The Chart above (coronavirus.help) follows the format in which for months I kept track of the most important indicators of the Covid-19 pandemic, reporting the daily changes in new cases, recoveries and deaths. Surprisingly this format has in recent months fallen in disuse by most reporting services I follow. This method of reporting is extremely useful because it allows to have a quick snapshot of the status of the pandemic both in terms of tis spread and its harmfulness. It immediately provides a breakdown of the gravity of the pandemic by comparing the number of infections to the mortality rate and the recovery rate. The fact it is now largely in disuse triggers more than just a few alarm bells. Bing, Google, John Hopkins, Bloomberg, and several other websites now prefer to separate the data into individual graphs, focusing on the new infections while setting aside the drop in the mortality rate, which has remained constant since May and is mostly sidelined by the media. Let’s see why?
In order to answer this question let's first break down what the virus is, how it evolves and how it developed into a pandemic.
What are Viruses?
Viruses are acellular living organisms. They are amongst the simplest and most elementary, if not the most simple and elementary, lifeform on our planet. Viruses cannot survive on their own but depend on a parasitic relationship with their host to survive and reproduce. Viruses are merely strings of DNA or RNA depending on host cells for their survival. Although consensus is not universal, for anyone who understands genes to be the foundational blocks of Life, viruses are indeed living biological organisms and thus subject to the same forces of evolution as any other biological organism. Evolution is also extremely simple. In fact, one need to understand evolution as nothing more than the drive of genes to survive in order to make sense of every aspect of evolution. A virus' primary function thus is to survive. This truism may seem banal, but one needs remember it in order to understand the peculiar evolutionary strategy of viruses. In fact what distinguishes viruses from other living organisms is the fact that they do not have a cell to contain the genetic strains and cannot live on their own. They depend on other lifeforms to exist replicating its DNA or RNA strains from a host cell to another through a process of constant replication we call infection.
Infectious Reproduction
Unlike other organisms, viruses reproduce only through infection. Bacteria, some algae and fungi, protozoa and other unicellular lifeforms reproduce through different processes of cell division. More evolved lifeforms have developed increasingly complex forms of reproduction. Plants and animals reproduce by bonding two cells carrying complimentary genetic material, and the most recent evolutionary strategy, sexual reproduction, allows for the fertilisation of eggs, which in the case of mammals has reached the greatest complexity, where the mother carries the egg within her body and nurtures it over a long gestation. Not viruses. Viruses are extremely simple and just continue to replicate infinitely as long as they are in contact or in proximity of a neighbouring cell that can host its genetic strains. A virus' sole purpose is to replicate and will only stop when it cannot find cells to infect either because of isolation or because the cells are inhospitable. Violent viruses that kill their host die together with their host, and will not be able to reproduce. More benign viruses instead can aspire to greater longevity and have higher chances to reproduce. The most important aspect of this distinction to retain, is that unlike other living organisms a virus' evolutionary strategy is not to become stronger, but to adapt to its host, or in other words become weaker.
Evolution
Viruses mutate far more rapidly than any other lifeform, and by virtue of being so simple, these mutations have a far greater impact on viruses than what occurs in other lifeforms. Viruses reproduces by infecting neighbouring cells within an organism, and with every new cell infected there is a potential genetic modification. Thus by the time the virus has reached maturity within a living organism and is capable of infecting another organism through some form of contact, including airborne particles, it has already endured several replications with potential genetical transformation. Unlike a human generation which is calculated in terms of the time it takes for offsprings to reach sexual maturity, a generation amongst viruses is each new organism infected within the timeline of an epidemic. In the case of Covid-19 the incubation period - the period of maturity before symptoms are manifested and the virus can spread to another organism - varies. For practical purposes, both with regards to statistics and administration, humans have agreed to a consensus over the incubation period being 2 weeks. That is why quarantine worldwide are always 14 days. Thus, over a period of 10 months since the first cases were recorded in Wuhan, China, the virus has already undergone 40 generations. Nevertheless as viruses are extremely simple and unstable organisms with rapid mutations and since their mutations have a far greater effect on their behaviour than on other more complex organisms, 40 generations in the evolutionary history of a virus is akin to millions of generations in animals such as mammals. Furthermore, since the virus was not contained and rapidly spread throughout the entire planet affecting every type of human ecosystem whether it be tropical or moderate, mountainous or coastal, urban or rural, Covid-19 has had plenty of time and resources to maximise the efficiency of its evolutionary strategy, which is to inhabit its host as long as possible. In fact it is widely documented that the original Covid-19 virus has evolved into numerous strains that differ significantly from its originator, and it would be only logical to conclude that these new strains are far more capable of co-existing with their human host than their predecessors.
Preliminary Conclusion
Unlike mammals where mutations only occur during sexual reproduction, viruses mutate very rapidly within the host organism and the effect of these mutations are far more significant on the behaviour of the virus than mutations on mammals. Every new generation generates new strains that differ, often significantly, from previous generations, and the overall strategy of viruses is to become as innocuous to its host as possible. Those strains that are harmful to its host die off as the the host dies, whereas the strains that do not harm the host continue to prosper and reproduce for successive generations. Thus if a virus escapes attempts of containment as in the case of Covid-19, it can rapidly adapt to coexist with its host in a few generations. Simply put, the natural selection of viruses rewards those genetic mutations that allow the virus to inhabit its host with the least possible impact. Therefore anyone who reads the statistics regarding the current pandemic, or looks at the different strains that Covid-19 has evolved into with the perspective of evolutionary biology cannot escape the obvious conclusion that the virus today bears no resemblance to the virus earlier this year. The virus has 'learned' to exploit their human habitat without the lethality of its predecessor. In other words we are no longer dealing with the prehistoric sabre-tooth tiger that was hunting down and feasting on our cavemen ancestors, but rather some form of domestic cat that has adapted to us without posing as great a threat.
