Post n. 37 (English)
It's time for Corona Virus. We live isolated in the house and wonder about when this catastrophe will pass. Meanwhile, scientists are informing us that there will be other epidemics. By now "it is not a question of knowing if, but when" other epidemical upheavals will occur.
One wonders where scientific research is at. What stage of development has the technology used to deal with such disasters?
Also because, as can be seen from the quotes that follow and which are taken from authoritative sources, man has always lived with viruses. Some of them, as we shall see, are even useful for our survival and have helped the evolution of the species. It is known that in many laboratories around the world, people are working hard to prepare a vaccine. But we will have it no earlier than six months. It also investigates how the viral protein attaches to cells to breach the inside of the cell. Which is useful for identifying some protein that is able to block the access of the virus to our cells. In short, it is a question of knowing how to defend ourselves from viruses and of knowing in depth the nature of this unavoidable presence.
COVID-19 HOW TO ENTER THE CELL AND HOW TO EXIT
THE BIOLOGICAL TECHNOLOGY OF THE BACTERIOPHAGE
Over the course of billions of years, through evolution, viruses have developed truly sophisticated systems to introduce and infect the host and survive. The response of the human species has been to adopt a survival plan. With what weapons, with what means, with what strategy? Cohabitation and immune system, that is: coexistence and / or fight.
COHABITATION
Guido Silvestri in "The Good Virus", 2019 warns: «Be careful thought: 'living together' does not mean at all 'ignoring', pretending nothing, like the ostrich that puts its head in the sand. On the contrary, it means adapting, reorganizing one's functioning in order to make serene coexistence possible». Ours is an intelligent body, which knows how to select the most suitable behaviours to face threats and exploit the opportunities of the environment around us, including viruses. In fact, the author highlights how in ours intestine lives an impressive number of bacteria and underlines the complicated and fascinating interaction that the immune system has with them. He therefore highlights how 8-9 per cent of our genome consists of portions of the retrovirus genome (RNA virus), called endogenous retrovirus (HERV) and adds: «[...] in the end it was discovered that, in fact, some of their functions have a beneficial role. In other words, the discovery that HERVs mediate certain absolutely fundamental cellular and physiological functions in the maintenance of the organism, has created a real Copernican revolution in our vision of the relationship between retrovirus and humanity. [...]But the most extraordinary of all is the function related to placental reproduction, the
great divide between mammals and all other living organisms. It is the placenta, in fact, that has created a very complex and delicate symbiosis between mother and embryo, yet capable of giving origin to the most incredibly fascinating forms of life. Starting with ours. Every time a man and a woman unite in the mystery of conception, it is they, the retroviruses with some of their proteins, that make that elusive biological miracle that is human life possible. That's why I wanted to title this book, a little provocatively, 'The good virus'». And further on he adds: «Of one thing, however, we seem to be certain: the human body is full of completely harmless viruses, so much so that within the scientific community someone starts talking about 'viral flora'", along the lines of known intestinal 'bacterial flora'».
THE IMMUNE SYSTEM.
Our immune system has evolved over hundreds of millions of years and through a purely Darwinian principle, which, roughly said, sounds like this: those who make it survive and those who don't make it die. To avoid suffering and death, human intelligence has managed, thanks to vaccines, to help the immune system. Unfortunately, the research and production of a vaccine are long, difficult operations, producing a vaccine is expensive and requires several months of intense work. For the Covid-19 there is no vaccine and we know that it mainly affects the elderly. Some young and reckless politicians might come up with a very simple idea: let's give Darwin what is Darwin's and let nature do it. Who should come up with such an idea is good to remember two things.
First of all, it was their great grandparents who invented the vaccines and their grandparents developed the vaccines against polio, measles, mumps and rubella and they vaccinated their children who in turn vaccinated today's young people. Without the discovery and use of these vaccines, many of today's young people would not be addicted to nightlife or called to lead important nations. Secondly, those who talk about flock immunity should remember what Dorthy Crowford writes in "The invisible enemy", 2002: "In the short term, viruses are usually ahead of their hosts because their succession of generations is very faster. They produce thousands of descendants every 24 or 48 hours while the (western) man can only count on an average of 2.4 descendants every 20 or 30 years. [...] A clear demonstration of adaptation comes from the myxomatosis epidemic caused by humans in rabbits. This virus, which naturally infects rabbits living in Brazil, without causing serious harm to them, was artificially introduced in 1950 in Australian rabbits (which are of European origin) with the deliberate intent to control their growing expansion. The virus had the devastating effect that was expected: in the first year, 99.8 percent of the infected animals were killed, but this effect quickly vanished.
