New COVID19 Research: Lung cell images show how intense a coronavirus infection can be

COVID19 continues to rage throughout the U.S. because we still don't have a national plan on how to combat it. We are now at the 6 month mark, and it's going to be a lot longer. We've known several friends who have contracted the virus, one who is still sick from it even 6 months later, and one friend who passed away from it. So Wear Your Mask. Don't be selfish. It's not about you. Otherwise, YOU are responsible for the deaths of others (and the people at these political rallies who never wear one for you know who are Idiots). Here's the latest SCIENCE report showing what COVID19 does to a healthy lung (HINT: It ravages it and makes it a lot less functional, even if at all functional - Can you afford a Lung Transplant? Then wear a MASK).  Here's the story:

 

Lung cell images show how intense a coronavirus infection can be

By Jonathan Lambert, Science News Sept. 15, 2020

(Photo: Coronavirus particles (small, spiky spheres) coat a human lung cell and its hairlike cilia in this scanning electron micrograph (left; higher-resolution view at right).

C. EHRE/NEJM 2020)

New closeup views of lung cells show just how prolifically the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can replicate once it infiltrates the respiratory tract.

 

In the lab, pediatric pulmonologist Camille Ehre and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill infected cells that line the airways in the lungs with SARS-CoV-2, waited 96 hours and then snapped scanning electron micrograph images of the virus-laden cells.

 

“Once a cell is infected, it is completely taken over by the virus, producing an astonishing number of viruses,” Ehre says. In a lab dish of about 1 million human cells, she says the viral load can skyrocket from about one thousand infectious viruses to 10 million in just two days. The new images were published September 3 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

 

Cells that line the respiratory tract and their hairlike protrusions called cilia help clear airways of inhaled particles and pathogens. These types of cells are also specifically targeted by the coronavirus. Once infected, they churn out “astronomical numbers” of viral particles, Ehre says, potentially propelling the particles deeper into the lungs, which can cause pneumonia, or out into the air where they can infect others.

 

“These images of airway cells jam-packed with viruses make a strong case for the use of masks to limit SARS-CoV-2 transmission whether an individual has symptoms or not,” Ehre says. Widespread mask wearing could help contain such explosive viral replication from spreading beyond a single individual.