This is a bonus video on top of my usual schedule and it's a little different to what I normally make. But don't worry, I'm not turning into a kids' channel! Normal service will resume on my next video. Let me know if you use this video to explain viruses to your kids. Did it work? What age do you think it's appropriate for (I'm not good at judging these things)? Get my books here: stevemould.com/books

@jayl9110

4 жыл бұрын

... a bunus video? Have I missed something?

@SteveMould

4 жыл бұрын

@@jayl9110 probably not! I put videos out every other Thursday (mostly). There was one last will and there will be one next week!

@crasschrisj

4 жыл бұрын

@@SteveMould More bunus videos please.

@crasschrisj

4 жыл бұрын

@Lochness Monsta Oh I have. I am assuming bunus is a portmanteau word created from bunged and...eh...never mind.

@jayl9110

4 жыл бұрын

@@SteveMould well if it makes you feel any better I just showed this to my 4yo daughter who demanded to watch it three times to make sure she understood

Showed this to my 9-year-old niece and she understood it just fine. Great video, Steve. You really have a talent to make things understandable. A true teacher.

@boxinabox6608

Жыл бұрын

I showed this to Boris Johnston and he understood perfectly

I think some "older children" could do with watching this too.

@chrisray4748

4 жыл бұрын

Came here just to comment this. I'll be using this on some stubborn adults.

@VulpeculaJoy

4 жыл бұрын

You mean some 73 years old child with orange skin and a weird hair piece?

@MrWesford

4 жыл бұрын

BaronZ You mean the best president of our lifetimes?

@Nite-owl

4 жыл бұрын

@@MrWesford Mustn't have had a long lifetime. At 3 years old you shouldn't be on the internet really.

@mr2octavio

4 жыл бұрын

Non growing children you say?

Steve did a phenomenal job in making concise and straightforward explanations

@Ivan_1791

4 жыл бұрын

Bruh, buy KZread already. xD

@elenaobradovic4181

4 жыл бұрын

Seriously, how many channels do you watch?

@juanjosegonzalez6693

4 жыл бұрын

Hongo chungo

@Lattamonsteri

4 жыл бұрын

But he didn't explain why viruses are bad, did he? :S

@Kaiwala

4 жыл бұрын

Sir, with respect, shoo.

"There's this curly whirly thing" Ah yes, a fellow intellectual

@kaibroeking9968

3 жыл бұрын

or, conversely, The Doctor.

@terranova1330

3 жыл бұрын

Ah, The Negotiator

@KhaosDCrab

3 жыл бұрын

Dont forget "Funny sticky out wobbly bits"

The funny thing about "hongos chungos" is that "chungos" is very informal and a little bit "outdated" like something my father would say in the 80s. It means something like "badass" but family friendly lol (also, it can be used as a bad thing like "sketchy"). It rhymes with hongo too, which is always a nice touch. Nice explanation btw, man! PS Saludos desde España :D

@uvbe

4 жыл бұрын

I've never seen it used with the "badass" meaning. I looked it up on the RAE it doesn't mention that meaning either. Where are you from? It could be a regional thing

@adamandracheloconnor2920

4 жыл бұрын

I read Hongos Chungos in your comment at the exact same time he said it in the video.

@MisterNohbdy

4 жыл бұрын

@@uvbe Yeah, Spanish slang varies tremendously between regions. It's pretty jarring sometimes to hear people speak a language I think I understand fairly well and find that half a sentence is nigh-unintelligible to me.

@MrV705

4 жыл бұрын

@@uvbe I'm from Madrid, and the "badass" meaning of the word at least here (like 30/40 years ago) was not necessary "cool" but rather... Try to imagine a bully at highschool, that *kind* of "badass", not the "this weapon is pretty badass!", i really hope it makes sense XD. It's a colloquialism basically so maybe this kind of use is just limited to Madrid... who knows! :/

@MrV705

4 жыл бұрын

@@MisterNohbdy Oh you wouldn't imagine how many times I've said something common in my "comunidad" just to realize that the person I'm talking to doesn't understand the idiom I'm using. Although the country is rather small compared to, idk, the states, the culture has evolved differently, and the way of pronouncing something or referring to something can vary widely. I mean, we even have like 4 languages apart from "spanish"...

