Understanding COVID-19 From An Evolutionary Perspective
Here’s how I see it
I looked keenly at the label of the shampoo bottle.
It said it could clear viruses such as coronavirus. It was a photo sent to me by a friend. She was pro-using that particular shampoo for protection.
Coronaviruses existed long before the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s only this new type that happened to be on a killing streak.
I never would have known much about it had we not visited a friend of ours to celebrate her campus graduation. The reason is I was knee-deep in the struggle to find the best way to start writing my book about evolution.
I made the first several pages but didn’t feel it. I need to feel my writing before I can share it with anyone.
It took several months before I got into the flow state, where I wrote consecutively for 30 days, without reading, until I was done with the first draft.
I did it during the COVID-19 pandemic.
All the while, I was monitoring the strategies used by the public health teams and infectious diseases specialists.
Some strategies made sense. Others introduced gaps for further worsening of the state. But who would listen to a medical student?
I was viewing the turn of events from an evolutionary perspective. And I didn’t see anyone talking about it. So let me give you my perspective.
What’s out there
We are aliens in this world.
We tend to think we are the superior ones on the planet. But we are spoilt heirs of bacterial innovation and viral resilience.
We are animals in a bacterial and viral world.
Coronaviruses have always existed. But they only turn virulent through one of the central processes of evolution — mutation.
Mutations can be lethal, neutral, or beneficial. For entities as large as us, mutations can often be harmful. For smaller entities, they can be beneficial. And they can spread fast.
Consider the rising case of antimicrobial resistance.
Hands, cars, and guns are to humans what genetic strips are to bacteria. They can easily switch, mutate, and eject some of the pieces in their cells with ease just as anyone can cock a gun or wipe the dust from their glasses.
A virus can turn virulent because of a series of mutations or a single one. It then gives it more fitness.
Fitness is the ability of systems to survive, seek mates, and reproduce to produce viable offspring. Many scientists do not believe viruses to be alive and would stop reading at this point.
I don’t want to focus on what is alive or not. But viruses can evolve through mutation, and increase their replication rates once in the right environment. The right niche for viruses is cells.
In short, through mutation, viruses can increase their replication effectiveness.
Mutation happens at the sub-cellular level. Its effects often happen at the organismal level.
What you call the flu is a virus that has found its ‘Earth’. You provide the necessary conditions for it to thrive.
It needs to have a means of moving from one ‘Earth’ to another for it to continue evolving. It’s why you will sneeze, blow your nose, cough, or even have episodes of diarrhea once infected.
These are strategies the immobile viruses will use to become ‘mobile’. They use these methods before they deplete all the resources or before our immune system finds a way of clearing them from our bodies.
It is similar to what humans are doing using space shuttles to explore other habitable planets before resources get depleted. Or before the Gaia destroys us.
As for the coronavirus, it became more aggressive. It depleted so much of its hosts’ resources, to the point of causing several cases of death in different parts of the world.
The other way they can spread is by contact with persons who have the virus. Instead of being propelled into the air through coughing, one only gets into contact with infected pieces of clothing. Usually, it is the caregivers and health practitioners.
Just like that, they find a new ‘Earth’ to exploit.
The cycle continues.
We are animals living in a bacterial and viral world. We need to understand this crucial point.
Aggressive Symbiosis
COVID-19 did was aggressive.
But first, a breakdown of symbiosis.
Osis means process. Sym suggests mutual understanding. Bio is life. So symbiosis is a process of mutual understanding between two or more living organisms.
It can be parasitic, commensalistic, or beneficial. A good example that shows two of these relationships is the life cycle of the female anopheles mosquito.
The mosquito is the carrier of the disease-causing parasite — plasmodium spp. Plasmodium, to our knowledge, has little to no effect on the mosquito. This is a commensalistic relationship.
However, once the plasmodium finds its way into our system, it unapologetically utilizes our resources to continue increasing in numbers. This is a parasitic relationship.
A beneficial relationship could be seen in the cow. It takes grass, made of complex sugars but by itself, it cannot digest it. In its gut, it has a host of bacteria that can digest these sugars. Once digested, the simpler ones can be absorbed by the cow.
The role of one, the cow eating grass, serves the bacteria. The role of the bacteria, breaking down the sugars for absorption, serves the cow. It is a beneficial relationship.
These are the three types commonly known about symbiosis.
But Frank Ryan introduces a fourth one — aggressive symbiosis.
It is where a symbiotic relationship becomes aggressive towards other occupants of the same niche by killing them.
