The Beautiful Elegance of Viruses and How It has Impacted Me

Medium Article- The Beautiful Elegance of Viruses and How It has Impacted Me- ABHINAV SINGH

Walking into fall quarter, I signed up for Humans and Viruses, a class that I took so that I could learn as much as possible about the way that viruses can impact our daily life. The first few sessions of the class left me in awe of the ways viruses function and how they are able to deceive the immune system in a variety of ways. I was mystified by the beautiful, destructive elegance embedded within the viruses. They are economical yet small, highly efficient yet are classified as the smallest organisms to inhabit the Earth. They are able to pack a tremendously complicated genome inside such a small, compact frame to enable ease of replication inside the nuclei of host cells. They have adopted ways of stealing the host cells machinery to initiate replication. From the use of 5’ Vpg proteins to capping the genome to initiate ribosomal binding, viruses seem to have a solution to every problem cells throw at us. What astonished me most about viruses and what became a personal issue for me was the way viruses are able to evade the immune system. Pox is able to deregulate MHC expression and HIV is able to infect CD4 cells and avoid immune detection. Meanwhile, Parvovirus is able to remain latent inside the host cell genome and only becomes activated when the person is immunocompromised, leaving them vulnerable to infection. All of these solutions viruses employ have taught me begrudging respect for their capabilities and to take prevention and vaccination very seriously.

When I was a freshman entering Stanford, I was warned of the possibility of acquiring viruses since people from all over the country were entering a similar dorm space, which would make transmission through respiratory and direct contact means a viable possibility. I did not pay much respect to this advice, and I suffered severe consequences. Initially, I saw that almost everyone in my dorm was getting sick. However, this was not happening to me, and I felt that I was extra immuno-protected relative to the rest of the students. Boy was I wrong. Around mid-October, I woke up with a horribly sore throat. A few days later, I started developing severe congestion and headaches. I was feverish. However, I naively thought this was a routine cold and felt that it would simply go away on its own. I took drugs that would help me relieve symptomatic effects. For instance, I would take tylenol and dayquil to clear up my nose and make my throat pain less intense. This helped me get through my classes and do my homework on a daily basis. However, I was concerned that this problem wasn’t going away. Much to my bain, everyone in my dorm was getting healthier while it seemed that my symptoms were stalling. I had never had a sickness this long before. Everything else I encountered seem to go away on its own within a week. After two weeks passed, I considered visiting the doctor. However, I remained in denial and told myself, “Tomorrow I’m going to wake up okay.” Eventually, a few days before Halloween, I visited the doctor and they took a sample from my throat. A few days later, I was told that I had a viral infection (although I am not sure what I had specifically).  They gave me an antiviral medication and after about 2 days, I started to wake up and immediately felt better. Although I was relieved about my sickness being better, part of me felt frustrated. How could I have allowed this sickness to progress to this stage? If I had acted after a few days or even a week, I could have saved myself weeks of frustration and pain which I dealt with for no reason. 

Taking humans and viruses helped me understand the context of this illness that I had freshman year. Symptomatic treatments are not the way to rid yourself of viral diseases and neither are antibacterial medications. Antiviral treatments saved the rest of the quarter for me and allowed me to proceed with my education at Stanford.  Surprisingly, however, this was the most severe sickness I have ever encountered, a sign that bodes well. Another interesting contextualization I developed from humans and viruses was when I encountered a specific interaction with my cousin. I remember a few years ago, my cousin told me that he was scared that he had an STD. When I asked what his symptoms were and what he thought it was, he told me thought he had herpes. I was terrified for him, as herpes has no treatment or vaccine as of yet. He told me he had these bumps on his genetalia, and at the time I thought that was a sign of herpes. When he went to the doctor, he was told that he had molluscom contagiosum. I did not know what that was at the time, but now I am able to understand exactly what happened. He acquired the disease from sexual contact and received a virally transmitted disease. He had nonerythematous papular clinical presentation, a sign of clear molluscom. The bumps he had were not red and were not aggressive enough to be classified as herpes. Back then, however, I thought that any bumps were a sign of herpes. What a fool I was!

Word Count: 901