1:46 Seeing very accurate simulations of our biological machinery is freaky, moving like individual organisms but are really just moved by entropy.

@satyris410

4 жыл бұрын

I thought that was pretty unnerving as well, hopefully it's not too disturbing for kids to watch. Maybe it's just because we're aware it's happening in every cell of our bodies

@dandanthedandan7558

4 жыл бұрын

Entropy is a pain to study. Regards, biotech student

In an alternate universe he's explaining kids to viruses

@sk8rdman

4 жыл бұрын

"You see, all of those big round things you've been trying to stick your curly whirly things in are called cells. In fact, trillions of those cells make up something called a kid."

@ronwesilen4536

3 жыл бұрын

They are food.

@jonathanberry9502

3 жыл бұрын

@@ronwesilen4536 And if you don't kill them, they will become bigger food, and make other food units.

@avani_tak

3 жыл бұрын

@@sk8rdman damnn!!

Just a heads up, there is a bit of a high pitch fluctuating noise in the background of the video. It seems to start at around 5:15, and ends at about 6:25.

@1.4142

4 жыл бұрын

tom scott did a video about high pitched noises

@photonicpizza1466

4 жыл бұрын

@@1.4142 This is probably unrelated to it, however. There aren't any CRTs around Steve, and even if, this sound isn't consistent with a CRT, it's not constant and it's at a wrong frequency. It's also only in one audio channel, it seems.

@RubixB0y

4 жыл бұрын

@@photonicpizza1466 I agree it's not from a CRT, but it is most definitely in both audio channels. Edit: Might be some sort of audio compression/filter artifact. Could be in the rendering or on KZread's end. Pure speculation.

@Roomsaver

4 жыл бұрын

Not that high pitched, it's more of a buzzing imo. I could hear it on my phone's speakers and they're pretty bad

@Tomartyr

4 жыл бұрын

Who else went back and made sure they weren't too old to hear it?

"It's a bit like buying a 3D printer and then using it to print another 3D printer." *RepRap Mendel intensifies

I’m 16 in high school just took bio learned this last semester and you filled in a few gaps I had

Nice video, but I was disappointed by the fact there was only one costume change

Im 20 and not a single teacher has ever attmepted to show me in any way the actual size difference of a cell to a virus, and he did it with ease, and leagues better than anyone else, this man is just amazing

I think that's a great explanation! I think a good follow-up would be "how our bodies fight the virus"

This is exactly the kind of lighthearted enthusiasm that I am going to express if I ever end up writing a college physics book - there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to have that annoying super-serious and super-formal tone that is all too common in college-level course books. The author David Morin has already demonstrated in his book "Introduction To Classical Mechanics" that you _can_ write a college-level science book while at the same time having that enthusiastic, innocent childlike spirit that you usually find in science books for kids - it is something that is possible to do. I even _had_ that particular David Morin book in one of my "Mechanics 2" courses a couple years ago for the parts about the Lagrangian Method and various concepts about space mechanics, and it was just as rigorously correct as any other of those "serious" and "formal" science books while actually being charming and inviting at the same time.

"It's a bit like buying a 3D printer and then using it to print another 3D printer." Imagine having to teach cell division to kids when 3D printers were not around. That's actually not that long ago.

@Roxor128

3 жыл бұрын

Fifty years ago you could have phrased it as "like building a factory and using it to build another factory". Though the analogy does break down in that whether using a factory or a 3D printer, you're using it to make _parts_ that get assembled into a copy of the original.

1:35 what a cool hoodie transition 😛

This is stellar content, thank you so much! I'll show this to my kids and help them translate the difficult bits.

Heck, I think I might use it to explain to my roommate 🤔

describing it as a factory made me think of those little dudes from fraggle rock - just keep churning stuff out, day in and day out

This guy MOULDs science in easy way possible

A fine description but a minor disagreement about transmission - I think fomites are probably a relatively small contributor to overall community spread and that long lived, few micron aerosols, despite how much they're being downplayed by certain groups who think it's all large droplet driven for some inexplicable reason, are probably the major player.

Great video, thank you for putting the effort in to teach the next generation of scientists, doctors, nurses (and youtube stem ambassadors!)

Hearing you say “hongos chungos” made my day :) it is funny in spanish, I’d say that chungos is a childish way to say crooked.

