The Virus Problem

 The Virus Problem

I'm not a doctor or a biology expert. This is just based on my concept of common sense. For the purposes of this article, I will use "bacteria" to mean living things that don't try to get into cells, though there are others; and I will use "virus" for things that need to get into cells, though this also includes intracellular parasites such as malaria and toxoplama.

For bacteria the immune system has a problem because there are good and bad bacteria, and the body has to distinguish. However the good are only in special places like the skin and gut, and mostly when they are in the wrong place the answer is to attack and kill and that works well most of the time for most people.

Viruses get into cells, and that is much harder for the body to deal with. The body has a complicated system for dealing with viruses before they get into cells and that is great except that a lot can happen while it's getting its act together.

The problem is: what to do about infected cells. In the early stages the answer is to kill the cells and hope to make up for the damage later. But when too many cells are infected then that can be a bad plan, because losing too many of an important type of cell can kill you. Plan B is for the cell to shut the virus down as much as possible, and for the immune system to tone down the cell destruction to a manageable level. Viruses that are well adapted to humans seem to know to tone down their attack to not kill their host, since that is a bad career move for them.

Humans form a vast monoculture across the planet. Monocultures are extremely prone to disease. We are lucky to have the SARS-CoV2 virus as a wake-up call. We need to wake up and decide to attack all viruses, planet-wide. This means:

• Testing, particularly of people travelling. We are mostly looking for anything new, or known to be virulent. E.g. temperature checks are an easy test, and everyone with a temperature can be followed up. Sereological testing for antibodies is good, if it can be done easily, perhaps with a finger prick.
• Reporting. Let's get a continuous global view of the health of our monoculture.
• That will let us isolate and attack areas of infection.
• Aim high. We want the total elimination of viruses and other intracellular parasites.