# RKS: WHY 'VIRAL' IS THE BUZZWORD TODAY?

- WHY IS INFORMATION NEVER BACTERIAL?

1st October 2022

VIRUSES vs BACTERIA

THE EQUATION AND REASONS FOR LIMELIGHT

Dear Reader,
Coronavirus has opened a new hot topic regarding viruses. Never before were the general public concerned so much about viruses impacting human health and neither the medical profession had taken day-to-day viruses, even if endemic, so seriously.
What was always talked in common parlance was the computer viruses and the news or messages / videos have become viral. Viruses are more a perceived threat to health but when linked to information the word ‘viral’ is anything but related to human health.
Why is this so? An endeavour is being made to analyze the root cause of why the word 'viral' has been linked to spread of information on internet and Social Media and has overshadowed the more popular infecting ‘bug’ called bacteria.

VIRUS vs BACTERIA

We have all heard the terminology 'bug'. It means to include three types of organisms that infect humans.

Viruses
Bacteria
Parasites

Viruses and bacteria are microscopic, but parasites may not all be so. Microscopic means only being visible under a microscope. Micrometer (micron) is one millionth of a meter (m) - viruses are 1 micron in size whilst dimensions for bacteria range from 1 to 5 microns.

HISTORY OF VIRUS EMERGENCE

Two scientists contributed to the discovery of the first virus namely, Tobacco mosaic virus, which Ivanoski reported in 1892.

Novel viruses are being discovered all around the globe and no continent is spared from the fright and fear of the possibility of a sudden appearance of a new such bug!

There are 219 virus species that are known to be able to infect humans. Although the well-known small pox (10,000 BC), flu (unknown bug previously but later identified as influenza) (1500 years) and chicken pox (15th century) viruses were identified to exist since time immemorial, the first novel bug to be discovered was yellow fever virus in 1901 and this set the trail for newer viruses in impacting health.

VIRUS APPEARANCE AND POPULATION EQUATION

The novel viruses of concern thus began their appearance at the very beginning of 20th century itself. It is intriguing why a spate of viruses were created by the Almighty after 3,00,000 years of existence of human race! In this regard it makes an interesting study of population spikes and explosions over the centuries spanning over from BC to AD.

Old Stone Age (Paleolithic Period): 5-6 million world population (0.04 person per sq km).
Metal Age (Neolithic Period): 150 million world population over 8,000 years (agricultural revolution) (1 person per sq km).
Till Mid 17th century: 500 million world population (3.3 persons per sq km) - population growth curtailed due to starvation.
18th century: Between 1650 and 1850 the world population doubled (industrial revolution) - 500 to 1,000 million (6.7 persons per sq km).
1920 AD: World population doubled in less than 100 years compared to 200 years taken previously!

The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history and it strangely coincided with the first fast doubling period of world population! Could be the Almighty discovered a new weapon to curb population for conserving in an effort to prolong the human race and, in bargain, the beautifully designed and crafted male and female specimen species in His eyes!

To complete the population explosion history, the next doubling occurred in 50 years (1920 to 1970) and the count was 4 billion; which has steadied for the next 50 years - doubling from 4 to 8 billion world population (1970 to 2020). Has the parallel emergence of viruses contributed to muffling the population explosion growth? GOK!!

CHRONOLOGY OF ALARMING 'NEW' VIRUSES DISCOVERY

The novel viruses of concern strangely began their appearances from the 1900s and there has been a steady flow of discovery of new bugs.

The viral infections are indeed alarming since newer variants of existing, or existent viruses, evolve to cause a whole new plethora of illnesses.

BACTERIA EMERGENCE OUTNUMBERED, & OUTWITTED BY VIRUSES

Since the 1950s, medical communities have been facing with emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, and newer surfacing pathogens are now considered to be a major microbiologic public health threat.

There are 13-30 trillion bacteria present on and inside a normal human being vs 380 trillion viruses! Incidentally the total number of cells in human body is 10 trillion.
In the last 40 years, 50 new infective agents have been identified and of these only 10% are bacterial species!
Only 1% of bacterial species cause infections but 3.2% of species of virus (219 out of 6828) infect humans.
Scientists and researchers find it easier to discover and develop new antibiotics for bacterial infections as compared to synthesizing anti-virals. This has led to medical professionals and even the layman consuming an antibacterial antibiotic for a viral infection (glaring proof - the COVID-19 pandemic) since these are the more popularly known weapons for bugs!!
0.26% deaths are globally reported as an outcome of bacterial infections vs 25% mortality rates (average) with commonest novel viruses. The recent COVID-19 has registered relatively the least case fatality figures of 2.2% - which is also 10 times greater than for bacterial infections.

