Cytokines Vs. Proteins: Living in a Coronavirus Hot Zone (Cont.)

2: Anatomy of the Coronavirus 

It's said that when proteins from the RNA strands in this Coronavirus attach to a human, its spikes will grab onto whatever ribosome it can find. In some cases, this means your eyes, causing a rare form of pink eye. Or, it'll attach inside your nose causing extreme inflammation. Or, it'll latch inside your mouth in which case you get a Sahara Desert-dry throat. 

Later in its incubation period the virus will move down into your chest and lungs, attaching as it makes copies of itself on your receptors. This is where the virus can do serious damage because it can whip up a cytokine storm and cause trouble breathing. These immune responses humans create are in fact cytokines working overtime against the virus proteins and so the sensation of having this weight placed on your chest is quite indescribable. 

In a cytokine storm, little firecrackers will also be going off inside your chest--akin to hundreds of needles poking and prodding you to the point you just sit in your bed and ask yourself what you did to deserve this. Did you poke too much fun at the poor Chinese folks who went through this very experience you're having now? Not so much of a joke now, eh, tough guy? 

Well, that was me by mid-March. Looking back at the timeline from which this insidious virus traveled through my body in comparison to the progression of the videos out of Wuhan, the trajectory was uncanny to that which we're experiencing in America right now. The videos started innocent enough, you know; then, as time went on this Corona became a completely different animal--as my students and we teachers soon found out. 

In the very next video on Facebook Watch, inside a packed emergency room corridor of a Wuhan hospital, a panicked doctor wearing a ghost-white Hazmat suit, a face shield and a mask stood screaming warnings into the camera. Down the hallway, a line of 50 people lay writhing and squirming against a wall. It was so surreal. The looks on my kids faces were as if they'd seen a ghost. 

They laughed nervously and went back to their Chromebooks to numb themselves with some YouTube. The aides and I looked at each other in slackjawed, stunned silence. We were expecting the equivalent of Wile E. Coyote here to chase the Road Runner, stumble off a proverbial cliff again, and look like an idiot--not some scene from The Walking Dead, for crying out loud. 

As teachers, our first priority is to educate our kids. Our intent was simple in theory. We'd provide our students with information on the virus and engage in a civil discussion. Anything that falls short of education and instead causes harm is never the goal. For good reason, that ER video would be the students' last we'd watch as a class. However, we do recognize that life sometimes happens outside of our purview and so while we do our level best to protect our kids, sometimes it simply isn't possible. 

The bottom line is that from our limited American purview, nobody knew what was going on in China as January rolled into Feburary, however, we all suspected something was afoot at the Circle K in Wuhan--aside from it being locked down tight while a mysterious respiratory virus was circulating. One student even added he wasn't down having this Corona--he'd rather stay in school. 

Days later, the doctor from the emergency room video was reportedly found dead from complications from this novel coronavirus--documented in the very next video that only we teachers watched on Facebook. Because, lets face it; after watching these videos devolve over time, we were still curious as to what might happen next. 

The next morning's Facebook video featured rows of trucks armed with cannons splashing lime green sanitizer on city buildings and streets as it rumbled along. The day after that video, a quick video update showed empty, barricaded streets of Wuhan while a masked cyclist pedaled past a hospital that was reportedly constructed to tend to the sick in mere days. 

Every few days seemed to come with another strange update revealing a new frightening detail--along with more deaths. At first, the reports stated most of the dead were over the age of 60. Would that statistic change too? Corona became the No. 1 water cooler discussion because as educators, our primary job is to inform our population. Frankly, we pondered whether we were all being sanitized.