Вирус it happens to you

Антиархитекторы

Что делать? Внедрять надо, иначе будут санкции, но тогда свою программу придётся пустить под нож — прощайте, мечты о подмосковной даче и тёплом кабинете!

Программистам была поставлена задача написать вирус. В срочном порядке были перелопачены тонны компьютерных журналов (интернета нет), в круглосуточное распоряжение выданы автомобили с водителями, лучший паёк, лучшие компьютеры, любые диски с любым софтом.

И вот вирус написан. Не обнаруживаемый ни одним известным антивирусом, различными анализаторами и прочими подобными приложениями, он немедленно заразил все доступные компьютеры. Функция очень простая: вражеская программа работать не должна! Она и не работала, постоянно вываливая ошибки: то данные некорректны, то операция недопустима, то файл неверного формата. А как вы хотели, когда посреди выполнения кусок кода или данных вдруг исчезает из памяти.

Декоративные вирусы

Произошла эта история месяца три назад. Надо мне было сдать проект начальнику, он бы его протестил по-юзерски (полюбовался бы красивым расположением кнопочек) и отдал заказчику. Последним сроком был вторник, но я загулял с друзьями и в итоге пропустил дедлайн — доделать получилось бы лишь к пятнице.

Бесплатное приложение

Есть у меня подруга, учится на филфаке. После школы мы не виделись — я уехала в другой город. Через два года я вернулась на историческую родину и, естественно, решила с подругой повидаться.

— Ну. Я песенку из интернета скачивала и заметила, что скачался ещё какой-то EXE-файл. Вот, думаю, здорово, программа какая-то полезная! Ну и решила запустить.

Так и не придумала, что ей сказать.

Боевая обезьяна с печатной машинкой

Друг мой недавно подхватил самый популярный на IT Happens вирус. Этот вариант поделки великодушно оставил возможность пользоваться системой, но диспетчер задач и прочее администрирование системы сделал недоступными. Поскольку времени на танцы с бубном не было, друг в сердцах вышел покурить. На обратном пути к нему прицепился его друг, юзверь в прямом смысле этого слова, решающий все проблемы на компьютере методом хаотичной долбёжки по клавиатуре, — просил какую-то игрушку скинуть.

Знакомые все лица

Лежу в больнице. Скукотища.

Поступает новенькая, с собой притаскивает ноутбук. Жизнь налаживается — каждую ночь в палате устраивается киносеанс для обитателей.

За неделю пересмотрели все фильмы. Снова скучно. Одна из соседок по палате звонит домой, и на следующий же день ей приносят флешку с горстью фильмов. Ура! Живём.

Нет, не живём — на флешке вирусы. Естественно, на ноуте кривой непонятный антивирус, не обновлявшийся неизвестно сколько. Ноут, конечно, показал нам фильм, но наутро его владелица обнаружила пропажу нехилой пачки фотографий.

Ещё час я слушала скрип их мозгов, затем мне это надоело, и я посоветовала заглянуть в скрытые папки — помню, когда-то давно наблюдала я следы жизнедеятельности вируса, заменяющего изображения на исполняемые файлы, а имеющиеся картинки переносящего в скрытые папки. Антивирус, естественно, с этой дрянью оказался знаком и бодро смёл все экзешники, порождённые вирусом.

Консилиум судорожно тыкает мышкой — разумеется, ошибается. Меня одаривают ещё более эмоциональным взглядом. Я, уже наученная многолетним опытом работы с юзерами, пожимаю плечами и решаю не вмешиваться. Консилиум приходит к выводу, что ноут надо нести в ремонт.

Выписываюсь из больницы, иду на работу. На работе эстафетой уходит на больничный мальчик, принимающий компы в ремонт.

Нет сети — нет проблем

Работаю сисадмином в местной небольшой фирме. Наша фирма заключила договор с горсоветом, чтобы я к ним наведывался и осматривал компьютерный парк. Неделю назад мне оттуда звонят и говорят, что у девочки-оператора пропала сеть и, соответственно, интернет.

На следующий день опять то же самое. Девочка уже чуть ли не в слезах, говорит, что отчеты и прочую текстовую утварь отправлять в администрацию нужно, а такое вот уже второй день. Смотрю — опять выдернута витая пара. Глянул на коннектор — вроде нормальный, замочек держит, но на всякий случай переобжал. На третий день опять двадцать пять.