There are more viruses residing in humans – 380 trillion than stars in the Milky Way - 400 billion (bn)! Since viruses are more in number, most implicated in epidemics and pandemics in modern times, more fatal and less treatable they have emerged as bugs of most concern for the human race. Out of the 21 worst epidemics and pandemics in history of mankind, 11 have been due to viruses - and 9 out of 10 bacterial pandemics were plague - but mark you no bacteria have been responsible for any pandemic post eighteenth century - maybe coinciding with the discovery of antibiotics.

'VIRAL' - A VIRUS-DERIVED TERMINOLOGY

The first computer virus was born the same year Intel released its first commercially available microprocessor. It was named as Creeper and was written in 1971 by BBN (Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc.) programmer Robert Thomas as a security test.

Prior to 1986, most viruses were mere annoyances and virtually harmless. In January of 1986, the first virus written for Windows based PCs was born. Known simply as “Brain,” it was written by two Pakistani brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, who were only 17 and 24 years old at the time.

HOW COMPUTER 'BUG' BECAME KNOWN AS VIRUS?

The metaphor of the "computer virus" was adopted because of the similarity in form, function and consequence with biological viruses that attack humans.

The term "computer virus" was coined in the early 1980s. Fred Cohen, then a Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California hit upon the idea of a self-replicating software (also called 'worm') for the first time. He demonstrated the "worm's" (- type of malware) capabilities to Len Adleman, his thesis advisor.

Adleman pointed out the similarity of the malware conceptualized by Fred Cohen to a biological virus. This is because the human health impacting virus utilizes the resources of the cell it attacks to reproduce itself, and so does the "computer virus" - thus began the journey of the word 'virus' into everyday English with respect to computer malware.

VIRUS SPREAD - A COMMON FEATURE

Both bacteria and virus spread in same way -

# Touching food with dirty hands.

# Skin contact.

# Contact with body fluids such as blood and saliva.

BUT, additionally, viruses spread even via droplets (during coughing, sneezing, talking) - an unique way exclusively for viruses in causing diseases - only TB bug, amongst bacteria, having similar mechanism. The respiratory mode is most important in determining the contagiousness of viral infections. Averagely humans spend 6 hours of day talking, and presuming they are asymptomatic but infected, the chances of spread of virus via droplets is more imminent than other modes - direct touch or water- / food-borne. Since viruses alone majorly spread via droplets their infectivity and spread from one human to another is faster than bacteria.

SIMILAR IS THE SPEED OF COMPUTER VIRUS SPREAD.

The most common ways the computer virus spreads is via:

# Downloads, including through opening of suspicious email attachments;

# Use of non-trustworthy removable media;

# Security vulnerabilities; or

# Network due to the worm component of a virus.

Just as we have protective vaccines against viruses there are anti-virus softwares to guard computers against malware (virus being a specific type of malware). Just like vaccines’ availability has enabled us to forget a dozen common viral infections, there are 100s of anti-viral softwares of which the 20 most popular are making our digital forays smooth and uneventful.

NO HOST - NO SPREAD

All human viruses cannot survive and / or proliferate if they do not have a host to infect. Viruses are essentially non-living microbes in the atmosphere and when they attack to enter a human cell during infection, spring to life and commence multiplying.

Ditto with computer viruses. Unless an hardware or a network is invaded, the man-made virus is innocuous since it can neither cause damage nor exhibit a multiplication effect.

DROPLET SPREAD vs COMPUTER VIRUS INFECTIVITY

Virus laden droplets from infected persons are typically 20 microns in size and it takes 150 seconds (100 microns droplet takes 3 seconds) to transmit over 1 meter which is considered as a close contact distance between a susceptible individual and an infected patient. For a droplet to infect it must be typically more than 5 microns in size. Omicron can spread in mere 15 seconds.

Computer viruses also spread relatively quick enough. A test carried out on different types of ransomware (virus and ransomware are types of malware) revealed that 1,000 Word documents were encrypted (code inserted in a file to prevent access or garble it) from between 18 seconds to 16 minutes - similar speed as human infecting virus spread.

HUMAN VIRUS PROLIFERATION vs COMPUTER VIRUS SPREAD

Humans take typically 20 years to produce a new generation. However, viruses can take only 8 hours (polio virus) to multiply.

In the case of computer virus, an infected desktop computer with a typical DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) connection could deal out roughly 300 copies per second of the worm (self-replicating malware); a faster university or corporate server could send copies up to 100 times faster!

INFORMATION HAS BECOME VIRAL

THUS, NOT ONLY THE HUMAN INFECTING VIRUS AND COMPUTER VIRUSES SPREAD FAST BUT EVEN MULTIPLY VERY QUICKLY.

THIS IS THE VERY ESSENCE OF COMMUNICATION AS CHAT OR VIDEO MESSAGING - SPREAD FAST & QUICKLY DISSEMINATE.

