I heard opinion, apparently from WHO, that coronavirus only can live outside body for few short hours. It's completely dependent on quickly jumping from one person to another.
No that's not true - while the coronavirus can remain viable in aerosolized droplets floating in the air for only three hours (which is actually quite a long time when you consider how far an aerosolized particle can travel in that time), as Shadowprophet said it can remain viable on contaminated environmental surfaces (known as fomites) such as doorknobs, railings, and countertops for up to three days:
"A new study by researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Princeton University and UCLA published in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests the coronavirus is still viable in aerosols, when the virus becomes suspended in droplets when someone coughs or sneezes, for up to three hours.
On surfaces such as plastic and stainless steel, the virus survived for up to two to three days. On cardboard the virus was viable up to 24 hours and just up to four hours on copper. The research provides key information about the stability of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, and suggests people could become infected through the air and after touching contaminated objects."
New study finds coronavirus can survive in air for hours, on surfaces for days
Now what I don't understand is, as far as I know, viruses are not living organisms. For example, they have no metabolism, so they can not die, because they don't actually live. From that I would understand that virus can spend days, if not months and years, waiting for unsuspecting victim.
Does anybody know more about this?
It's true that viruses aren't alive - when articles say that a virus can "survive" for a certain period of time under certain conditions, they just mean "remain viable/infectious" for that period of time.
A virus is basically a nanotech machine - the shell (called "a viral capsid") consists of an envelope of organic molecules featuring little protuberances made of a specific receptor. The receptor determines the type of cell that the virus can infect - the viral receptor is like a custom "docking port" for the virus to bind to a specific cell. And when it binds, the change in surface tension opens the viral receptor, permitting the RNA contained within the virus to squirt into the infected cell. The RNA serves as a chemical instruction manual to make copies of the virus, and the internal mechanisms of the cell go about fulfilling those instructions automatically, over and over again, until the cell explodes, releasing multitudes of completed new viruses.
But these little machines are made of organic molecules, which are vulnerable to oxidization like all organic matter, so basically they "rot" in air and water fairly quickly. Some viruses can only survive a short while when exposed to oxygen - HIV for example. But coronaviruses are sturdier - note the stable spherical capsid, so they can live for days on some surfaces, before the oxygen destroys their viability.
That's it. Mortality rate for flue was said to be 1%, which made coronavirus moderately dangerous at 2-3%. Than flue mortality was changed, on the fly, to 0.1%, which made coronavirus an order of magnitude more dangerous overnight.
That was just sloppy reporting early on - most journalists are idiots. Doctors were telling the journalists that the mortality rate for influenza was "under 1%," and lazy journalists just rounded up to 1%.
The real number was always around .1% to .3% - the flu only kills about 1-3 in 1000 people. If it killed 1 in 100 people, then we'd all be a lot more worried about catching the flu, and we'd all know people who died from it.
I keep hearing about warm weather reducing this. I have no idea.
But wouldn't it be deliciously ironic if it did and we could thank global warming for saving us?
That would be ironic. Higher temperatures do slightly reduce the time that the virus remains viable in the environment because higher temperatures accelerate oxidization, which is why we put food in the refrigerator. But 1 or 2 degrees is insignificant. So after we overcome this pandemic, we'll still be facing a global climate change crisis that ultimately poses a far greater threat to human life and civilization.
One of the big problems now is that people are posting total BS statements online without any truthful backup. It is bad enough reading negative posts time after time. I can get information from the main new agencies. I don’t wish to read nonsense that China is starting to get things under control. Common sense would tell you that is completely false.
Kindly refrain from issuing statements unless you are 100% sure of what you are stating.
Ok first of all, "common sense" is and always has been a terrible arbiter of the truth. People used to think that it was "common sense" that rotting logs spontaneously generated snakes, for example, because snake were often seen around rotting wood.
Given the draconian measures taken in China in recent months, it would not surprise me at all if this recent news story is true:
"For a second day in a row, China found no domestically transmitted cases of the virus that emerged in its central province of Hubei late last year, according to new daily figures registered on Thursday."
China's new imported coronavirus cases at record; no domestic transfers for second day
This is the fault of communist China, trying to cover this thing up at first, lying about this thing and not locking down their country sooner...
Global health chief seen as China’s puppet amid coronavirus disaster
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This is definitely China's fault - those disgusting wet markets spawned the first SARS virus, which could easily have been as bad as this virus. So they shut down their wet markets for a brief time, and then allowed them to flourish again. That level of reckless disregard for human life is the legal requirement for a manslaughter conviction in our courts. So China is guilty of thousands of manslaughter charges, which will probably reach the millions before this is over (if it's ever over - this thing could keep mutating year after year for centuries, coming back to reinfect the world again and again).