A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them Back

by Bruce Schneier

A SARS-CoV-2 virion is about 80 nanometers wide. It attaches itself to a protein called ACE2, which occurs on the surface of many of our body’s cells: in the heart, gut, lungs, and nasal passages. Normally, ACE2 plays a role in regulating blood pressure, inflammation, and wound healing. But the virus has a tip that can grab it, thereby fusing together the membranes around the cell and the virus, and allowing the virus’s RNA to enter the cell. The virus then subverts the host cell’s protein-making machinery, hijacking the process to make new copies of itself, which go on to infect other cells. Other parts of the virus’s RNA create different proteins that stay in the host cell. One prevents the host cell from sending out signals to the immune system that it’s under attack. Another encourages the host cell to release the newly created virions. And a third helps the virus resist the host cell’s innate immunity. The result is the disease that has dominated our lives since 2020: COVID-19.