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Daily 019: Millions Monday - Virus Reproduction

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Summary

Two visiting students. 12-15 check-in announced. History class on American West. Millions Monday calculates exponential virus reproduction and immune system response.

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to Arts and Ideas in the air, under the tent, and around Baltimore.
0:06 This is your daily podcast of all the events going on around Arts and Ideas.
0:13 Right now as I look out, I see a gaggle of young kids on the mulch pile jumping and hopping
0:19 around.
0:20 Love that mulch pile.
0:22 The weather is a little bit brisk, but otherwise enjoyable here under the tent.
0:27 It's sunny at the moment, which certainly helps.
0:31 We're looking forward to a nice brisk October, and we'll see how all that goes.
0:39 Today we had mandatory announcements, and just a quick recap of that.
0:43 We will be having a 12 to 15 year old check-in meeting on Wednesday at noon, so if you are
0:50 in that age range, please plan on attending.
0:55 If you're just slightly younger than 12, we recommend you come to that.
0:59 I will try to go around and ask those students about that.
1:07 We have two visiting students this week.
1:10 One is a five year old and one is a nine year old, and they seem to be enjoying the great
1:15 outdoors along with us.
1:20 We have an article club, which is on Friday going to discuss a couple of videos on environmental
1:29 stuff.
1:30 One is from Kirkesat, and the other is from Mad Blender.
1:35 So I just watched those two videos.
1:37 It's really nice at 2x speed, pretty quick.
1:41 So it could be an enjoyable discussion.
1:47 And then there's the history class that today was discussing about the rubber luxury that
1:59 was on Wednesday.
2:01 And then this coming Wednesday will be on the American West, cowboys, Indians, miners,
2:08 robin barons, unions, and bikes.
2:12 Let's see, all right.
2:18 There might also be a mention of someone named Myles Kug, and definitely Big Bill Haywood.
2:26 Looking forward to it.
2:28 All right, let's see what else.
2:34 We have, yeah, it was announced that we do have a TV that's available under the tent.
2:42 And so far no one's used it, so that makes me very happy.
2:48 There's also, we have plans to do some outdoor camera watching of some wildlife, maybe caterpillars,
2:57 maybe spiders.
2:59 It's exciting.
3:00 All righty, so that's the I think goings ons.
3:05 I feel like the Gaga Pit wasn't used very much today, which makes me very sad.
3:10 But hopefully tomorrow the ball playing will return.
3:14 We shall see.
3:15 All right.
3:16 It's Millions Monday, so I thought let's investigate virus reproduction, because we've got a pandemic
3:25 going on right now.
3:26 So let's say that, you know, a virus gets into a cell and it generates lots of copies
3:34 of itself using the innards of the cell, very sad for the cell.
3:38 Let's say 10,000 viruses get reproduced in a cell and that 90% of them get killed by
3:44 the body, leaving about a thousand to find new cells to infect and reproduce themselves.
3:53 Doesn't sound so bad initially, right?
3:56 Let's say it takes a day for a viral invader to reproduce itself fully in the cell up to
4:03 10,000.
4:04 Now these are just numbers I made up, although I did look it up and 50,000 for a burst size
4:15 was actually mentioned.
4:16 So maybe that's not so bad.
4:18 I don't know about the kill rate, although we'll see that it has to be much higher because,
4:22 well, we'll get to that in a moment.
4:25 So let's say that starting with just one viral element coming into the cell, that we have,
4:39 you know, how many do we get each day?
4:41 Well, so after one day we get a thousand basically new cells infected, right?
4:50 That's the basic assumption.
4:52 Now each of those 1,000 cells, infected cells generates another thousand.
4:59 So that's a thousand times a thousand or a million for the third day.
5:05 And then each of those million generates another thousand.
5:10 So that's multiply that by a thousand, you get a billion.
5:12 So that's the fourth day.
5:13 Fifth day, again, you multiply by a thousand, you get a trillion.
5:18 And then there's the sixth day, which is one quadrillion.
5:22 Now at this point you're dead because the number of cells in a human body is something
5:31 on the order of 10 to 50 trillion.
5:37 So yeah, they're all consumed at this point.
5:39 Now, of course, this generally means that our immune system must be getting better and
5:45 better at killing these little viral guys and rapidly so.
5:49 And you can play with that.
5:50 You can say, okay, maybe the first day, you know, the first 1,000, none of them get killed.
5:57 So maybe even it's like 10,000.
5:59 And then the body gets wise and it's like, okay, we're doing something.
6:02 And maybe they kill 50% of them all.
6:05 And then maybe it gets up to 80, 90%, 95%, 99%, 99.999%.
6:14 So until it's basically all gone and, you know, it's like wiping them out continually.
6:20 All righty.
6:23 So that's your Millions Monday.
6:28 Basically be thankful for your immune system.
6:30 It does a heck of a job because the reproductive power of an unrelenting virus is not pretty
6:37 to behold.
6:38 All right.
6:39 Incidentally, if it's a bacterial infection, it reproduces far fewer of them because bacteria
6:45 are far larger than viruses.
6:49 But bacteria are also much more robust from being killed.
6:51 So there you go.
6:53 So whether you want to be reincarnated as a virus or bacteria, tough to say, tough to
6:58 say.
6:59 I'll just stick with being human.
7:01 All right.
7:02 Have a good day and talk to you all later.