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The COVID-19 pandemic is radically transforming our world in ways that were once unimaginable. From wild animals exploring city streets to spontaneous performances by amateur musicians on Instagram, the shift is evident. As of now, nearly two million people globally have tested positive for the virus, with over 125,000 lives lost. Projections suggest the crisis may spiral far beyond what we would consider 'manageable.' The human toll extends beyond health, as millions are poised to suffer in the upcoming financial downturn, which experts predict could rival the Great Depression in severity.
The virus itself remains mysterious, and the scientific community is still grappling with how it functions. Experts have admitted that they don’t fully understand the virus, as there are considerable discrepancies between its anticipated behavior and the actual outcomes observed in patients worldwide.
10. Why Are Young, Healthy People Dying as Well?
One of the most troubling aspects of the pandemic is the unusually high fatality rate among the elderly. This enables the virus to spread unnoticed among younger, healthier populations. While this may seem like a positive, it isn’t. SARS-CoV-2 can remain undetected for long periods and propagate extensively, only to strike the vulnerable elderly when it eventually reaches them. If the symptoms were more noticeable early on, the virus would have struggled to spread unnoticed to its older victims.
However, that doesn't imply younger individuals are completely immune, as a significant number of them have also succumbed to the virus. This remains an area we don't fully understand, as based on current knowledge, relatively healthy and younger people shouldn't experience severe symptoms. This forms part of a broader mystery surrounding how the virus affects people in such varied ways, and addressing this question is key to preventing more deadly outbreaks in the future.
9. Can Animals Become Infected?
While we still have many unanswered questions about the COVID-19 pandemic, we are certain that the virus originated from animals. There's ongoing debate about which specific animal was responsible—with pangolins, bats, and even poultry among the possible sources—but researchers are likely to focus on animals after thoroughly studying the human cases.
What has left scientists scratching their heads is how the virus, which mutated to infect humans, is now transmitting back to animals—something no one had expected. A recent case involved a tiger at the Bronx Zoo testing positive for the COVID-19 strain, along with other tigers exhibiting similar symptoms. Although this isn't the only case of human-to-animal transmission, the other instances have involved household pets.
This marks the first known case of the SARS-CoV-2 strain infecting wild animals, and the method of transmission remains unclear. Our best guess is that an asymptomatic zoo worker may have unknowingly transmitted the virus to the tigers. If that's the case, other animals should have been affected as well, but so far, no other animals—apart from the big cats—have shown symptoms, raising the possibility that the virus may only affect tigers for some unknown reason.
8. We Still Don't Fully Understand Its Biology
It’s true that the COVID-19 outbreak has disproportionately impacted developed nations, prompting some of the world’s top healthcare experts to work tirelessly in an attempt to understand its mechanics. However, this has not yet yielded much insight, as the SARS-CoV-2 strain has proven far more elusive and difficult to comprehend than anticipated.
At the heart of the issue is the fundamental biological structure of the virus. While it is known that the virus has a spiky, ball-like shape, with the spikes designed to penetrate living cells, the reason for its extraordinarily rapid spread remains a mystery. Other relatively benign viruses, including other coronaviruses, possess similar spike features, but they don't spread as quickly. We still don’t fully understand what makes the SARS family of coronaviruses so deadly to humans, or, as we will explore shortly, how it even came to infect humans in the first place.
7. Its Evolution in Humans Remains Poorly Understood
While understanding the virus's biology could help explain its impact, there’s still a critical question: how did the SARS-CoV-2 strain evolve to infect humans? Although coronaviruses have previously infected humans, they’ve typically required time to adapt before causing significant damage. The previous SARS strain, known as SARS-classic, took time to mutate within humans before it became dangerous. In contrast, the current virus seemed to know how to infect and kill from the very start, as it has not undergone any major changes since the onset of the pandemic.
However, this doesn’t mean the virus isn’t mutating. The difference is that none of its mutations have yet managed to outcompete the original strain. To put it simply, the current SARS-CoV-2 strain doesn't need to alter itself to spread more effectively—it already does so effortlessly.
6. People Are Testing Negative, Then Positive
As we continue to see thousands of new cases globally each day, doctors are now facing a perplexing issue: patients who previously tested negative are later testing positive. This has raised serious doubts about the reliability of our detection methods and tools.