— К вам сюда уборщица наведывается?
— Да, но я тут постоянно, и она никогда не подходит к компьютеру.
— А кто ещё имеет сюда доступ?
— Ну к нам тут приходит иногда специалист, осматривает компьютеры.

— Вы частенько здесь бываете?
— Да, каждый день хожу.
— С какой целью? Здесь всё нормально работает.
— Смотрю, что бы вирусы не попали на компьютер.
— На что именно вы смотрите?
— Ну я кабель вытаскиваю, чтобы вирусы не попадали.

После непродолжительной беседы проблема с сетью была решена. Вот такие вот нынче специалисты: нет сети — нет вирусов, а антивирусы — для слабаков.

Кто на что учился

Закрою-ка я тему с вирусами, требующими отправить SMS. Cкладывается впечатление, что многие из разработчиков этих вирусов учатся в наших институтах, да и то на троечку. Самые запомнившиеся экземпляры из тех, что видел:

1. Отличный вирус, но имел одну маленькую особенность — закрывался по Alt+F4.

3. Показывал порнуху (потоковое видео с какого-то сайта), а когда отрубался инет, тупо вылетал с ошибкой.

4. Расплодился по всем компам в фирме, кроме машины генерального. Оказалось, пугался двух мониторов, при включении выдавал ошибку и закрывался.

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The coronavirus emerged in only December last year, but already the world is dealing with a pandemic of the virus and the disease it causes - Covid-19.

For most, the disease is mild, but some people die.

So how is the virus attacking the body, why are some people being killed and how is it treated?

Incubation period

This is when the virus is establishing itself.

Viruses work by getting inside the cells your body is made of and then hijacking them.

The coronavirus, officially called Sars-CoV-2, can invade your body when you breathe it in (after someone coughs nearby) or you touch a contaminated surface and then your face.

It first infects the cells lining your throat, airways and lungs and turns them into "coronavirus factories" that spew out huge numbers of new viruses that go on to infect yet more cells.

At this early stage, you will not be sick and some people may never develop symptoms.

The incubation period, the time between infection and first symptoms appearing, varies widely, but is five days on average.

Mild disease

This is all most people will experience.

Covid-19 is a mild infection for eight out of 10 people who get it and the core symptoms are a fever and a cough.

Body aches, sore throat and a headache are all possible, but not guaranteed.

The fever, and generally feeling grotty, is a result of your immune system responding to the infection. It has recognised the virus as a hostile invader and signals to the rest of the body something is wrong by releasing chemicals called cytokines.

These rally the immune system, but also cause the body aches, pain and fever.

The coronavirus cough is initially a dry one (you're not bringing stuff up) and this is probably down to irritation of cells as they become infected by the virus.

Some people will eventually start coughing up sputum - a thick mucus containing dead lung cells killed by the virus.

These symptoms are treated with bed rest, plenty of fluids and paracetamol. You won't need specialist hospital care.

This stage lasts about a week - at which point most recover because their immune system has fought off the virus.

However, some will develop a more serious form of Covid-19.

This is the best we understand at the moment about this stage, however, there are studies emerging that suggest the disease can cause more cold-like symptoms such as a runny nose too.

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Severe disease

If the disease progresses it will be due to the immune system overreacting to the virus.

Those chemical signals to the rest of the body cause inflammation, but this needs to be delicately balanced. Too much inflammation can cause collateral damage throughout the body.

"The virus is triggering an imbalance in the immune response, there's too much inflammation, how it is doing this we don't know," said Dr Nathalie MacDermott, from King's College London.

Inflammation of the lungs is called pneumonia.

If it was possible to travel through your mouth down the windpipe and through the tiny tubes in your lungs, you'd eventually end up in tiny little air sacs.

This is where oxygen moves into the blood and carbon dioxide moves out, but in pneumonia the tiny sacs start to fill with water and can eventually cause shortness of breath and difficulty breathing.

Some people will need a ventilator to help them breathe.

This stage is thought to affect around 14% of people, based on data from China.

Critical disease

It is estimated around 6% of cases become critically ill.

By this point the body is starting to fail and there is a real chance of death.

The problem is the immune system is now spiralling out of control and causing damage throughout the body.

It can lead to septic shock when the blood pressure drops to dangerously low levels and organs stop working properly or fail completely.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by widespread inflammation in the lungs stops the body getting enough oxygen it needs to survive. It can stop the kidneys from cleaning the blood and damage the lining of your intestines.