Counter Arguments
The reason Covid-19 has lost its lethality is simply due to the natural biological evolution of viruses. The lethal ones have died off, leaving their innocuous, or less harmful offsprings propagate. So why the concerns over the pandemic today. There are valid reasons for concern. First and foremost, the media, governments and supra-national agencies alike all seem to concur that this natural evolutionary cycle towards coexistence has not yet occured. They claim that the collapse in mortality rate is due to circumstantial factors rather than adaptation. The circumstantial factors can be labeled as follows:
Improved medical practices: We have learned how to deal with the virus better. This is certainly true, but insufficient to explain the collapse in mortality.
Greater numbers of test: The virus is largely asymptomatic. As more and more people are tested there is a drop in the mortality rate because patients without symptoms were previously not tested. This is certainly true, and can account to a large portion of the drop in mortality, but it is insufficient to offset the natural evolution of the virus, because the absolute number of deaths and that of people requiring intensive care treatment has also dropped drastically. The added number of asymtomatic cases reported cannot effect the absolute number of deaths.
Lockdown and social distancing: The measures taken to combat the virus have certainly slowed down the spread, but cannot explain why those effected do not show the same pathologies as earlier patients.
Immunity: Humans, and other animals can develop immunity to certain viruses, but the recurrence of the disease in several patients shows this to be not so significant especially in light of the several strains of Covid-19 that have come to light from the rapid spread of the virus globally.
During summertime people spend more time outdoors: Another important factor to take into consideration is the fact that the virus spreads more easily indoors, and thus is more active in the winter months, also referred to as 'flu season'. Once again this is correct, but the data from developed nations in the Southern Hemisphere, now in full 'flu season', confirm the fact the the virus today bears little similarity to the virus that affected the Northern Hemisphere during its 'flu season' at the beginning of the year. None of the countries that are in flu season right now have experienced a mortality rate comparable to the Northern Hemisphere earlier this year. On the contrary their mortality rate is very much in line with the global average.
While it is not possible to precisely quantify the impact of these circumstantial factors, it seems far-fetched to claim that they override the more logical explanation offered by evolutionary biology. We are thus left with the original question unanswered from a scientific point of view, and must seek explanations in the social, economic and political motivations that dictate government and international policies.
Political Motivations
Although it is extremely difficult to quantify the above listed mitigating factors, it is impossible to consider them strong enough to counter the natural evolution of the virus. It is thus necessary to conclude that the virus has indeed mutated into a more benign parasite, and that the reasons this evolutionary adaptation is largely ignored by global media, governments and supra-national agencies has social, economic and political motivations rather than scientific. In order to understand the political motivation to keep the pandemic alive we must once again go back to the genius of Joseph Schumpeter. The brilliant Austrian economist had successfully predicted in 1942, when Europe was still dominated by authoritarian fascist and national socialist ideologies, that capitalism would have prevailed over all other socio-political systems. Schumpeter also successfully predicted that the extraordinary success of capitalism would eventually cause a transfer of power from sovereign governments to a handful of individuals that controlled the global economy. This is what we are experiencing today. The reason our governments are not taking science into account with regards to Covid-19 is a consequence of not wanting to disturb the economic battle for the creation of a global standard for vaccines. Just like internet protocols, computer operating systems and telecommunication networks, there is a global economic battle for the ownership of vaccine standards, and governments as well as supra-national agencies are quietly and obediently waiting instructions from the corporations that will try and carve out markets for their vaccines. This subservience to corporations is all the more evident in Western countries were governments are reluctant to adopt therapies already widely proven. Much of Asia for example, is now treating Covid-19 with an off-the-shelf Japanese drug called Avigan, that has been used for decades against flus. The reluctance to adopt these therapies while waiting for a vaccine is due to the fact that these consolidated methods would jeopardise the economic return of the vaccine market. Governments prefer to answer to the interests of corporations rather than the well being of their citizens.
What to do
The first thing to do is respect the law. The fact that our governments are denying the scientific rationale of evolutionary biology does not justify disobeying the laws created by the people we have appointed to govern us. If we don't like it, we have every right to let them know and vote them out of power if they continue to betray our trust, but if the law requires us to wear a mask, to quarantine or to social distance we must respect these laws. Secondly, we must continue to be cautious. Once understood that the pandemic is now largely apolitical game, we must still pay close attention to it for the months to come and avoid treating it lightly. Outside of the social aspect, there are still very valid reasons to be concerned over Covid-19. The changes that allowed Covid-19 to adapt itself to the human body are not willed. The mutations are purely accidental and no one can decide how the virus will continue to mutate. Just like it mutated to a more benign form as per its evolutionary strategy, it can also become deadly once again. If more deadly strains emerge in environments that are not safeguarded a new lethal epidemic can once again take place. Finally, people are still dying, and still in large numbers. We should remain vigilant and not forget that amongst our friends and relatives there are people that remain vulnerable to Covid-19 even in its new more docile adaptation. Schools should reopen but children at risk or with guardians that are at risk should be allowed to continue studying remotely. Businesses should continue to make every possible effort to let employees work remotely and limit physical interaction as much as possible. Large congregations should be curtailed. Public areas should be equipped with hand sanitisers, and people should continue to wear masks when sharing indoor spaces.
Final Conclusion
Covid-19 is not a hoax. The fact it has been manipulated by governments, institutions and corporations around the world is deplorable, but the virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people. We must remain vigilant - vigilant towards the evolution of the virus, and vigilant towards the manipulations of those who seek to profit from it.
Copyright © Carmelo Pistorio 2020