FISH FACE SLAP

SARS-CoV-2 Rocks

Too bad we suck

Zillions and gazillions of viruses live everywhere. They even live on you and in you. Creeped out yet?

Most of the gazillions that live on you and in you don’t do anything in particular to you. Many even do you a lot of favors by doing stuff you need done or merely staying out of the way, which is major when you think about what they could do if they had a mind to. Fortunately, they don’t have minds. If they did we would all be in very deep shit.

If all the viruses living on and especially in your body were suddenly transformed to human size, not only would you explode, which would be unpleasant in the extreme, but their combined weight would throw the earth off balance, which would be even worse. For everybody else that is. Having exploded, you would know nothing about the devastating floods and storms raging everywhere, so maybe they did you another favor.

Your viruses, I mean, by transforming. At least you got it over with quickly.

Among these gazillions of little buggers are the ones called SARS CoV-2, which you may have heard about. What, you haven’t heard of SARS CoV-2? OK then, COVID-19? You heard of that? Good. I thought so. What did you think caused it? Oh, the virus? There are lots and lots of different kinds as I explained — wait, did I? — so saying the virus doesn’t do that much. It’s name is SARS-CoV-2 and it’s really good at being a virus.

With viruses it’s spread or die, which is why they love our lungs, mouths, and noses so much. Since we love to hang around and breathe all over each other, if they can get us sneezing they’re in business.

SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t even need that. It spreads just fine when we flap our mouths and blab, or even better, sing. Since we so love to do those things why does it need to carry along all those other effects, such as killing us, you ask? That’s our immune system’s doing. Have you heard the term “cytokine storm?” Our immune systems wage holy war against the other. Maybe that explains racism. Even at the deep cellular level, we hate the other so much we’re ready to kill ourselves to get rid of it.

So there it is, this nation of tiny little things trying to do their thing and reproduce. Unfortunately, it needs the cells of our bodies for that. Our immune system escalates within days to the nuclear option and there we are. SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t care if we die, in fact it doesn’t care about anything, it just, like, spreads. If enough of us stick around that’s all it needs. Since the case fatality rate is something like .2% it has plenty of leeway to kill more, or less, and still get around just fine. Omicron, shmomicron! Whether it kills a few more of us or a few fewer this latest variant of SARS-CoV-2 will get along just fine.

We might not. Get along just fine that is. As I said in my brilliant subtitle, we suck. We’re a species, but we love to think of ourselves as individuals, so we suck our thumbs and cling to our freedom like it was a blankie. We don’t like to be told what to do. This is especially true of adolescents, but a lot of people never grow up, so here we are. Battling it out with an organism that’s excellent, an ace, positively sick at being a species while we, concerned with preening ourselves about what rugged individuals we are, suck at it.

Being a species that is. We suck at being a species. Which is too bad. If we can’t get it together enough to deal with a simple thing like a pandemic, what chance when confronted with a doomsday asteroid, an invasion of space aliens, or global warming? Or, even worse, global worming? You think melting glaciers and dead polar bears are bad? Wait until worm guts squirt out with every step you take.

Special thanks to Gary Chapin