It feels so weird to me that the small change in degrees might actually kill a virus. I mean, wouldn’t all viruses by now have become accustomed to “warmer climates”?
Or is it a cat / mouse game, our bodies being able to heat up more and them getting more fire resistant by the year. Was a fever less hot a couple of hundred years ago?
I am not an expert but I believe the temp threshold is for when proteins denature due to the ambient heat overcoming the strength of the bonds (mostly h-bonding i believe) that hold the protein in its specific tertiary structure and when you exceed it the proteins unfold/break
I read that this is a common misconception: the high heat is not enough to denature any proteins (else it would kill you too) and, what’s more surprising, it actually makes viruses/bacteria more active. But it also makes your immune system more active, with an overall win in effectiveness over the microbes, which is what makes it useful.
Yep - our bodies turn the thermostat up, increasing metabolism/cellular functions, which increases body temperature. Fatigue slows us down as our bodies redirect resources towards supporting our immune systems and producing cells to fight off the infection, vs spending that energy on being mentally and physically active.
Once our bodies get a handle on things, the fever “breaks” and we start recovery and return to homeostasis.
Viruses do adapt and mutate though. Look at all the various strains of H1N1 and SARS-COV-2.
Just because they don’t reproduce without a host cell doesn’t mean evolution doesn’t happen. If a trait emerges that is beneficial to future generations, viruses carrying that trait can infect more cells and spread further.
Usually it’s evolution itself that people give too much agency to. Mutations are a crapshoot. They can be beneficial or they can cause birth defects, sterility, prevent reaching sexual maturity, or make finding a mate excessively difficult. Or all of the above.
Once had the flu with a fever of 106-107(almost 42c)…I was taken to the hospital and the doctor literally threw me into an ice bath… I was crying and he said “I’m sorry but you will be dead soon unless we drop that fever”
I had to continue taking ice baths at home because the fever kept creeping back up to that range. They’re not fun…
I say otherwise, & I will happily bathe in the righteous flames of the eternally damned, rather than suffer the unholy blight of pickles on my beloved grilled cheese.
Geoscientist here. I concur. The names are punny sometimes (this example in particular), but usually non-descriptive. Exceptions for the super common things (quartz, pyrite) when used in a discussion where the chemistry is irrelevant in that specific context. Conversely, we generally don’t care about the chemistry when talking about “clays” in geophysics, so defining them chemically would become noise to the reader.
Pretty sure they have 100 percent mortality rate as most animals do. There are some species of jellyfish that technically are immortal (capable of immortality anyway) - they revert back to a polyp stage and start life over again without dying. But every other animal species, like us humans, does have to bow down to the grim reaper at some point.
“Caterpillar” is not a species. It’s a stage of some animals’ life cycle. It means 99% of catepillars die before they become butterflies or moths or whatever
If there are other immortal animal species, what are they? My comment about jellyfish being immortal was from the article in national Geographic. What are the animals you are thinking of?
The hydra. There’s a species of worm (pretty sure it’s a flatworm, could be a round one though). Technically, lobsters are too. They also aren’t cos growing their news shells is incredibly taxing and that’s how the old ones usually succumb, but yeah, genetically, they do the whole telomere regeneration shit. Their DNA is like 17yo when they die at age 130. So, yeah.
Hydra, eh? According to the web, hydra are "virtually immortal" in a lab environment. On the other hand, though I've heard lobsters could be immortal, the web (which obviously is the only true source of info, wink wink) says it's a myth, eventually the lobster will die "from exhaustion during a moult." However I know they can live a long long time, many animals can easily out live humans.
Oh ffs. I swear to god we don’t deserve the internet. I literally pointed out that lobsters do die. The reason we can consider em immortal is cos they clean up their telomere damage. You colossal idiot. You’re trying to trip me up and “expose” me, but you can’t even get the fundamentals right…
I heard “g” was created at around the same time in two different parts of the world. One of them claims it to be pronounced “g” and the other claims it to be pronounced “g.”
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