"The virus sets up such a huge degree of inflammation that you succumb. it becomes multi-organ failure," Dr Bharat Pankhania said.

And if the immune system cannot get on top of the virus, then it will eventually spread to every corner of the body where it can cause even more damage.

Treatment by this stage will be highly invasive and can include ECMO or extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation.

This is essentially an artificial lung that takes blood out of the body through thick tubes, oxygenates it and pumps it back in.

But eventually the damage can reach fatal levels at which organs can no longer keep the body alive.

The first deaths

Doctors have described how some patients died despite their best efforts.

The first two patients to die at Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan, China, detailed in the Lancet Medical journal, were seemingly healthy, although they were long-term smokers and that would have weakened their lungs.

The first, a 61-year-old man, had severe pneumonia by the time he arrived at hospital.

He was in acute respiratory distress, and despite being put on a ventilator, his lungs failed and his heart stopped beating.

He died 11 days after he was admitted.

The second patient, a 69-year-old man, also had acute respiratory distress syndrome.

He was attached to an ECMO machine but this wasn't enough. He died of severe pneumonia and septic shock when his blood pressure collapsed.

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Share on Pinterest There’s a variety of symptoms of COVID-19. Getty Images

• Coronaviruses cause respiratory illnesses, so the lungs are usually affected first.
• Early symptoms include fever, cough, and shortness of breath. These appear as soon as 2 days, or as long as 14 days, after exposure to the virus.
• But damage can also occur in other parts of the body, especially during serious illness.

All data and statistics are based on publicly available data at the time of publication. Some information may be out of date. Visit our coronavirus hub and follow our live updates page for the most recent information on the COVID-19 outbreak.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the new coronavirus that’s sickened more than 3.2 million worldwide, with more than 230,000 deaths reported.

But one thing that’s clear is that in serious cases, the virus can have a devastating effect on the body — and not just on the lungs.

Here’s what we know so far about how COVID-19, the disease the new coronavirus causes, affects the different systems in the body.

As with other coronavirus illnesses — including SARS, MERS, and the common cold — COVID-19 is a respiratory disease, so the lungs are usually affected first.

Early symptoms include fever, cough, and shortness of breath. These appear as soon as 2 days, or as long as 14 days, after exposure to the virus.

While fever is at the top of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of symptoms, not everyone who gets sick has a fever. In one study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that around 70 percent of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 didn’t have a fever.

Cough is more common, but treatment guidelines developed by Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that cough occurs in 68 to 83 percent of people who show up at the hospital with COVID-19.

Only 11 to 40 percent had shortness of breath.

Other less common symptoms included confusion, headache, nausea, and diarrhea.

The severity of COVID-19 varies from mild or no symptoms to severe or sometimes fatal illness. Data on more than 17,000 reported cases in China found that almost 81 percent of cases were mild. The rest were severe or critical.

Older people and those with chronic medical conditions appear to have a higher risk for developing severe illness.

This variability also shows up in how COVID-19 affects the lungs.

Some people may only have minor respiratory symptoms , while others develop non-life-threatening pneumonia. But there’s a subset of people who develop severe lung damage.

“What we’re frequently seeing in patients who are severely ill with [COVID-19] is a condition that we call acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS,” said Dr. Laura E. Evans, a member of the Society of Critical Care Medicine Leadership Council and an associate professor of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.

ARDS doesn’t happen just with COVID-19. A number of events can trigger it, including infection, trauma, and sepsis.

These cause damage to the lungs, which leads to fluid leaking from small blood vessels in the lungs. The fluid collects in the lungs’ air sacs, or alveoli. This makes it difficult for the lungs to transfer oxygen from the air to the blood.

While there’s a shortage of information on the type of damage that occurs in the lungs during COVID-19, a recent report suggests it’s similar to the damage caused by SARS and MERS.

One recent study of 138 people hospitalized for COVID-19 found that on average, people started having difficulty breathing 5 days after showing symptoms. ARDS developed on average 8 days after symptoms.

Treatment for ARDS involves supplemental oxygen and mechanical ventilation, with the goal of getting more oxygen into the blood.

“There isn’t a specific treatment for ARDS,” Evans said. “We just support the person through this process as best we can, allowing their bodies to heal and their immune system to address the underlying events.”

