Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

What Is a Coronavirus? Coronaviruses were first identified in the 1960s, they get their name from their crown-like shape. Sometimes, but not often, a coronavirus can infect both animals and humans. Most coronaviruses spread the same way other cold-causing viruses do: through infected people coughing and sneezing, by touching an infected person's hands or face, or by touching things such as doorknobs that infected people have touched. Coronaviruses cause diseases in mammals and birds that include diarrhea in cows and pigs, and upper respiratory disease in chickens. In humans, the virus causes rare but potentially lethal respiratory infections. Cases of the virus have been detected around China, including Hong Kong and Macao, and other countries, including Japan, South Korea, the United States and Thailand. Singapore and Vietnam are the latest to join the list. The symptoms of most coronaviruses are similar to any other upper respiratory infection, including runny nose,

What is swine flu? Like people, pigs can get influenza (flu), but swine flu viruses aren't the same as human flu viruses. Swine flu doesn't often infect people, and the rare human cases that have occurred in the past have mainly affected people who had direct contact with pigs. But the current "swine flu" outbreak is different. It's caused by a new swine flu virus that has changed in ways that allow it to spread from person to person -- and it's happening among people who haven't had any contact with pigs. That makes it a human flu virus. In an effort to avoid confusion, the CDC is calling the virus "novel influenza A (H1N1) virus" to distinguish it both from flu viruses that infect mainly pigs and from the seasonal influenza A H1N1 viruses that have been in circulation for many years. How does swine flu spread? Is it airborne? The new swine flu virus apparently spreads just like regular flu. You could pick up germs directly from droplets from th