The number of dead rabbits peaked three years after the virus spread, and seven years later only 25 percent of the sick animals died. Now, some 50 years later, Australian rabbits are in better shape than ever (and plans are being made to introduce a new virus to fight them). For a generation of rabbits it is between 6 and 10 months, if we compare them to the 20-30 years of a human generation we see that in a similar situation it would take 120-150 years for humans to adapt to a new lethal virus ".
Now, since humans do not live in nature like rabbits, but in urban agglomerations of millions of inhabitants, if such a measure were adopted, the time of contagion in the case of the human population would be enormously shorter and more intense. While allowing all living organisms to possess basic cognitive equipment and therefore capable of defending themselves, while respecting all rabbits: is it credible that people resign themselves to being infected like rabbits? Would it bear deaths and sufferings? It can be assumed that no one would leave the house anymore, no bars, restaurants, cinemas, theatre, recreational activities, travel and for essential needs we would only see people with masks around. The contagion would dilute over time, with the result of blocking human activities for a long time, the economy would be destroyed and the risk of impoverishment and social reactions would become dramatically current.
It is evident that this road is not feasible. Therefore it is concluded that there are two fundamental things to do today: respect the rules and put scientists and the thousands of doctors and health workers, heroes of the 21st century, who with great courage they are facing, at the risk of one's life, the pandemic and those who work in services that allow the population to survive in the best conditions to operate and face the extremely difficult task that weighs on them.
RICH COUNTRIES AND POOR COUNTRIES: WE ARE ALL INVOLVED
But for the future, in the prospect of investing in other pandemics, should we only hope for coexistence? Relying on science and respecting its times? Or is it crucial that ordinary citizens, not experts, adopt behaviours and make consistent and effective decisions? Meanwhile, it is necessary to be aware of what the future holds and to keep in mind, as history teaches, that new positive changes can emerge from negative upheavals.
Technological changes, innovations are decisive for the good of humanity. But, evidently, any change in global scenarios - and this is an era of profound transformations - does not only involve progress, but is also the moment when unprecedented problems arise.
There are already those who have reflected on the theme: Dorothy Crowford in (quoted work) 2002, writes: "The appearance of a new viral infection is not just a random event: there are always rational answers to the questions' why? ',' how? ',' when? ' and where?'"
The author gives an account of some recent epidemics.
"The viruses that cause 'tourist diarrhoea', also known as 'Montezuma's revenge', are called rotaviruses. Rotaviruses alone kill around 800,000 people annually. They thrive in the poor sanitation and overcrowding situations characteristic of developing countries where they are usually transmitted from individual to individual through contaminated water and food.
The dengue virus causes flu-like symptoms but can cause a potentially lethal haemorrhagic fever. Recently, in New Delhi, a dengue outbreak caused 5500 hospitalizations and 320 deaths in just two months. Lately, this type of epidemic has frighteningly increased in number, both in Africa and Asia, where disorderly and increasingly rapid urbanization creates overcrowded conditions in which the virus thrives. In these cities, mosquitoes carrying the virus reproduce everywhere in ponds, in pools of water, in drains, in drinking water tanks and in air conditioners. [...] if the earth's temperatures continue to rise as expected, then the tropical and subtropical territories will extend both north and south and the viruses they carry will spread to territories that are new and unexplored for them.
In 1993, a temporary climate fluctuation was responsible for a Hanta virus epidemic in the United States. One day in New Mexico, a young couple was rushed to hospital with severe flu symptoms: fever, headache, cough and breathing difficulties. In a short time the disease had a lethal outcome. [...] investigations into the local fauna to discover the natural host of the infection ended up identifying the peromyscus manicutatus, a rodent common in North America. [...] Humans contract Hanta virus by inhaling infected material, namely dust contaminated with urine and rodent faeces. Most of the individuals who fell ill lived or worked in huts, barns or stables infested with these animals. Following the discovery of this new Hanta, researchers identified it in about 15 percent of samples collected from people who died in the south eastern states due to indefinable but similar illnesses to the flu. As a result, the virus must have previously crossed the species barrier, infecting humans when favourable conditions have occurred.
In West Africa this animal is hunted for food purposes, and in some cases bred as a pet animal, which over the years humans have occasionally infected with scratches or infected bites. Many African monkeys are carriers of the so-called 'monkey immunodeficiency virus', or SIV, similar to HIV. We have known for some time that HIV-2 is so similar to the form of SIV contracted by the monkey Cercocebus atys that it is likely that its origin should be sought here. In West Africa this animal is hunted for food purposes, and in some cases bred as a pet animal, which over the years humans have occasionally infected with scratches or infected bites. These were a few scattered cases, which did not attract attention until the virus caught on enough to spread among humans.
