The Coronavirus is SUPER TINY - Why that's Horrible and Awesome at the SAME TIME

 

This coronavirus is SOOOO small, you can't see it. I read that you could fit a million virions on the head of a pin. Also, if you were to take 10,000 virions and stack them all together, they'd equal just about 1 millimeter (I had to figure this out with a calculator, and then I saw the guy in the video below gave the same exact analogy, using a picture of a ruler to boot). 

"So, if we can bind those proteins up with something like an antibody, it'll to prevent them from being able to attach and enter cells." 

Gaaaaaa! Why do we have to try to create "something like" an antibody, when we can actually use the really useful tools mother nature already gave us, to slow down replication, boost our own immunity??

The next part of the video shows a picture of the HIV virus, and the guy in the video says that this technique (of creating something like an antibody), is "Exactly how we've beaten back viruses with similar spiky proteins before."

I need to make a comment, here.  The Coronavirus and HIV are both enveloped viruses with "spikes," but a coronavirus is much easier to kill, because it doesn't "go dormant," like HIV does (I just learned last week, why HIV is harder than other enveloped viruses, to kill).  

For anyone who's not familiar with why HIV is hard to kill (like I wasn't, till a week ago), here's an excerpt from the article "Why is HIV so hard to kill?"  by Roxanne Palmer:

The AIDS virus is also hard to destroy because it tends to infect the very cells designed to destroy it: a kind of white blood cell called a CD4 lymphocyte. These types of cells can be activated to fight pathogens, but can also lie inactive. If infected, these dormant CD4 cells can maintain a hidden reservoir of HIV that can bring the infection roaring back to life even after a successful course of treatment; most drugs can’t touch these reservoirs.