Most of us can remember the opening lines of Star Trek: the Old Series,

“Space… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Probably a lot of us use it as a mantra as we wash our hands these days. Anything to help us avoid the strange new bit of life form called a virus that is making its way around the globe.

I must admit, I’ve been giving it some thought as I scrub up after a rare trip outside the house. I’ve also been flashing the Vulcan salute to others as I pass (not too close) by. It’s strange how one small infectious agent can change entire cultures. (And, how many Star Trek ideas are wrapped up in some cultures.)

So, in the spirit of the Enterprise and its many-year mission of exploration, though, I’ve been thinking about this virus a lot lately. Last week I posted about home-bound observing, which I hope some of you are able to do. Today, I want to talk about encountering new life forms (or bits of them).

The Virus Itself

First off, there’s debate about whether COVID-19 (which stands for “Coronavirus Disease 2019”, the disease we’re all facing) actually IS caused by a life form. The actual virus doing the damage is called SARS-CoV-2, which is short for “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2”.

Strictly speaking, a virus is a form of DNA or RNA. And, the material that is behind the COVID-19 epidemic is a virus. But, like any other virus, it can’t exactly replicate itself the way life does. For a virus to be a success at what it does, it has to invade a living being. It needs a host.

Once it finds one, it gets inside a cell of a being’s body and takes over the mechanical bits of cells. Then, they use the cellular machinery to make copies of themselves. In other words, they hijack cells in order to find a way to replicate. When they find a cellular Garden of Eden, viruses replicate with a vengeance. As we’re finding out with the COVID-19 outbreak; the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes it is a hardy and opportunistic traveler.

In the sense that it can’t reproduce itself without sponging off another living being, the virus isn’t strictly alive. But, it IS part of the stew of life on this planet. It might NOT be alive on its own, but it sure can wrack up damage inside of things that are alive. The trick to understanding its spread is this: A virus can’t do anything until a host ingests it, picks it up, or somehow gets it inside the body.

So, we can dance on the head of a pin all day and debate about whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus is alive. That’s not the point. The point is, it’s like a hitchhiker or a bad political idea. It hops aboard and goes along for the ride, replicating as it goes. And, the more hosts it gets, the more it replicates. Ad nauseum (perhaps literally). And, it’s not benign. It makes people sick. Some of them get very sick. And some die.

Don’t Cry for Me, Quarantina

The trick to defeating this quiet, deadly little piece of DNA/RNA is to deny it the ride. Hence, the quarantine. And, all the stay-at-home orders percolating around the world. Some countries (like China) figured this out pretty quickly and shut down everything as soon as they could. Other countries… (ahem)… did not. And, thus, we see the spread of the virus by people who have traveled freely, went on spring break, and in some places, continue to have personal contact with people who are infected, and so on.

Some folks figure it’s okay if they get sick—they assume they can handle it. That’s fine for them. However, the illness the virus causes takes a while to manifest itself. During the time it’s busily replicating inside a person’s body, the hosts are out there. They’re busily helping the virus infect others who may NOT be able to handle it.

That’s the basic gist of how the virus travels around. It’s an opportunistic freeloader just waiting for someone to give it a ride. If people stop taking it around to parties, stores, and so on, then the virus can’t keep doing what it’s doing: making people sick, and some of them die.

And, that’s why we are urged to stay inside, avoid other people, do social distancing. In effect, we ALL need to inhabit the land of Quarantina in an effort to keep the virus from claim-jumping from one victim to the next. The fact that many of us are now working from home, and avoiding crowd situations will help the effort. That’s really all there is to it.

So, we may be asked (urged, ordered, pleaded, begged with) to stay in, it’s for a good cause. As our state governor put it yesterday, it’s should be a labor of love to care for others enough to stay home and not spread the virus to anyone else. This is true whether we have it, or we simply pick it up from a dirty door handle (or some other form of contact) and help the virus get a ride somewhere else.

New Worlds and New Life

There are, as we know, many other worlds out there beyond our own. And, on at least some of them, there is life. There might even be viruses. One thing that used to amuse me about Star Trek (in all its forms) was the very idea of simply transporting to other worlds’ surfaces. Crew members didn’t always seem overly worried about potentially lethal viruses or bacteria. They just beamed down and did their thing.

Of course, they had red shirts to send down first. But, they also had these biological scans they could do from orbit. Supposedly that would give the crew and away team members some measure of reassurance that they were transporting into a safe environment. So, even in Star Trek, there were forms of distancing, especially if the environment turned out to be less than hospitable. They had to figure out how to visit wearing suits or some other protection.

As astronomers search out new worlds, the questions of the types of life they support will grow. Right now, nobody has seen evidence for intelligent life. But, that’s more a function of where we’ve been able to search and find worlds. Many are not considered as habitable as others. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack, and we’ve got a HUGE haystack to explore.

But, let’s suppose that we do find a planet somewhere nearby that might have life on it. It could be inhabited by bacteria. And, anyplace with the building blocks of life in terms of RNA and DNA, could also support viruses. And, our future Star Trekkers who are out there exploring strange new worlds are going to have to do exactly what we’re doing now on planet Earth: stay safe, stay clean, and not allowing viruses to hitch rides. We all know where those rides end up.