That was a really good explanation ! Thank you !

Really nice explanation. The only thing missing is working in why our cells can mistake RNA for DNA, which they don't do. Some simple explanation similar to how "librarian" or "teacher" machines in our cells read a portion of the DNA and take notes of specific instructions in the form of RNA. These RNA pieces are then picked up by the "worker" machines who then follow the instructions. The virus RNA is picked up by "worker" machines who act on these instructions as if they came from the "librarian" or "teacher" machines. Adapt the analogy to fit. ;-) (Hopefully I'm close to right. I'm no molecular biologist so this is based on my limited understanding of having read things that are way over my head...)

loved this this was very helpful , love everything you do

What an excellent video. Thank you Steve!

I could be a virologist and still want to watch Steve explain viruses

Dude.. this is epic! Sending to my kids now!

those animations are really great

3:49 Good job little camera. Nice focus pull.

@dfgaJK

4 жыл бұрын

Hold-on. On closer inspection, that wasn't fully automatic. There was a focus point selection in-play.

I enjoyed this but it could use updating as aerosol contamination of air spaces has been found to be primary for spread.

Brilliant Steve. Hope you keep going till my kid is old enough to benefit from your great ability to communicate and teach.

Congratulations for your very instructive and good videos !

Great video Steve!

What about the movie "Osmosis Jones"? That was/is also a kid-friendly movie about a virus. Also had them coppers and all...

Nice simple explanation. I think I understood it. Thanks.

Hello Steve Mould, This is great, But it needs up dating regarding transmission segment. I think it is probably a very important update to make. thank you for your work

Very good and down to earth for even a child to understand as well as a adults...

those protein-protein interaction videos are top grade. thanks

1:35 Steve gets cold.

When you say "available in lots of languages" ... where is it available and in what languages ?

@SteveMould

4 жыл бұрын

They all have different names but if you search for Steve Mould at your local online bookshop it should show you what's available!

@Ovni121

4 жыл бұрын

I can't find any French version in local or bigger book store for Canada. Looked at Renaud Bray, Archambault, local bookstore and Amazon (ca, fr, com)

@SteveMould

4 жыл бұрын

@@Ovni121 :( I'll check with my publisher. I thought at least one of them was in French but maybe not!

@AtomicKitty31

4 жыл бұрын

No French version either to be found on French online bookstores :(

@uvbe

4 жыл бұрын

@@SteveMould Anywhere in the world or only US/Canada?

Well, I just found this video and I showed it to my 8 year old, and he seemed to grasp it, so well done.

Thanks, I am going to be teaching a course on the science of coronavirus to 5-9 graders. This was a lot of help.

THERES POISON DUST FLOATING AROUND

Literally nailed it....loved it...thank you....

@satyris410

4 жыл бұрын

Figuratively nailed it! But yes

You did a great job of explaining. I do have a question with regard to the manner in which we discuss cells in general. Often we explain things in a manner such as 'the virus is looking for a host so it can reproduce', which is inherently wrong. Cells don't seek nutrients, they don't build new stands of DNA, they don't have the capacity to actively engage in tasks while ignoring everything else. My point being, we talk of cells as though they are mindful of what they are doing, which they are not. Cells act according to the atoms and the chemistry that surround them. In fact I would argue I'm wrong in simply saying 'Cells act.' The DNA and RNA are simply a string of atoms in a sequence that when 'read' results in different functions; whether that be the reproduction of the virus/shell or the development of veins in an embryo. Perhaps the simplest way I can think to explain my....thought, is with a different topic. Sperm cells are often described as 'swimming' towards an egg. They don't actively seek to swim towards eggs, rather they flagellate up/down a gradient of chemicals released by the egg. If those chemicals are not present then the flagella simply flails until the atoms necessary for flailing depletes. It's all just reactions. Biology is a convenient way to explain chemistry.

@DembaiVT

2 жыл бұрын

As an English major: whole it's good to be mindful that this happens without intent, the use of metaphor is important when explaining things To people who lack the vocabulary to understand what you just went into. Metaphorically, viruses seek out cells. Slightly less metaphorically, they follow a set of instructions that is built into their structure. Even less metaphorically, the virus just so happens to be compatible with human cell walls, and will infect them if they happen to come in contact. Literally though, there is a lot of complex words, chemistry, and long chains of protein markers that have very precise functions (that someone with a chemistry back ground could fully label) But when you speak to a layman, if you jump right to the literal, you lose your audience. Humanizing the virus makes it easier to relate to, and therefore, raiser to understand.