Here’s an example.
Imagine a wild dog has found a dead carcass. While feasting on it, it acquires a new virus from the fluids the dead meat produces.
For some time, the disease takes its toll on the dog, but it regains its vitality. Since the virus spreads through body fluids, it easily spreads to other dogs. However, they are not as lucky, and they die.
The symbiotic relationship formed by the dog and the virus at first contact selfishly kills all the other occupants of the same niche.
Suppose the dog is female and produces offspring. The pups are likely to be resistant to the disease-causing effects of the virus.
The result is other dogs are aggressively eliminated, while the symbiotic relationship between the dog and the virus now dominates this niche.
Chances are this is the case with COVID-19. It was aggressive.
It sought the ones who could withstand symbiosis and aggressively eliminated those who couldn’t.
Aggressive symbiosis has been at work for ages. It came to the aid of the whites when they invaded various territories. Poxvirus spread fast and killed many while it retained those who could withstand the symbiotic relationship.
Symbiosis is one of the key movers of evolutionary changes and progress. It is likely one of the causes that led to the cases of death witnessed the world over.
Islands of Change
Evolution happens fast in islands.
It’s why scientists study species on islands.
Darwin studied the finches in the Galapagos. Jared Diamond studied birds in the Islands of New Guinea. Scientists create islands in petri dishes.
In the management of COVID-19, we created islands.
By extension, we likely hastened the rate of evolution of the virus.
Usually, viruses that tend to kill their hosts don’t spread that far. They would kill the host and die with it. But the viruses which only cause a minor disturbance would spread from one host to another.
More virulent diseases are the cause of their own downfall.
As for the COVID-19 pandemic, we had two mixes.
One is individuals who succumbed to the disease. Two, individuals who became resistant to it.
The driver, likely aggressive symbiosis.
Add the fact that lockdowns were instituted, viruses would then mutate at a faster rate.
In our country, lockdowns were instituted with a caveat — people would only be allowed outside for a certain amount of time.
It was this process that I felt would accelerate the disease.
When you restrict movement but allow for a small window for sustenance, you increase the degree of interaction among the very people you wish to separate. Shops and supermarkets would be hubs for the virus to spread.
Remember that islands have faster evolution rates, so gene flow would happen in these centres.
Gene flow is another evolutionary process.
As the name suggests, it is the migration of different genes into new environments. When people migrate from rural to urban centres, gene flow is at work.
When you merge aggressive symbiosis, gene flow from instituted islands churning different new viruses every other time, what you get is a machine for new strains.
In the age of rapid journalism, what you unintentionally end up developing is an identification scare.
Identification Scare
New strains were being introduced within short spans.
With the damaging effects COVID-19 had, it is likely that we attributed every new wave of infections to the other strains we discovered.
Initially, it was Delta, later we had the Omicron.
These are steps in microevolution.
Microevolution happens within populations in short spans of time.
For instance, if you have white-peppered moths mixed with dark-peppered moths, the industrial age is likely to favour the dark-peppered one more. The soot generated during the industrial age would camouflage the black ones over the white ones.
Predators would then do the rest.
Microevolution happens through small changes that grant one population more fitness. Still, some scientists would not agree with the idea of viruses being alive and thus, warrant the term fitness.
But the effects of COVID-19 should challenge their ideas.
Now you have
- Aggressive symbiosis
- Rapid mutation rates happening in
- Instituted landlocked areas (islands)
- Accelerated gene flows, and
- Advanced identification techniques that discover new strains every other time.
This is bound to give people a scare.
Here’s the one important thing evolution says about it all
Once the major waves happen, the ones likely to survive are the less virulent ones.
Remember, the virulent strains tend to kill their hosts. We isolated these individuals and maintained proper measures to reduce contamination.
Opening up the instituted islands reduced the rate of mutations and reduced the frequency of emergence of new strains.
Furthermore, focal gene flow was reduced now that the rush for supplies was also reduced after the disease was contained.
Aggressive symbiosis no longer played that big a role because the remaining cases are less virulent.
Lessons we can get from this is how epidemics spread.
And now you can have an evolutionary perspective on such crippling diseases.
These are not the only evolutionary processes at work. I have left out several others such as self-organization, size, and genetic drift.
But you catch the drift.
NB: This article is meant to serve as a guide, but not the ultimate truth as to the processes underlying the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Systems such as these are complex. They warrant more explanations as they tend to raise more questions and puzzles than answers and solutions. Please refer to several specialists in different fields for more expert input.
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