Frank's Musings

The virus that causes COVID-19 has been lurking inside certain animals (bats?) for no one knows how long.   It may have been created by a random mutation; but only now has it emerged as a human respiratory pathogen.   Because of its novelty, our bodies’ immune systems were not prepared by prior experience to annihilate or block it.  Perhaps those bats’ immune systems have evolved in a way to defeat the COVID-19 virus, and surely the search for a vaccine that will inoculate humans against this virus includes investigation of that mechanism. 



There is another lesson, however. to be drawn from the sudden occurrence of this worldwide disease.  The number of viruses in existence in the world has been estimated at over 50 million.   Some of them are useful in other organic or inorganic systems. Some are inert.  And others are pathological, causing an immunologic response in their hosts.  Harmful viruses may emerge only occasionally from their existence within host systems which are able to control their pathogenic effects.  However, as the experience of the black plague, measles, small pox, the 1918 Spanish influenza and the more recent polio, SARS, MERS, H1N1, and HIV epidemics have shown us. viruses continually disturb the healthy status quo.  Moreover, the ever-increasing density and easy frequency of communications of the earth’s population makes it more and more vulnerable to viral attacks when the chief means of combating them is a biological system that only slowly adapts to harmful novel agents. 



It must be hard to anticipate the next viral attacks, particularly owing to their random evolution.  Fortunately, modern science has improved our ability quickly to respond to what will become a more frequent threat to human life.   God knows how much longer it will take to end future viral epidemics if the same luddite and simplistic attitude toward them is taken as has been directed at COVID-19 by the Trump-led federal government.