeling these symptoms ... it’s worth isolating yourself and getting a couple of tests Like COVID RTPCR CBC CRP Flu Symtoms : Pain areas: in the muscles Cough: can be with phlegm Nasal: congestion, runny nose, sneezing, loss of smell, redness, or post-nasal drip Whole body: chills, fatigue, fever, malaise, or body ache Eyes: watery eyes, itchiness, or redness Head: congestion or sinus pressure Also common: chest pressure, headache, swollen lymph nodes, or throat irritation *Posted by Dr Gautam Chhajed Foundar and CEO MedicoHelpline.com*
The following are some symptoms because of thats are likely to be in big time trouble.
(Note : These may be innocuous symptoms too, but they ring an alarm in a physician’s mind, an alarm that cannot be put into a snooze mode till a problem is ruled out )
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More than a quadrillion quadrillion individual viruses exist on Earth, but most are not poised to hop into humans. Can we find the ones that are?
Viruses infiltrate every aspect of our natural world, seething in seawater, drifting through the atmosphere, and lurking in miniscule motes of soil. Generally considered non-living entities, these pathogens can only replicate with the help of a host, and they are capable of hijacking organisms from every branch of the tree of life—including a multitude of human cells.
Yet, most of the time, our species manages to live in this virus-filled world relatively free of illness. The reason has less to do with the human body’s resilience to disease than the biological quirks of viruses themselves, says Sara Sawyer, a virologist and disease ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. These pathogens are extraordinarily picky about the cells they infect, and only an infinitesimally small fraction of the viruses that surround us actually pose any threat to humans.
Still, as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrates, outbreaks of new human viruses do happen—and they aren’t as unexpected as they might seem.
To better forecast and prevent outbreaks, scientists are homing in on the traits that may explain why some viruses, and not others, can make the hop into humans. Some mutate more frequently, perhaps easing their spread into new hosts, while others are helped along by human encounters with animals that provide opportunities to jump species.
When it comes to epidemics, “there are actually patterns there,” says Raina Plowright, a disease ecologist at Montana State University. “And they are predictable patterns.”
Most new infectious illnesses enter the human population the same way COVID-19 did: as a zoonosis, or a disease that infects people by way of an animal. Mammals and birds alone are thought to host about 1.7 million undiscovered types of viruses—a number that has spurred scientists around the world to survey Earth’s wildlife for the cause of our species’ next pandemic. (Bacteria, fungi, and parasites can also pass from animals to people, but these pathogens can typically reproduce without infecting hosts, and many viruses are better equipped to cross species.)
To make a successful transition from one species to another, a virus must clear a series of biological hurdles. The pathogen has to exit one animal and come into contact with another, then establish an infection in the second host, says Jemma Geoghegan, a virologist at Macquarie University. This is known as a spillover event. After the virus has set up shop in a new host, it then needs to spread to other members of that species.
Exact numbers are hard to estimate, but the vast majority of animal-to-human spillovers likely result in dead-end infections that never progress past the first individual. For a new virus to actually spark an outbreak, “so many factors need to align,” says Dorothy Tovar, a virologist and disease ecologist at Stanford University.
For a virus, one of most challenging aspects of transmission is gaining entry to a new host’s cells, which contain the molecular machinery that these pathogens need to replicate. This process typically involves a virus latching on to a molecule that studs the outside of a human cell—a bit like a key clicking into a lock. The better the fit, the more likely the pathogen is to access the cell’s interior. SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, engages with the protein ACE2 to enter cells in the human airway.
For any given host, “there’s a very small number of pathogens that are able to” break into its cells this way, Sawyer says. The vast majority of the viruses we encounter simply bounce off our cells, eventually exiting our bodies as harmless visitors.
Source: Nationalgeographic