[dirk digler]

Long article

We Thought It Was Just a Respiratory Virus
We were wrong.

https://www.ucsf.edu/magazine/covid-body

If you’re exposed to SARS-CoV-2 – say, from a cough or sneeze – the virus will likely first encounter ACE2 receptors on cells in your nose or throat. But these receptors also populate your heart, gut, and other organs. Fattahi’s team has found evidence suggesting that male sex hormones such as testosterone may increase the number of ACE2 receptors that cells produce, which could help explain why SARS-CoV-2 seems to wreak greater havoc on men than on women and why kids rarely get sick. “The fewer ACE2 receptors, the less risk of infection – that’s the idea,” she says, adding that this hypothesis for the disease’s gender gap is only one of several.

Once inside a few initial host cells, the virus sets them to work churning out copies of itself. Within hours, thousands of new virus particles begin bursting forth, ready to infect more cells. Although SARS-CoV-2 is less deadly than the original SARS virus, which emerged in 2002, it replicates more rapidly. Also unlike SARS, which primarily infects the lungs, SARS-CoV-2 replicates throughout the airway, including in the nose and throat, making it highly contagious – like the common cold.