One curious thing about COVID-19 is that many patients have potentially deadly low blood oxygen levels, but they don’t seem starved of oxygen. This has led some doctors to rethink putting patients on a ventilator simply because of low oxygen levels in the blood.

The lungs are the main organs affected by COVID-19. But in serious cases, the rest of the body can also be affected.

In serious cases, the rest of the body can also be affected.

“In patients who become severely ill, a good proportion of those patients also develop dysfunction in other organ systems,” Evans said.

However, she says this can happen with any severe infection.

This damage to the organs isn’t always directly caused by the infection, but can result from the body’s response to infection.

Some people with COVID-19 have reported gastrointestinal symptoms , such as nausea or diarrhea, although these symptoms are much less common than problems with the lungs.

While coronaviruses seem to have an easier time entering the body through the lungs, the intestines aren’t out of reach for these viruses.

Earlier reports identified the viruses that cause SARS and MERS in intestinal tissue biopsies and stool samples.

Two recent studies — one in the New England Journal of Medicine and a preprint on medRxiv — report that stool samples of some people with COVID-19 tested positive for the virus.

However, researchers don’t know yet whether fecal transmission of this virus can occur.

Evans says COVID-19 can also affect the heart and blood vessels. This may show up as irregular heart rhythms, not enough blood getting to the tissues, or blood pressure low enough that it requires medications.

So far, though, it’s not clear that the virus directly damages the heart.

In one study of hospitalized patients in Wuhan, 20 percent had some form of heart damage. In another, 44 percent of those in an intensive care unit (ICU) had an irregular heart rhythm.

There are also signs that COVID-19 may cause the blood to clot more easily. It’s not clear how much this plays in the severity of the illness, but clots could increase the risk of a stroke or heart attack.

When liver cells are inflamed or damaged, they can leak higher than normal amounts of enzymes into the bloodstream.

Elevated liver enzymes aren’t always a sign of a serious problem, but this laboratory finding was seen in people with SARS or MERS .

In one study of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, 27 percent had kidney failure.

One recent report found signs of liver damage in a person with COVID-19. Doctors says it’s not clear, though, if the virus or the drugs being used to treat the person caused the damage.

Some people hospitalized with COVID-19 have also had acute kidney damage , sometimes requiring a kidney transplant. This also occurred with SARS and MERS .

During the SARS outbreak, scientists even found the virus that causes this illness in the tubules of the kidneys.

There’s “little evidence,” though, to show that the virus directly caused the kidney injury, according to a World Health Organization report.

Dr. James Cherry, a research professor of pediatrics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, says the kidney damage may be due to other changes that happen during coronavirus infection.

“When you have pneumonia, you have less oxygen circulating,” he said, “and that can damage the kidneys.”

With any infection, the body’s immune system responds by attacking the foreign virus or bacteria. While this immune response can rid the body of the infection, it can also sometimes cause collateral damage in the body.

This can come in the form of an intense inflammatory response, sometimes called a “cytokine storm.” The immune cells produce cytokines to fight infection, but if too many are released, it can cause problems in the body.

“A lot of [the damage in the body during COVID-19] is due to what we would call a sepsis syndrome, which is due to complex immune reactions,” Evans said. “The infection itself can generate an intense inflammatory response in the body that can affect the function of multiple organ systems.”

Another thing about the immune system is that, so far, there are almost no cases of COVID-19 in children under 9 years old. Scientists aren’t sure whether young children aren’t getting infected or their symptoms are so mild that no one notices it.

Cherry says children also have a less severe illness than adults during other kinds of infections, including measles and pneumococcal infections.

He says this may be because children have a “straightforward immune response,” whereas older people can sometimes have an “over-response.” It’s this excess immune response that causes some of the damage during infections.

“There was evidence of this happening during SARS,” Cherry said, “and I suspect it could also be playing out here [with COVID-19].”

Pictured here is a smear test for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Photo: Sebastian Gollnow/dpa (Photo by . [+] Sebastian Gollnow/picture alliance via Getty Images)

dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images

A sequel to a movie that you didn’t want to see in the first place is one thing, like Ghost Rider 2 after Ghost Rider. A sequel to having a COVID-19 infection would be something completely different.

