EASY PEASY SCIENCE PT 2

Germs, if I Can't See Them They Don't Exist

EASY, PEASY, SCIENCE 2

GERMS, IF I CAN’T SEE THEM THEY DON’T EXIST

By

Fay E.A. Reid

Thus quoth Hegesmith. Either the man is an outright liar (which I hope) or if he really hasn’t washed his hands in 10 years, that means he hasn’t showered in 10 years either.  The stench must be unbearable.  I pity his coworkers, anyone he interviews would need a working gas mask.

Germs is a general term for bacteria, viruses, certain fungi, and molds. All these are single celled molecules capable of infecting plants mammals, reptiles, amphibia, birds, fish and so on.  They can be symbiotic - meaning they help the host and in return are allowed shelter and a share of food and water. They can be benign, simply living in another being but causing no harm, Or they can be infectious causing diseases and death.

Bacteria

So, let’s start with bacteria, singular bacterium.  Like all other “germs” they come in the good, bad, or indifferent qualities. One of the more common bacteria residing in humans is Escherichia coli, commonly known as E. coli, which also happens to be the only bacterium I have personally seen,  Escherichia is the Genus named after a German Doctor Escherich, coli means of the colon which is where these little critters normally live.  A single bacterium is not visible to the human eye. However a whole colony of E. coli in a petri dish is visible,  They look like a fuzzy white blob on the agar (a jelly like substance containing the type of nutrients (food) on which whatever bacteria you are studying can live). 

I just happened to have the good fortune of attending graduate school at CSUS from fall of 1970 to the winter of 1972. During this time graduate students were given access to the electron microscope housed in the basement of the science building.  I prepared my slide by making a tissue thin slice of a colony of E. coli and carefully inserting it in the microscope.  The electron scope took a photo and you were briefly able to observe the actual bacteria. Electron scopes work by sending a stream of electrons through the object and photographically displaying the results.  I kept those photos for several years along with my Masters thesis but somewhere I lost them. E. coli looks sort of like a Tyelenol lozenge covered with fuzz.  A large colony of these critters will cover a millimeter or more in a petri - large meaning hundreds of them

Sorry mister Hegesmith they do exist

A bacterium is a living creature. A single cell containing a nucleus, mitlchondria (teeny little energy producing bits) lysosomes and many other cellular parts which work together tirelessly and in the case of bacteria help the cell to divide creating duplicate bacteria with great efficiency and rapidity.

As long as they stay in your intestines helping you break down the food you eat so your body can use the nutrients gained to create more cells and do the job that specific organ has, to keep you alive and healthy. E. coli is helpful at best and benign most of the time.  However, bacteria are much shorter lived than you are and dead E. coli along with some living ones that got in the way are eliminated when you defecate.  And therein lies one of the problems. Whenever we eliminate waste products from our bodies our hands come in contact while cleaning ourselves - which is why physicians go to great lengths telling us to wash our hands frequently.  Like me, during their course of studies the physicians have seen bacteria and worse the result of bacterial infections.

If you could see your own hands under magnification you would be disgusted with the amount of ‘not you’ that collects there when you are not wearing disposable vinyl gloves. If ever you come into contact with someone like Hegesmith I’d advise no handshakes, hugs, or kisses, in fact I’d keep a very healthy distance.

A number of serious, frequently fatal, diseases are caused by bacteria. The most infamous being plague (black plague or bubonic plague). Here the bacterium Yersinia is carried inside fleas on rats, cats, rabbits, chipmunks,  and other small animals. The flea leaps to a human, bites the human who is then infected with plague. Better hygiene has effectively lowered the incidents of plague and modern medicine has developed cures.

Fungi, Molds, and parasites

These are more single celled critters, not as likely to live and thrive inside animals but they can and do, and when they do they are not good for the host, they cause serious illnesses and even death. Like bacteria they are living, that is they are capable of self reproduction. Their cells have a nucleus, mitochondria and all the other cell parts.

Certain fungi cause Valley fever a serious respiratory system disease that can cause death in some people. While it is not always fatal, it can cause fever, vomiting, diarrhea.

If you are susceptible to allergy black mold can also make you sick, but is rarely fatal. The warmer the climate the more likely you are to find black mold on or near water sources.

Malaria is caused by a parasite (plasmodium) these are protozoans usually harmless single celled critters but in the case of malaria quite dangerous. Since they travel exclusively in mosquitoes. Get rid of the mosquito, get rid of malaria.  

Mosquitos are also the vector (carrier) of yellow fever so I don’t think eliminating the mosquito genus would be much of a threat to the planet.

Viruses

There has been an ongoing argument in the science world, at least since the 1960’s about whether viruses are living critters or not.  Those who say they are not living have the arguments that they are incapable of self reproduction and they have none of the usual accouterments for nutrition. I really don’t care where they are living or not, they certainly cause a world of harm by forcing other plants and animals to produce replicas of themselves. So, whichever side you take you will get no argument from me.

Viruses are probably the simplest beings on Planet Earth, they are less complex than rocks and like a rock they appear to have no neurons (things that make us feel, So what are they?  A strand of Ribose Nucleic Acid, commonly referred to as RNA. Something you heard a lot about during the Covid pandemic as that was the type of vaccine administered to register us immune to the COVID-19-sars-2 virus. 

[A quick aside, prior to this virus vaccines were usually made from ‘killed’ that is genetically altered viruses in a medium containing albumin (egg whites).  These vaccines take two or three years to develop and test for contrary reactions. A lot of people are allergic to eggs and sometimes the ‘killed’ viruses cause other problems. - Another reason for the ‘viruses’ aren’t living you can’t kill them, just make them, genetically inactive so they can’t cause whatever damage they were causing]

So back to the virus. This strand of RNA is wrapped in a protein coat. That’s it. No mitochondria, no nucleus, no lysosomes, no nothing found in a typical cell. Another argument for it is not living.  [Personally I’m not convinced it isn’t living because it can make me very sick while causing me against my will to produce thousands of viruses instead of what my cell was supposed to be doing to support my body - I have enough trouble trying to make my body support me as it is - it thinks because I retired, it has the right to retire too]

In our own bodies we use RNA and messenger RNA to tell our DNA to produce certain necessary proteins to keep us healthy, alive, and active. So you can understand how a Virus can do the same thing only causing the cell to make replicas of the virus instead of, say cholesterol, or whatever that particular cell is supposed to create.

A major problem with viruses is this very simplicity - as the invaded cell is busily replicating the virus some part of the code may slip altering the viruses produced. This is called mutation.  So far I’ve needed 7 Covid vaccines, not because the vaccines lose their efficacy but because the virus has had so many viable mutations in the 5 year period since it first made its appearance in the fall of 2019.

But not all viruses are bad.  Some viruses are called phages (pronounced fAjuz) these are viruses that “eat” bacteria.  They don’t literally ‘eat’ the bacterium they just tear it apart entering it to make it reproduce the virus so the bacterium dies without reproducing the virus - mission failed.  So scientists are studying how to adapt these phage viruses to ‘kill’ specific bacteria and fungi that infect plants, animals, fish, birds, and fungi.

Now I’m ready for questions.