Nearly two years into this pandemic and it seems that most people still don’t understand how viruses work. And the powers that be — namely Anthony Fauci, CNN and Twitter — seem to be more interested in ruling our lives than educating us.
That should be your first clue that something isn’t right.
Unlike the Washington Post, I actually believe that democracy dies in darkness. And since all we seem to get is fear porn masquerading as science I thought I’d share some relatively basic biology — actual science — on how viruses like Covid 19 work and what we can expect in the future.
First, nothing alive on this planet wants to die.
Survival is always the primary imperative. Always. The secondary imperative is reproduction. If a virus kills its host before it gets to propagate, then it will die, failing to perform both primary and secondary survival imperatives. So viruses do not want to do that.
Simple Darwinian logic.
Second, a mutation is only beneficial if it allows the virus to better propagate. That means mutations that make a virus more deadly, like Ebola, for example, are not beneficial to the virus, will fail to propagate and will eventually fizzle out, as has Ebola.
Bottom line, viruses naturally want to propagate and not kill the host, since that kills the virus. That survival imperative will ultimately lead every virus to become less harmful, even if it becomes more transmissible. That means that Covid 19 will eventually recede to a common cold or flu like scenario.
That much is clear. That much is logical. That much is scientific.
That means this: Fear-mongering over Delta, Omicron or whatever variant is all about power-hungry politicians and click-hungry media’s profit model that depends on you, a gullible populace, to propagate the fear porn and perpetuate the pandemic.
It isn’t about your health. It isn’t about our wellbeing. And it certainly isn’t about science.
Image credit iamcootis / Flickr