Really great. I'll be showing this to my daughter

Another perfect video with a great great explanation. LLLLLIIIIIKKKKKEEEEE

Here before this is marked for children and you cant comment anymore, dude, Steve you're amazing.

Wow, that was very good. Would you think a similar video on the immune response would be interesting?

I have always thought that things should be explained in as simple terms as possible, assuming of course that it doesn't significantly harm the overall quality of the explanation. The super-formal super-serious stuff should be reserved for science books where extreme accuracy is very important for various reasons - and even there it is quite common to idealise things, just to make things more manageable.

@satyris410

4 жыл бұрын

I agree with you that science should be accessible to everyone, including introducing the basics as clearly as possible

@VulpeculaJoy

4 жыл бұрын

Well this is what Steve Mold, Matt Parker and all the other science communicators are doing. They know the scientific aspect and repackage it into easily digestable bits of videos/talks/articles for the average simps. But throughout my school life I always noticed (after doing my own research or asking too much) that at some point, too much simplification actually skips over some vital parts or changes some aspects that it actually removes itself from reality and gives a totally wrong impression. Turning a cow into a point at it's center of gravity with 0 volume, but a certain mass only works in the context of the model that you're trying to use. (just a quick example)

Could you also explain why injecting or swallowing disinfectant wouldn't work against the virus and why it would be harmful to try, you know, "for kids".

@jonathanberry9502

3 жыл бұрын

Depends on the "disinfectant". There are many things that can kill viruses, if I were to make a list, it would be huge, but let me just mention the one I accidentally split i my kitchen today, BHT Butyl-Hydroxy-Toluene. it can kill viruses but doesn't harm human cells. There are so many others, and yes they can decimate a viral infection rapidly knocking it out. but they are cheap and not patented medicine so thy can't be used to cure the pandemic because of greed.

@michaelmacdonald329

3 жыл бұрын

The chemical found is fish tank cleaner is totally different make up than Hydrochlorquine and get this, its isn't hydrochloroquine. He never told anyone to go out and drink a disinfectant you numbskull

@itsv1p3r

5 ай бұрын

Trump never advised swallowing topical disinfectant, he simply asked a question to a medical professional wondering if its possible to internally disinfect oneself. It was a good faith question, its so stupid to then misrepresent this honest question but its clear that you never saw the clip and are too stupid to bother watching it.

This video does a great job at explaining how viruses spread, but not how they harm (or kill) the host.

Excellent explanation thank you

I'm not a kid. But I loved this. Thank you!

Hongos Chungos is a very apt translation for "Funky Fungi". Chungo means something like badass but has a certain connotation that is humorous (in a nefarious way though). But yes, it's hard to explain from someone on the fence of both languages.

Thanks. This helped with my understanding and I'm a 26 year old man...

Yo Steve, do you work near 'The Reach' Climbing center in Woolwich?

This is basically how things should be explained to people in general most of the time. Heck, even _university professors_ should keep it intuitive like this, because their job isn't to recite the entire freaking course book anyway, their job is to give the students a good fundamental "feel" for the material in the book and to explain the big picture, preferably along with a bunch of example problems etc. That's what "Professor Leonard" here on KZread always does with Calculus, and he is a goddamn good maths teacher.

I think this should be updated given the recent developments regarding aerosols vs droplets, as well as the value of masks.

You might want to consider a card or something to update the transmission section.

Let's be real- a big chunk of the views on this video are probably people (like me) who are sufficiently educated in science and just watch all of your content regardless ;) That said, this is really well-explained! I love how you keep everything kid-friendly, but still say things like "the bits that are coloured purple" rather than "the purple bits", which would technically be misleading

5:30 - 6:10 is inaccurate information.

What does it mean to be a carrier but not show symptoms? Does that mean our immune system is stronger? Or does it mean we don't have that much of the virus in our system yet? Or do certain people's bodies just react differently?

hongos chungos - hongos is fungi, chungo is a colloquial adjective that means dodgy, cheap, crappy, but can also mean 'sick'

Hey Steve great video! But I've always wondered what is the mechanism that makes you cough, or poo alot? They're so small but how do they make you do such big things?