You may think that the one “positive” of testing positive for the COVID-19 causing coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) and surviving would be that you won’t get infected by that virus again. At least not during this pandemic. Ah, but is this assumption really true? Will you indeed be immune to the SARS-CoV2 after you’ve recovered from a COVID-19 infection? Some reports out of Japan and China seem to suggest otherwise.

For example, Daniel Leussink and Rocky Swift reported for Reuters about a female tour bus guide in Japan who tested positive for the virus after recovering from a COVID-19 infection. Here is a UNTV news report on the case:

Does this case actually prove that re-infection with the virus is possible? Or was this just a mistake in the testing? Or did the person have a particularly weak immune system so that she couldn’t generate immunity? After all, one case can be an accident, an aberration, an anomaly, an aardvark in a sea of anemone.

Well, oops something like this happened again, according to a more recent NHK-World Japan report. This time it was a man in his 70’s, who first tested positive for SARS-CoV2 on February 14 while on a Diamond Princess cruise ship. After being transferred to a medical facility in Tokyo, he stayed there until testing negative for the virus. On March 2, he left the facility and traveled home via public transportation. However, the man eventually began feeling sick with a fever, which prompted him to go to a hospital on March 13. The following day he tested positive for the virus again.

Then there’s the February 14 article from Caixin, a Beijing, China-based media group, that was entitled “14% of Recovered Covid-19 Patients in Guangdong Tested Positive Again.” Umm, 14% would seem more like an “ooop” than an “ooops.” This CGTN news warned of such reinfection possibilities:

Remember though, these are news reports and not scientific studies yet. While the reappearance of Nicholas Cage with a flaming skull riding a motorcycle may not call for additional scientific studies, all of these cases certainly do. First, scientists need to confirm whether the test results were indeed accurate. Remember, no test is perfect. If people can screw up a drink order, they can certainly mess up a medical test. Even if a test is performed properly, you could still get a positive result when you don’t actually have an infection. On the flip side, just because you test negative doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no way that you are carrying the virus. That’s why a doctor may test you multiple times to be sure of a result.

Secondly, doctors and other scientists need to double-check or triple-check that each of these patients actually got re-infected with the virus rather than had an infection that simply lasted a long time. What if, for example, the cruise passenger and the tour bus guide each had fairly long infections and just happened to have intervening false negative test results? The tests could have simply been like commercial breaks in the middle of a single long episode of a television show.

Third of all, the amount of immunity that you build up after being exposed to any virus depends on not only virus itself but surprise, surprise your immune system and its response. When your immune system sees a particular virus for the first time, it can essentially get caught with its pants down, not ready to defend your body against this new invader. However, exposure to the virus either through a vaccine or getting infected may train your immune system so that, borrowing the words of former President George W. Bush, “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.” If strong enough, your immune system then may be ready with proper defenses next time the virus comes calling. Could the cases of reinfection then be examples of people who happened to have weaker immune systems?

Here is a 3D illustration of SARS-CoV2. (Photo: Getty)

Or are these cases any indication that our immune systems may not be able to consistently build up enough protection against SARS-CoV2? Well, a review article published in January 2020 in the Journal of Medical Virology summarizes much of what is known about your immune system’s response to various types of coronavirus. As you can see, this involves a complex orchestra of different cells and chemicals. Therefore, the immune response to one virus won’t necessarily be the same as to another virus, even if both viruses were different types of coronaviruses. All of this also depends on how strong your immune system may be and how well your immune system recognizes an invader like SARS-CoV2.

Plus, your immune system has got to remember the virus. Over time, immunity may fade, allowing the virus to reinfect you. It’s like when you get back together with an ex after you have forgotten how terrible you are for each other. The question then is how long can your immune system remember SARS-CoV2?

With SARS-CoV2 having emerged so quickly, there just haven’t been enough studies yet on how your immune system may react specifically to SARS-CoV2 and how this may differ from person to person. Therefore, we have to rely on studies of other coronaviruses for now. The closest approximation is probably the even more evil cousin of SARS-CoV2, the original SARS virus that caused the outbreak of 2002-2003.

In a study published in a 2007 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, a research team from the Shanxi Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Taiyuan, China, followed 176 patients who had had severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). On average, SARS-specific antibodies remained at the same level in a patient’s blood for about two years. Then, during the third year after infection, antibody levels tended to drop precipitously. This suggests that immunity to the SARS virus may remain for two to three years with reinfection possible after three years.

