Firmitas

Virus Types and Means of Reproduction
Revision 12
© 2007-2022 by Zack Smith. All rights reserved.

Contents

Viruses overview

They are small: measured in nanometers.

Viruses are not really living. They are simply pieces of genetic code in a container that chemically connect to a living cell, inject that genetic material mechanically, and whose genes take over the cell's metabolic processes.

That container is typically made of protein.

Viruses require cells as hosts. They have no metabolism on their own.

Viruses infect every form of life. For instance, a virus that targets bacteria is called a bacteriophage.

Virus parts

  • Genetic material, either DNA or RNA
  • A capsid = a container made of protein
  • An optional phospholipid envelope with glycoproteins on the outside surface

Virus shapes

There are three:

  • Helical i.e. a spiral like shape
  • Polyhedral up to 20 sides
  • Complex = with head & tail elements

Viruses have 2 kinds of survival strategies

  • Lytic, where they take over a cell and ultimately burst it open, killing it but spewing viruses out.
  • Lysogenic, where their DNA/RNA is integrated into the host's genome, thereby becoming a part of the cell.

Viruses types by envelope

  • Naked i.e. no envelope, easy for the immune system to kill.
  • Enveloped

The lytic life cycle: memorize as AESAR

  • Attachment
  • Entry & degradation of host's DNA
  • Synthesis of new viruses
    • duplication of virus' genetic material
    • creation of new virus parts
  • Assembly of parts into new viruses
  • Release of new viruses

Burst size = the number of viruses that a virus can produce before the host cell bursts. The T4 phage makes about 200.

The lysogenic life cycle: memorize as AEIM

  • Attachment
  • Entry (no degradation of host DNA
  • Integration using integrase enzyme
  • Mitosis
    • Host+virus DNA duplicated
    • Cytokinesis

A virus that uses the lysogenic life cycle is termed either a provirus or prophage. What causes various proviruses to shift to the lytic cycle is not completely understood, but in some cases stress is the stimulus.

Viroids

These are newly discovered particles of RNA that are known to attack plants, at this point. They lack both capsid and envelope, so they are bare RNA.

Oncogene Theory

This theory states that 15% of cancers are caused by viruses. One example is HPV, which causes cervical cancer i.e. cancer of the cervix in women. The virus is lysogenic and it inserts a destructive gene into the tumor suppressor T53 gene. This allows a mutated oncogene to cause a cell to become cancerous.

Well known lytic viruses

  • SARS-CoV-2 i.e. the cause of COVID-19.
  • SARS-CoV-1 i.e. the cause of 2002-2004 SARS outbreak.
  • Common cold viruses e.g. rhinovirus
  • Influenza
  • Rabies
  • AIDS mode of HIV
  • Tobacco mosaic virus

Well known lysogenic viruses (proviruses)

  • HIV
  • Herpes
  • Hepatitis B
  • Varicella-Zoster (chicken pox)

COVID-19 virus SARS-CoV-2 (nCoV2)

This is a lytic, RNA virus.

It is contagious between humans e.g. by air.

99.6% survivability rate

The survival rate for humans is widely reported to be very high, over 99%. Source

The vast majority of people who get COVID-19 do not die because of COVID-19. Despite the public panic surrounding COVID-19, especially among the science-illiterate, and despite propaganda from self-serving pharmaceutical corporations and their authoritarian allies in the media and government, it's just not very lethal.

It can however cause organ damage, because the Spike Protein is highly toxic.

COVID-19 Mortality Rates by Age

Only 6% of deaths occur from COVID alone

The CDC published on their website: Of all COVID-19 deaths only 6% of them are recorded as having occurred with only COVID-19 listed as the cause.

The other 94% of cases involved comorbidities and on average those people had 2.9 comorbities. What's that mean? It means they were very unwell people.

Natural immunity is better than a vaccine

An Israeli study found that natural immunity, which is what your body receives after you've had COVID-19, is 27 times stronger than a vaccine for the Delta variant:

A former US Health and Human Services official has said that if you've had COVID-19, the immunity that you gained from that is just as good as any immunity you might get from a vaccine.

The lab origin is a certainty

The genetic code of the virus was published quite early in the pandemic by a lab in Shanghai and it was immediately found by researchers in India and elsewhere to contain parts from other viruses, such as HIV. It is man-made.

It is the result of gain of function research i.e. research on making a virus more dangerous, which is a euphemism for bio-weapons research.

The NIH now admits (late October 2021) that they funded Eco Health Alliance which engaged in unauthorized Gain of Function research to make the bat virus transmissible to humans.

In a research proposal that was rejected, Peter Dazsak of EcoHealth Alliance allegedly advocated for releasing the man-made virus into the wild.

US-run bioweapons labs are numerous and in 25 countries

It was never just Wuhan.

A Bulgarian investigative reporter found that bioweapons labs run by EcoHealth Alliance are not only in Wuhan China, they are in many countries, for instance including Ukraine.

Bioweapons expert and law professor Francis Boyle, formerly of Amnesty International, expands on this:

Political effects

Given the high survivability of COVID-19, the panic over the virus no longer makes rational sense and appears to be politically motivated, not the result of genuine health concerns.

The main political effect has been rapidly expanding authoritarianism.

So who is pushing for this authoritarianism?

A chief orchestrator of pandemic policies has been the World Economic Forum (WEF), known for its Davos conferences, which is led by Klaus Schwab, whose family members were all Nazis before and during World War 2.

A prominent leader at the WEF is Canada's deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, whose grandfather was a high-ranking Nazi propagandist. She has recently been photographed posing with actual Neo-Nazi Ukrainians.

The WEF seems to be working closely with the WHO, which is associated with China. At present China is still being run by the militant fascist Xi Jinping.

Note that while above I refer to Nazis and a fascist, I am not using these terms in the casual sense referring vaguely to racists, but to the literal, historical sense of these words. These are people who believe freedom and democracy should be ended.

Herpes

There are a few kinds of Herpes

  • Herpes simplex = highly contagious, you can get it from sharing a bottle, utensil, chapstick; touching a doorknob.
    • Effects are sores at point of contact e.g. mouth.
  • Genital Herpes = you get it from sexual activity.
    • Effects are sores on genitals: allegedly painful.
      • Statistics show that the New York City area and Southern California have large percentages of people with Genital Herpes.

Chicken Pox

  • If you get it as a child, you become immune.
  • If you get it as a child, it can recur after age 50 in the form of shingles.
  • If you get Chicken Pox as an adult, you will endure painful shingles.

HIV

There are 250 variants of HIV, therefore a vaccine is hard to create. Some variants are strong, others weak.

HIV is an enveloped RNA virus that is unusual in that it also contains two useful enzymes inside the capsid:

  • HIV reverse transcriptase: converts RNA from HIV to cDNA
  • HIV integrase: inserts the cDNA into the hosts DNA.

HIV's surface glycoprotein gp120 latches onto the CD4 receptor of the human immune system's T4 cells. When HIV becomes lytic, it destroys the T cells and renders the immune system unable to defend a person against even the common cold.

HIV viruses are created by budding, in which the cell membrane of the host is used to create the envelope of the new viruses.

HIV-resistant people have a defective T-cell receptor.

Prions

Prions are not viruses.

Prions are a normal part of living organisms. However there are good and bad prions.

The bad kind of prions are proteins that attack other proteins, converting them into something like themselves.

With several billion years of evolution on the planet, bad prions were bound to evolve eventually.

Examples of prion diseases include:

  • Mad Cow disease (BSE)
  • Creutzfeld-Jacob disease
  • Scrapie


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