Can Coronaviruses become first strike weapons?

In a statement released yesterday, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces indicated that the campaign of tests on the sailors of the nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle had revealed that 688 of them were contaminated with the Covid19 virus, more than a third of the crew, even though the ship had systematically isolated symptomatic cases on board as soon as the disease appeared. In other words, and despite the precautions taken on board (if not during the stopover at the port of Brest), the virus had already spread widely in the crew before the number of recognized cases began to increase. , and leads the military authorities to end the deployment of the ship to reach its home port of Toulon. At the same time, we learn that for the US Navy, the epidemic has also struck, in addition to the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt which made headlines last week, the aircraft carriers USS Ronald Reagan and USS Carl Vinson , while the status of the USS Nimitz remains undetermined.

Why is the Convid19 so effective in terms of contagion?

Like all viruses, the primary function of Covid19 and Coronaviruses is not to kill its host, but to replicate, so as to accumulate, over the course of mutations, new genetic characteristics allowing it to infect new carriers, and therefore to "survive" in the sense of the preservation and transmission of this genetic heritage. However, unlike the majority of known viruses, Coronaviruses are designed to have a very high level of contagiousness, far exceeding that of viruses which are nevertheless known to be contagious, such as the flu. Among the known viruses, only Measles seems more contagious than Covid19. To achieve this, coronaviruses rely on their own characteristics:

• they affect the respiratory tract and are therefore easily transmitted in the droplets of saliva expelled by speaking or coughing
• They survive for hours, sometimes days, on certain materials such as metal, plastic, fabrics or hair
• Carriers may be asymptomatic, and the incubation period during which the patient is reportedly contagious is 5 to 14 days long, and may even reach 21 days in some cases.
• Finally, the majority of children under 10 do not show any symptoms even when they are carriers, even though at these ages, they increase physical contact with their parents, and other children nearby.

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