While it’s true that the virus can lie dormant for some time before symptoms emerge, most countries are already factoring this into their discharge protocols. According to guidelines from the now-criticized and defunded WHO, all recovered patients must test negative twice, with a minimum 24-hour gap between tests. Alarmingly, some of these patients are now retesting positive, and we still don’t have a clear explanation for why.
Some experts suggest that the virus may have the ability to deactivate and then reactivate itself within the human host. Another possibility is that patients could be getting re-infected after being discharged, or there may be an entirely different cause. At this point, we simply don’t know. These scenarios challenge the widespread belief that recovered patients would develop immunity, as is common with most diseases, which would ideally help build herd immunity. Furthermore, if the virus can reactivate at will, what does it really mean to be 'recovered'?
5. The Asymptomatic Carriers
A study of past pandemics reveals that the true reason behind the Chinese virus's success isn’t necessarily its high transmission rate or even its death toll. We've faced far deadlier outbreaks than this one—it's nowhere near as catastrophic as the Black Death or the Spanish Flu in terms of both mortality and infection rates. However, it stands out in one key way: infected individuals can continue their daily activities with little to no symptoms, making it far more difficult to contain. This results in a society filled with ‘Typhoid Marys’—or, perhaps more aptly for our times, ‘Coronavirus Karens.’
What remains unknown to scientists is the sheer number of these asymptomatic cases. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the spread of the virus can’t be solely attributed to known hotspots or confirmed infections. While many patients with mild or no symptoms have tested positive, those are only the cases we’ve managed to detect. People who experience a mild cold or cough might not think much of it, but experts suggest they could be the primary drivers behind the astonishing speed at which the virus spreads.
4. Why Are Children So Resilient Against It?
It’s well-documented that the coronavirus impacts people differently. Fatalities are significantly higher among the elderly, often attributed to their compromised immune systems. This might seem like a logical explanation, but it doesn’t account for the curious fact that the virus seems to have little effect on children. While adult deaths are tragically common, fatalities among children have been thankfully minimal.
While this is certainly positive news, it remains baffling. After all, children are hardly known for their superior immunity or fitness levels. In fact, they are often at a higher risk of respiratory viral infections, such as the flu. Yet, we’ve seen a higher mortality rate among those with better immune defenses than children, and we still can’t explain why.
3. How Does the Virus Spread?
Around the world, nations are taking drastic measures to slow the spread of the virus, including lockdowns and social distancing policies. However, these actions are based on the assumption that we have a solid understanding of the virus. With new research continually challenging what we thought we knew, it’s clear that our prevention strategies will need constant adaptation if we are to have any hope of overcoming this pandemic.
The most perplexing aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic is that we still don’t fully understand how it spreads. Anyone claiming certainty on this front is only speculating. Initially, it was believed that the virus could only spread through physical contact. However, emerging studies suggest that it might remain suspended in the air for a much longer period than previously thought and doesn’t necessarily require droplet transmission. A striking example of this is a choir, where members maintained social distance yet were all infected. Our best guess is that they contracted it through the air, but we’re still uncertain about all the ways the virus can be transmitted.
2. The Invisible Path of Transmission
Although the number of cases worldwide continues to rise at a concerning pace, most of them can still be traced back to potential sources of the virus. Knowing that a hospital is a hotspot, for instance, allows us to quarantine and isolate the area, contact anyone who might have been near it during the outbreak, and prevent further infections from spreading.
However, what’s troubling is that we’re also seeing several perplexing cases with no clear origin of infection. For example, a toddler in Gujarat, India contracted and died from the virus despite no known cases in the entire district. Additionally, a man in California became the first American to get infected without coming into contact with any confirmed host.
1. How Do Patients Recover?
At this stage, we have a relatively good understanding of how the novel coronavirus can be fatal, even though many of the conditions leading to death remain unclear. What we still don’t fully comprehend, however, is how people recover from it.
In most other diseases, patients recover by developing antibodies that not only help them combat the current infection but also protect them from future attacks by the same strain. While this immunity may not be permanent, like with the Influenza virus, the body still retains some evidence of having fought off the illness.
Surprisingly, a significant number of recovered Covid-19 patients don't fit the expected pattern, and researchers are struggling to understand why. A study conducted in China found that while most recovered individuals had developed antibodies specific to the SARS Cov-2 strain, around 30% showed no signs of such antibodies or any related ones. It remains unclear how their bodies managed to recover at all.