Keep in mind though that antibody levels do not always correlate with immunity. They can be like selfies on Instagram, only indirect measures of what’s really going on at a deeper level. Some people may have immunity against a virus without detectable antibody levels, and some people may be very susceptible to infection even though antibodies are present. The only way to have determined if the patients actually had immunity against the SARS virus would have been to have re-exposed them to the virus and checked what happened. And that would have been a horrible experiment to do.

The other question is how many different versions of SARS-CoV2 may be running around, or rather spreading around since viruses don’t have little feet and little sneakers. It’s difficult to answer this question for sure without more thorough and widespread testing. According to a study published in the journal National Science Review, an analysis of samples from 103 COVID-19 cases suggests that at least two different versions of SARS-CoV2 are circulating. This doesn’t necessarily mean that these versions are so different that immunity to one version doesn’t mean immunity to another. Regardless, things may evolve in the near future. Viruses can be like the characters in Game of Thrones or an actor in a Broadway show, changing rapidly. Over time, the new coronavirus could possibly mutate to the point that new versions are no longer as recognizable by your immune system as the original version. After all, mutations are probably what allowed the virus to jump from another animal to humans.

Not knowing exactly how immunity against SARS-CoV2 works and how long it may last throws a gigantic wrench into public health planning. Many trying to predict the course of the pandemic have been assuming that once a high enough proportion of the overall population has been infected and has become immune, the pandemic will subside. Herd immunity is the percentage of the overall population that is immune to a given pathogen. When this percentage gets high enough, the virus will struggle to find more susceptible people to infect, sort of like trying to sell Justin Bieber T-shirts in a crowd when most of the people are already wearing such shirts. The belief is that when around 70% of the population is immune to the virus, SARS-CoV2 will struggle to continue transmitting.

From left, Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chief . [+] Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance speak during a press conference in Downing Street about coronavirus outbreak on March 9, 2020 in London, England. (Photo by Alberto Pezzali - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

However, things could change substantially if people can actually get re-infected with the virus or different enough versions of the virus end up circulating. Such possibilities would be yet more reasons to question the “herd immunity” approach to controlling the pandemic that’s currently being discussed in the U.K. and described by Sarah Boseley for The Guardian. Since there is no vaccine available against SARS-CoV2, there is actually talk of allowing those with stronger immune systems to get infected to achieve the 70% or so herd immunity threshold. Huh?

This strategy would make sense except for the fact that it doesn’t. First of all, those who get infected could end up having serious consequences such as death, which is typically a very serious consequence. This would be reminiscent of the saying that “the operation was successful, but the patient died.” Allowing people to become infected by a potentially deadly virus is always a risky proposition, sort of like playing roulette when your lungs are on the betting table. So far, the COVID-19 case-fatality rate seems to be somewhere between 1% and 3.4%. This isn’t as high as the rate for SARS but nonetheless significantly higher than that of a bad flu season.

Secondly, this herd immunity strategy depends on people not getting re-infected with the virus. But with the aforementioned reports from Japan and China, you have to wonder if the strategy is not a “herd immunity” strategy but rather a “herd immunity maybe” strategy to borrow the words of Carly Rae Jepsen. “Maybe” may work to some degree with flirting and dating but not when lives are at stake.

Third of all, this strategy assumes that people will not leave or enter the U.K. That may work only if you want to completely eliminate travel to and from the country.

Finally, such a strategy would run counter to other mitigation strategies such as social distancing as indicated by the following tweet:

Uh, U.K., would this really be O.K.?

All of this is a reminder that scientists do not yet know enough about this new coronavirus. What percentage of people become immune to the virus if exposed? How strong is the immunity? Will it actually prevent reinfection? How long would this immunity last? Is it two years as the SARS study hints at or could it be much shorter than that? How does all of this vary from person to person? How many different versions of the virus may end up circulating? As the Internet meme goes, I and many other scientists have so many questions.

Therefore, if you do get exposed to the virus and recover, don’t view it as a free pass to start hugging strangers, digging your fingers deep into your nose like you are looking for pocket change, and licking door knobs. Keep doing what everyone else should be doing such as social distancing, washing your hands frequently and thoroughly, keeping your filthy fingers from gravitating towards your gigantic face, and actively disinfecting surfaces, objects, and that enormous BTS statue that you have in your living room. Just because you survived the first infection, doesn’t necessarily mean that future exposures and possible infections will end up OK. As you know, sequels don’t always have the same endings.