@DembaiVT

2 жыл бұрын

Inflammation. Your body has the built in reflexes to get rid of irritants, either by flushing your intestines or stomach or lacking you cough or sneeze. This is triggered by inflammation, because your cells are stressed and harmed by being forced to "print" viruses. This triggers a response which then makes you try and eject the irritant.

HI STEVE ! I AM YOUR NEW SUBSCRIBER !

Great video. Any chance or revisiting how coronavirus is transmitted? More recent research suggests that the surface transmission route (fomites) was over estimated and the possibility of airborne (aerosol) transmission greatly underestimated.

Great teaching...

"I'm not growing anymore because I'm an adult." I wish my waistline had gotten that memo.

Take a shot (with the family of course) everytime Steve says curly-wurly

@VulpeculaJoy

4 жыл бұрын

Yes, a vaccine shot. (jokes on all the anti-vaxxers out there in these times)

@jaypaans3471

4 жыл бұрын

Sure, let me get my revolver...

@jaypaans3471

4 жыл бұрын

@@VulpeculaJoy your pun/answer deserves a thumbs-up. But your comment against anti-vaccers does not get one from me. Because (with all do respect for people in ICU and such) some people actually have a good immunity and can fight off the virus surprisingly well. Deserves mentioning.

Hey this is how computer viruses work too. They find random programs your computer is running and then put there own code in saying to find another random program and put its code into that lol

I feel like you didn't really explain why viruses make you sick and how you get better. Maybe a follow up could be useful.

4 жыл бұрын

Exactly what I noticed. He explained how viruses spread, but not actually why they are dangerous, what they do to you.

great explanation

Cell: how to divide? DNR: RTFM

Fomite transmission actually hasn't been clinically confirmed for COVID19... Its thought the majority of cases are actually person to person transfer... Other than that, good video...

I think you left out one imprortant bit: The virus attack on your body itself is not that bad and often goes unnoticed. Your immune system has a bunch of cells that kill / eat infected cells and others that clump up the virus particles so they can't spread so fast and can't infect anything. When a lot of cells die in one spot they cause inflammation in the lungs making it hard to breathe when the pneumonia becomes too servere. All this action of your body fighting the virus depletes and thus weakens your immune system's readiness to fight other threats and that makes it possible for, under normal circumstances, less harmful pathogens like bacteria to abuse that hole in your natural defense mechanism to then overwhelm the body and be the actual cause of death. That is why e.g. older people with a less healthy immune system or more pre-existing conditions are much more likely to suffer more and/or die and we have to protect them especially.

Someone may have already asked, but it would be cool if you could explain the difference between how a regular vaccine works vs. the RNA vaccine. Thank you.

you are the best man thanks

This does a really good job of explaining how viruses spread, but not really how this process also makes you sick once you do catch it.

@DembaiVT

2 жыл бұрын

Okay so we have a cell and it has a virus in it. That cell has too much stuff in it now. But for some reason it doesn't have enough stuff in it to split. And so it gets large and crushes cells next to it. As more and more the virus reproduces, more and more of your lung cells end up crushing the cells next to them as well as being uncomfortably large for their own purpose. Also the virus is preventing new lung cells from being built. Cells are designed to gather enough material to split and then split. if they aren't being permitted to do so and they aren't gathering enough material to do so... Eventually they die. So you end up with big cells that are off size and hurting other cells, you have cells that are dying because the virus has overwhelmed their resources, and this continues to get worse and worse and worse until your lungs are compromised. On top of that when your body recognizes inflammation it tends to produce either mucus, coughing, sneezing. ( if it's in your stomach it may make you throw up or have diarrhea) And if it can't get rid of the problem it does it even more. Your body only has a few ways of dealing with stuff, and if it means that you drown in your own mucus so be it. The reason why a steroid treatment can work at least temporarily is that you are literally turning off your body's ability to deal with the virus which means that you won't drown in your own mucus... But with it comes a price, up to and including lifelong pain, an inability to have full immune response, and abnormal heartbeat to name a few.

I'm 25 years old and never realised viruses were actually the "resources" for the cells, and not just things that somehow simply "change" a cell to cause it to create copies of the virus.

