# Viruses Are Profoundly Strange **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [March 30, 2020, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viruses-are-profoundly-strange/850687 "2020-03-30T19:16:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2020, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viruses-are-profoundly-strange/850687/1 "2020-03-30T19:16:15Z")
Have been reading up on virology and the history of infectious disease. You’d think we know a great deal about them. In medical school, we learned about the 250 or so viruses that infect people. We learned less about the trillions of microbes, three pounds worth, each person carries. Maybe 40,000 species. We don’t know much about them. They help us digest 10 percent of our calories and extract certain vitamins. Viruses are weird. Most of them infect bacteria and have no effect on us. No one knows how many different ones there are - estimates range from 300,000 to a trillion. They can’t propel themselves and are inert outside a cell, waiting to be collected off a surface or in the air. In 1986, a student decided to look for them in seawater, which was thought to be a waste of time. She found each quart contains up to 100 billion viruses. If ocean viruses alone were laid end to end, it would stretch for ten million light years. This is a lot more than the DNA in your one body, which if stretched end to end would go beyond Pluto. A virus found in permafrost in 2014, frozen for 30,000 years or so, was still active when injected into an amoeba. Viruses spread very quickly. A volunteer fitted with a device to mimic a virus, using ultraviolet dyes, showed at a cocktail party to go everywhere - the hands, head, upper body of everyone, doorknobs, sofa cushions, food — since the average adult touches their face sixteen times an hour. A virus can spread through an office building in four hours. But kissing doesn’t spread them effectively, they need other physical touch. A survey of subway trains showed metal poles to be fairly clean; but plastic handgrips and seat fabric to be highly populated. We know so little about so many microorganisms that it seems prudent to expect future outbreaks and prepare for them. Much of the microbiome undoubtedly has positive effects, but no one wants to spend the money to discover all about them. That may change. It’s probably money well spent. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viruses-are-profoundly-strange/850687)._