Dr.
brought back old articles about whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus actually exists. After checking them out, I decided to relate the size of a “COVID” (SARS-CoV-2 virion) to the thickness of a dime. A dime has a thickness that is 1.35 millimeters (mm):
When converted into microns (micrometers), the thickness of a dime is 1,350 microns. Each single micron is worth 1,000 nanometers (nm). Here is an electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virions:
The hair-like structures are the spikes, and as you go toward the top-right, you are zooming in. The length of the spike is 23 nm — but the whole virion is from 100 nm to 200 nm (0.1 to 0.2 microns). If you stacked COVID virions next to a dime that was laying flat, then you would have to stack 7,000-14,000 to reach the height of the dime.
If you layed spikes down sideways, so that they were only 4 nm tall, you’d need to stack 337,000 of them to reach the height that is represented by the thickness of the dime!
Reference
Source for the image of virions above: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.02.972927v1.full.pdf
If you haven't already consider checking out this biologists work because he's doing some good work on the ties between the names and virology as a whole.
https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2111594956
He worked for CHD for a bit