Starting a new blanket project. Not sure how it’ll work out since I’m not following a pattern this time. The subject: viruses. Here’s the foundation of the first square.

Laying out the placement of spikes and label.

Added spike proteins (in red)

Added membrane proteins (in orange) and envelope proteins (in yellow)

Printed a guide to use for adding the virus’s RNA to the square using my favorite name for a product: Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy™. (I keep saying it over and over in my head.)

Rinsing off the Sticky Fabri-Solvy. Also redid the E-proteins and M-proteins because I didn’t like how they came out.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is responsible for 23 million cases and 800 thousand deaths worldwide. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of confirmed cases in the world at 17k per million people.

Working on the influenza square with hemagglutinin (in pink), neuraminidase (in purple), and M1-protein in blue. The lipid bilayer is in dark gray. Still need to add M2-protein and RNA.

Influenza and other causes of pneumonia represent the 8th leading cause of US deaths in non-pandemic years.

Happy with how the glycoproteins (in orange) and the matrix proteins (in pink) are looking, but the capsid (in the center) is getting reworked because it disappears.

HIV has existed in the US since the mid-1970 but may have jumped from chimpanzees to humans as far back as the late 1800s.

SARS-CoV, the virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, probably originated in bats.

Only two people in the U.S. have ever tested positive for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

There was an eight-fold increase in Hepatitis A cases in the US from 2016 to 2018.

Chronic hepatitis C infection is the most common reason for liver transplants in the US. There is no vaccine.