Sun may be behind our wicked weatherIn July about 70 award-winning San Diego County journalists – including 24 from the Southwestern College Sun – became dreadfully ill after a Society of Professional Journalists award banquet at the Bali Hai Restaurant. For the next 2-10 days some of San Diego County’s finest journalists had diarrhea, muscular fatigue and severe vomiting. They had been exposed to human norovirus (HuNoV).

San Diego was the center of norovirus notariety barely three months earlier when two Royal Caribbean cruise ships pulled into port full of infected passengers who contracted the illness in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. An airborne pathogen, norovirus can glide through the sky and live in water for two months or more.

We may never know what caused the outbreak at the SPJ banquet. Perhaps someone carrying the virus failed to completely clean their hands or maybe the particles blew in from somewhere else, landed and wreaked havoc. San Diego County’s Health Division did not publicly identify a patient zero. There might not have been one.

Norovirus can travel remarkable distances, drop in and make a lot of folks really sick. Norovirus has much in common with gliding neotropical canopy spiders. Above the treetops of the jungles in Panama and Chile, researchers heaved those flat, ugly spiders into the air to study the origins of animal flight. Apparently the spiders are natural skydivers which use aerial reflex and perfect body positioning to grant them control during aerial descent (glides).

HuNoV particles are also great gliders, which is why it is possible to get infected with norovirus without having to be in direct contact with a patient zero. They can literally drop in undetected. Worse, they are highly contagious. People encountering someone who is sick can become ill, too, as several journalism students family members did.

Vomiting can spread the virus, even if the sick person hits the toilet squarely. Researchers from North Carolina State University established that sprays of viral particles mist around the area of the vomiter. If a person is a carrier of norovirus, they will aerolsolize the virus. Once airborne, it will linger in the space. When the bathroom door is opened, the particles can fly right on out.

Scientists from Université Laval took air samples during norovirus outbreaks at eight healthcare facilities in Quebec, Canada. Ranging from 13 to 2,350 HuNoV particles per cubic meter of air, the virus was detectable at one meter away from the patient. It drifted out the facility, flowing to the hallways and nurses stations until it had almost the same concentration of particles as patient rooms.

Bioaerosol of this nature, if inhaled, can bunk out in the back of the throat and subsequently be swallowed. For some human immune systems it only takes 20 norovirus particles to become infected.

A traveling girl’s soccer team from King’s County, Washington fell ill in 2010 at a tournament when a grocery bag full of snacks carried the virus. Oregon’s Public Health Division determined that when one of the girls was ill, she threw up in the hotel bathroom. Snacks were left on the bathroom counter. Six team members got sick after they handled the snacks from the grocery bag. Investigators swabbed the bag two weeks after the outbreak and still found traces of norovirus.

Lingering is a notorious ability of viruses, especially in water. Emory University, known for its research training in microbiology and immunology, found that norovirus could survive more than two months in groundwater. Researchers placed a mock version of HuNoV called Norwalk in groundwater collected from a well that met clean EPA standards. For 61 days, 10 of 13 volunteers drank the water in a special research facility and became infected. Emory scientists were surprised the water was still infectious after the 61st day.

Funding did not allow the project to continue testing human infectivity after day 61. Not letting science go to waste, they stored the water in a dark room for 622 days. After 1.7 years, the water was tested and the viral RNA had not diminished. Once more, the water was stored and 1,266 days later, the water showed little change from the last result. More disturbing, this meant norovirus is highly resistant to environmental degradation in clean groundwater.

Sometimes everything changes when little things travel remarkable distances.

Spiders can release a little bit of silk and let the wind take them. While on his historic voyage, Charles Darwin and his crew always wondered how spiders kept showing up in the ocean. Maybe norovirus was there, too.