How does it survive so long? I’ve heard its got a lipid (fat based? Opposed to what?) make up. 17 days seems like quite a big charge in that battery but maybe it can go dormant - be like a congealed piece of fat and when a warm organism touches it, the pathogen reactivates? Maybe but do other viruses live that long?
“How does it survive so long?”
It doesn’t.
It's an 'enveloped' virus, meaning it has a lipid membrane layer around it. HIV is the same, except HIV gets this envelope by 'budding' out of cells through the cell membrane. Coronavirus gets out of cells, and gets its envelope via the golgi apparatus and associated vesicles in cells. That's why hydroxychloroquine can potentially help, as chloroquine alters golgi function and the vesicles. All viruses have nucleic acid (either DNA or RNA) encapsulated within a protein capsid. The enveloped ones just have the lipid membrane layer on the outside of the capsid. In general, non-enveloped viruses are thought to be more resistant to 'drying' over longer periods, but this isn't a hard and fast rule. It's probably more than you want to look at, but in case you want to have a scotch and read about viruses here's a link to an article that addresses enveloped vs non-enveloped viruses and their survival. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4462923/