Monroe Dispatch - No Struggle, No Progress

As the world continues to search for answers on how to halt the spread of COVID-19 through hand washing, wearing of face masks and social distancing, researchers are looking for that “smoking gun” clue that may signal a cure for the virus. As the rate of infections and deaths increase, researchers are literally racing against the clock to develop a vaccine either to slow down the virus’ spread, or a cure altogether. There are many voices that we hear from on how people are to cope with the virus, mostly from people who are not the scientists/researchers who are the ones that have the expertise to hopefully find a cure. One of our Dispatch readers asked the question why haven’t antibiotics been used to treat infections from bats when scientists know that bats are the carriers of certain viruses. The answer according to medical science is “no”, that would not work. That would not work because antibiotics treat BACTERIAL infections, not VIRAL infections such as COVID-18. Without sounding too technical, bacteria have its own metabolism which differs from human metabolism, while viruses do not have a metabolism. Antibiotics are substances interfering with the bacterial metabolism, targeting the parts of metabolism which is different from human metabolism. Because viruses have no metabolism of its own, it is not possible to use antibiotics against them. According to scientists, this applies to COVID-19. COVID-19 follows a list of viruses that we have heard and survived from, only we didn’t know they were known as “coronavirus” because of their scientific names. Many will remember SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003 which may have originated in bats and somehow was passed to humans. Sometime later, the world would be faced with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS in 2012 which again probably started in bats and transferred to humans. Bats were always in the equation because they are carriers of zoonotic diseases, meaning that scientists are convinced that bats can have the coronavirus in them and transmit it to animals, which can be transmitted to humans. But there has to be a host(animal) for the bat to infect for the disease to spread. Scientists believe that is what happened in China. Vaccines, more than any other method of ending diseases caused by viruses, have been the standard used by scientists. That is why scientists are frantically working on creating one in hopes of finding a cure sooner, rather than later. Consult and listen to your doctor and follow the guidelines from the people who study/understand diseases and know what your best options are.