News, information, images, footages of clips or GIFs on internet or Social Media platforms are referred to as becoming ‘viral’, if they spread fast and disseminate quickly; they are never referred to as bacterial!! OED (Oxford English Dictionary) citations indicate that the adjective “viral” first showed up in the late 1940s and the verbal phrase “go viral” in the late 1980s.

The more engagement one gets in the first 5-30 minutes after posting, the more likely it is that the concerned post will go viral. What are the criteria to be labelled as viral?

# Having 1,00,000 likes or more for a post classifies it as viral.

# More than 1,500 shares of an article qualifies it to be labelled as viral.

# Greater than 5 million (mn) views (view means watching for more than 5 seconds) over 5-7 days of uploading a video, is considered as a benchmark to classify as becoming viral. Incidentally, the December 17, 2005 episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL) "Lazy Sunday," the second SNL Digital Short, was the first viral video on YouTube.

Videos can become viral if there are more than minimum of 500 registered views in 30 minutes. In the case of viral text messages, the fastest took mere 24 minutes - having generated 1,00,000 likes on a Twitter platform for James Teaser (#KannadaTeasers).

SUMMARY

Virus is indeed the buzzword. It has overtaken bacteria on all counts. There are human infecting viruses, computer viruses and viraling of messages and videos. Why has the terminology 'virus' has become viraled? It's the outcome of the basic attribute of the virus bug, which has beaten and overtaken the bacteria as far as. bugs are concerned.

HUMAN VIRUS

# 380 trillion viruses reside in or on humans compared to 39 trillion bacteria.

# In the last 40 years of new microbe discovery, only 10% identified have been bacteria.

# 1% of bacteria cause infection compared to 3.2% in case of viruses.

# Amongst the most deadly 21 pandemics recorded in history, bacteria is implicated in 1 or 2, whilst 8 viruses were collectively responsible for these.

# Before 19th century it was all plague (bacteria) pandemics but after the dawn of nineteenth century emerged mostly all viral pandemics.

# Mortality due to bacterial infection, on account of antibiotic resistance, is 0.26% which is 10-100 times lesser than that reported as a consequence of viral infection.

COMPUTER VIRUS

# Human virus came into limelight in nineteenth century and computer virus entered the fray in the twentieth century.

# The human virus size is 100 nm and contains RNA or DNA whilst the computer virus occupies 1000 kb and have inserted pieces of code.

# The malware is called virus since it spreads and spreads as fast as human virus.

# Omicron can spread in 15 seconds and the computer virus can corrupt 1,000 Word document files in even 18 seconds.

# Just as human virus multiplies only when infects a host, the computer virus can only spread when it attacks a hardware or a network.

# Human virus causes symptoms and can kill the patient whilst computer virus causes malfunctioning of computer or even cause system collapse.

NO WONDER THE COMPUTER MALWARE IS TERMED VIRUS AND NOT BACTERIA.

COMMUNICATION VIRALING

Spreading and with speed is the essence of viral infections as well as hackers creating viruses. In communication too, the internet and birth of Social Media has focused attention on virus-like spread of messages, chats, images, Gifs and videos. Anything which spreads and spreads fast qualifying set criteria, is said to have become viraled. The following are some of the most deemed viraled communications.

# Facebook: Most viral photo posted by Walmart: Happy #Easter! How many eggs can you find in this photo? - 20,000 likes, 21,000 comments & 1500 forwards.

# Instagram: Photo of an egg by Chris Godfrey @world_Record_egg on Jan 4, 2019 - 56.1 mn likes.

- Instagram Hashtag: #love - 1.835 bn likes.

# Meme: FAIL / Epic Fail. Part of a series on Internet Slang, 2003 - 9,68,589 views, 1,529 images, 605 videos, 55 comments.

# Twitter: 'Giveaway 100 million yen' by Yusaku Maezawa @yousuck2020 - 4 mn retweets.

# Video: One commentator called the Kony 2012 video the most viral video in history - about 34,000,000 views in three days and 100,000,000 views in six days.

# YouTube: "Baby Shark Dance" by Pinkfong Kids' Songs and Stories (Korean education brand) released on June 17, 2016 - 11.34 bn views.

Virus and viral are so much in limelight that one runs away from viruses - both human and computer, but yearns to attain the virality creating / achieving tag. Where are the poor bacteria in all such gameplan of God and mankind - they seem to have been lost in wilderness and whenever they dare raise their head they get eliminated by the powerful antibiotics of today.

HERE'S WISHING ALL THE VERY BEST FOR GARNERING SUCCESS IN COMMUNICATION VIRALING.

DR R K SANGHAVI

Prophesied Enabler

Experience & Expertise: Clinician & Healthcare Industry Adviser

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Dr R K Sanghavi