Oh man, Steve, great video but that audio artifact, buzzing is pretty bad around 5:50

"Hongos chungos" could be an euphemisim for drugs, like hallucinogenic mushrooms. It translates to nasty fungi. Also, "chungo" in general is an informal way to say nasty, so kids could find it funny on its own.

This was a good explanation of how viruses replicate and spread, but there was no mention of exactly how viruses affect us negatively. Replicating by itself doesn't hurt us. It's the filling of our cells with duplicates, changing the cell membrane, and causing premature cell death which is doing the damage.

So if the RNA from a virus is the instruction set to replicate the virus, how does that instruction set itself get replicated? In other words if the virus is like a car which contains instructions on how to build the car from scratch, are part of the instructions to include a new set of instructions in the new car? Also how many times can each cell replicate a virus, is it only once?

Bit curious that you made the claim that scientists think fomite transmission is one of the most common transmission routes, given that it is the exact opposite of the truth and many studies have shown that fomite transmission seems to be near zero. Also, the example would have been better talking about breathing the droplets into the nose rather than mouth as it is primarily mucousal cells which are believed to be the most common route of entry due to the way they present ACE-2 receptors that provide the entry point. You did an AMAZING job explaining all of this video without indicating that viruses were living things, or overly attributing intent to the particles, bravo! Overall a great video, and I can excuse the fomite thing because you did use it to reinforce good practices that are harder to justify in a common-sense way when only talking about the aerosol routes of transmission!

Bonnes explications

One thing I've never quite understood is people always talking about virus _concentrations._ Like, you need a certain amount of the virus to get sick. Why is that? From all the explanations I've heard, even just a single particle containing the virus should be enough to infect you, and I don't understand why that isn't the case. It's not like the virus just doesn't come into contact with your cells, is it? That single particle is bumping around in your airways, so I would think that it's guaranteed to bump into one of your cells on the way. And once a single cell is infected, it should infect the others as well. So, why is it that you need a certain amount of the virus to actually become sick?

So the virus literally merges with the cell instead of like getting inside and then releasing its dna?

@kanecobe

4 жыл бұрын

Some fuse directly as shown in the video but its thought that Sars-Cov-2 (coronavirus) mostly undergoes "endocytosis" which is the entire virus enters the cell and is then engulfed by an organelle known as an endosome (a machine for moving stuff around the cell) which can open and release the RNA/DNA into the cell.

@bradywells1293

4 жыл бұрын

Coronaviruses can enter the cell by two pathways, one where it merges and releases viral RNA directly into the cell, and another -- like Kanecobe mentioned --through endocytosis [google img should show simple models of what this looks like]. Different coronaviruses have different 'preferred' pathways and it's unclear right now how much Sars-CoV-2 uses one pathway vs the other. I think this family of virus typically utilize both pathways to some extent. This is actually really important because the mechanism of the potential drug treatments only work on one pathway or another. Remdesivir is believed to only prevent direct merging of viral particles and cell membrane, while hydroxychloroquine would affect the endocytosis pathway (the drug affects the pH inside the endosome iirc). How well these drugs work to fight Sars-CoV-2 specifically is still to be determined.

Great video thanks, maybe a follow up video about vaccines is in order :)

steve: hongos chungus me: big chungus!!

chungos coud be translated as badass, more or less hahaha, is a word more used years ago but still used, nice video :)

I dont know how exactly but this type of education should always take care to ensure that children find a balance of worry and not. A few different people that I know developed germophobia due to powder/blacklight germ demonstrations at too young of an age. edit: /watch?v=I5-dI74zxPg&feature=emb_logo this type of thing

Thought it could be useful for my parents But sadly they dont understand English

@Just_Sara

4 жыл бұрын

Maybe you can translate for them??

@reineh3477

3 жыл бұрын

Click on the wheel, -> subtitles -> translate -> pick a language Google will translate it to almost any language you want

Hey Steve, I've noticed that thia video isn't marked as for kids, but is clearly made for kids. Given KZread's recent policy change, do you think this is potentially dangerous?

There is a wolf in your grandma's house. Do not visit her, little Johny.

Shared, and also asked some spanish language speakers to tell me what they think!

"chungo" (adj.) is a funny word in spanish to say "dangerous" or "bad". Yet it may have many other meanings.