How Diseases Evolve
COVID-19 where did it come from and where is it going? To start let’s discuss the history of the virus. SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 is a single-stranded positive-sense RNA virus that is part of a zoonotic Coronaviridae family and is most genetically similar to SARS-CoV-1 (Bahchechi, M.). This means that the virus currently wreaking havoc on the world evolved from a similar variant of a similar disease in a closely related set of diseases. This set of diseases are considered zoonotic which means that they originate first in animals before entering the human population. The genetic material of this virus is RNA, typical cells use DNA as their genetic material. Viruses are a type of pathogen that require hosts to survive and replicate, therefore they are not considered to be alive. But if viruses are not alive, how can they evolve?
