When former US President Donald Trump compared Covid-19 to the flu last year, he was mocked by the world media. But it has been said again and again by the scientists and Indian yogis that Covid-19 is not more lethal than a flu, although exceptions apply.
Speaking to a hindi news channel, Sreedhar Chinnaswamy, a researcher from the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in India said that that virus can get inside you, only if you allow it to, and you get to decide what the virus will do to you once it enters you. “The genome size of a virus is only 30kb, whereas the total length of the human reference genome is over 3 billion base pairs, also our immune system is very strong with different layers, so unless you have fat reserves where the virus can sit and fight your immune system, you need not worry.”
“You are really vulnerable to the virus only if you have comorbid conditions, so living a healthy lifestyle is imperative for people with co-morbidities,” he added.
On new strains of Covid virus being found in India, Chinnaswamy said that mutation of virus is inevitable because India has a heterogenous population, so one should not be really surprised with these new strains coming up. “Though having a heterogeneous population is also helpful because a virus finds it difficult to spread in a heterogeneous population,” he added.
Chinnaswamy further said that the virus is not going anywhere, anytime soon, it will stay till it gets a host and it will probably touch everyone, though its aggressiveness will go down with time.
Also, once you recover from Covid virus, you are better prepared for its variants that are similar in nature, though there are exceptions, like in the case of UK variant which is an immune escape variant.
When asked about why more number of youth are getting infected during the second wave, Chinnaswamy said that it is because the virus load has increased. “Hypothetically speaking, if earlier a person was coming in contact with 10 viruses, now he is coming in contact with 100 viruses.”
When asked about whether Covid has something to do with the season because during both the waves, India was hit with Covid in the month of March and April, Chinnaswamy said that the summer season is not good for physiological processes, usually our immune system is under stress during summers.