BSE, now known as bovine spongiform encephalitis, was quickly baptized 'mad cow disease' because it caused brain degeneration and paralysis with invariably fatal outcomes. Although BSE is not caused by a real virus, it has been included in this assay because the pathogen is infectious and can be transmitted in vitro, just like a virus. Although the cause of BSE was quickly discovered, pinpointing the origin of the infectious agent was not as easy. Scrapie, a BSE-like disease that affects sheep has been present in British flocks for several centuries, and the carcasses of infected sheep were turned into flour and used as feed. […] Feed the animals with animal flours made with their own kind.
All the epidemics described so far in this chapter have been caused in one way or another by man, even if casually and without any responsibility ".
IN EUROPE SITTING ON A CLOCK BOMB
There are further and new dangers that are highlighted by Dorthy Crowford «An 'epidemic' is defined - argues the author - an unusual increase in the number of cases of an infection within a community, while a 'pandemic' is an epidemic that spreads all over the world while involving several continents. [...] The new strains of flu come from the Far East more frequently than could happen by pure chance. Both the 1957 (Asian) and the 1968 (Kong) pandemics had this origin, as did the Beijing, Shangdong, Wuhan and Singapore strains. The most plausible theory to explain this geographical puzzle indicates the rural areas of southern China as the epicenter of the infection, the place in the world where there are more pigs, humans and water birds (especially ducks) that live in close contact with each other. [...] The recent problems caused by intensive breeding reproduce in parallel among the animal species what happened to our ancestors in the first agricultural communities. A farmed salmon cage is easy prey for a fish virus, just as a crowded city is for a human virus. Even more, indeed, because the breeding virus is usually obtained by coupling between blood relatives and lacks genetic variability.
The same reasoning applies to a battery of chickens, a wheat field or a shed full of pigs. If one of them is vulnerable to infection, it is very likely that they are all vulnerable, and a virus can strike and massacre them.
In Holland there are over 14 million pigs kept on farms with a density of around 9000 animals per square kilometre. Which means going for trouble. The most recent swine fever epidemic in 1997 killed 6 million pigs, or rather most of the animals still in perfect health, was killed to prevent the spread of the infection. The whole disastrous affair cost the Dutch government the equivalent of 600 million euros in compensation. An epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease, an illness from an air-borne virus, would be even more disastrous, and would be able to eliminate most of the European pig farms in one fell swoop.
As if that was not enough, these overcrowded farms are a hotbed of genetic admixtures for influenza viruses, and a new strain capable of causing a pandemic may emerge at any time. […] There are many factors that interact to produce the ideal circumstances for a virus to thrive. By adapting to the surrounding environment with the passage of time, the lifestyle of human beings has changed from nomadism to agriculture, and then to urbanization, and viruses have exploited these changes to derive the maximum possible benefit. Nowadays we are coming into contact with the natural environment as never before, and more and more often with the flora, fauna and viruses it hosts. The colonization of new territories in Africa, deforestation to allocate new land to agriculture in South America, intensive farming in Europe and North America, the domestication of wild animals destined to coexist with humans, large irrigation programs, wars and global warming are just some of the ways we make our presence felt. And all these events affect the ability of viruses to adapt to the environment, causing changes that put humans in contact with new reservoirs of infection. "
WHAT TO DO?
OUR SURVIVAL IS AT RISK
Without prejudice to the fact that every citizen should have greater respect for the environment, it inevitably concludes that it is necessary to tackle and solve potentially destructive phenomena at the root such as:
DEFORESTATION,
WARS,
CLIMATE HEATING,
INTENSIVE FARMING WHICH ALSO CAUSE HUGE SUFFERING FOR ANIMALS,
THE PRESENCE OF FABULOUS ENVIRONMENTS,
ALL FACTORS THAT GENERATE VIRUSES.
Finally, Dorothy Crowford raises another controversial issue. «Over the last century, - he says - the introduction of health security measures, advanced medicine and vaccination has avoided many deaths, and now the balance is disturbed again, and we are facing a population explosion. The population has reached six billion individuals, and this figure is rapidly increasing. As a result, we are forced to colonize new territories, be it the Australian outback, the South American pampas or the African rainforest. All places where we will encounter new viruses and fall victim to new, terrible diseases. Perhaps, the key could be demographic control ».
A crucial question that scientists cannot responsibly evade for long.
But the question involves us all, because we all ask ourselves whether, faced with the negative consequences of the increase in population and therefore of the consumption, of pollution and all that negative man causes our planet, a demographic control is in some way an inevitable necessity.
Caretto Gino
Fossati Pasquale
Modafferi Antonia
Occhipinti Giovanni
Perrone Isabella
P.S. The data of this article were taken from the essays by Guido Silvestri "Il virus buono" 2019 and by Dorothy Crowford "Il nemico invisibile" 2002. We think that the considerations set out are now in the minds of most European and Western citizens. The images were taken, logically from the Internet. Since this Blog is not for profit, I hope that nobody will ask me for Copyright rights.
Our task was to make a collage and remind everyone what we often forget or overshadow due to the busy life:
