THE GREAT EQUALIZER
Let’s play a little game, I want you to think back on
history’s greatest massacres, by death toll (fun, I know). What springs to mind?
WW1 where an approximate 16 million people died or perhaps you know WW2 was far
deadlier, with the death toll around 40-50 million! What if I now told you
these numbers pale in comparison to the amount of death that has been caused by
pandemics in our history, the influenza pandemic (Spanish Flu) alone killed
between 50-100 million people and it isn’t even the deadliest pandemic in
history, no that honor belongs to something that sounds a little less ominous,
the bubonic plague, affectionately known as the Black Death. It killed
somewhere between 75 to 200 million people, no event in history, no war, no
revolution has ever come close to these numbers. Oppenheimer the father of the
atomic bomb is famously quoted as saying “for I have become death, the
destroyer of worlds”, a virus while not a sentient being truly embodies these
words. Now that we have given viruses a proper introduction, let’s talk about
what it even is.
SO
WHAT EVEN IS A VIRUS, AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
Well a virus is an infectious particle, Unlike
bacteria it is inert which means it is not alive, all a virus is at its core,
is just a piece of information and it has a singular purpose, making more of
itself, it does this by worming its way into living cells and basically hijacks
them into producing more of itself, the reason viruses are so dangerous is
because of their ability to spread to other cells and then out into the world
infecting more and more people, to make matter worse they also evolve quickly,
David Quammen had a very apt description for why viruses are so potent saying “
they
evolve quickly, they are unaffected by antibiotics, they can be elusive, they
can be versatile, they can inflict extremely high rates of fatality, and they
are fiendishly simple, at least relative to other living or quasi-living
creatures,”. Once a person is infected one of three things can
happen.
Ø The
virus can simply die out
Ø The
virus kills the host
Ø The
host and the virus learn to coexist
WHAT
MAKES A VIRUS INTO A PANDEMIC?
Now that we have learned viruses have the ability to
spread to other cells, we have to talk about what viruses are famous for,
Pandemics. Before we talk about pandemics we should first clarify the
difference between epidemics and pandemics. Epidemics are simply when a disease
affects a large number of people in a community, population or region. A
pandemic is a larger scale of an epidemic spreading all over the world. So what
gives a virus pandemic potential, well the answer can both be technical and
simple, technically speaking if a virus has a RNA genome over a DNA genome it
is more likely to become a pandemic but we don’t want to focus on that (blah
blah science science), let’s instead talk about what everyone knows, most will
know that a lot of our most famous and deadly diseases originated from animals,
Smallpox, measles, Ebola, HIV (all our little superstars) came from animals, in
fact around 80% of our pandemics started because of animals.
The next thing we have to consider is the R-naught,
the movie explains this perfectly, how many people can a person affected with
the virus potentially affect. For example, polio had an R-naught between 4 and
6, which means they would affect somewhere between 4 to 6 people, once we know
the R-naught then only can we understand the scale of the pandemic.
WHAT
MAKES A PANDEMIC INTO THE GREAT EQUALIZER?
I started this blog going through a fun little history
lesson of humanities greatest death tolls, we concluded that all our wars, all
the death and destruction men have caused, have not even come close to what
viruses are capable of, which leads us to an important question, who does a
virus affect, think back in our history, why did we have so many massacres, who
did we target, how many wars or massacres can you think of where the victims
were not targeted because of their race, religion, gender or even sexuality,
you see these are things men would consider before deciding who to hate, who to
kill, but a virus, a virus doesn’t care, it does not care who you are, what
your race, gender, religion are nor does it care how much money you have, it
has no biases and no moral qualms, An enemy that can’t be bought, bullied,
reasoned or negotiated with, in that sense a virus, that results in a pandemic
does become THE GREAT EQUALIZER.
REFRENCES:
History's seven deadliest
plagues. (2022, October 17). Retrieved October 25, 2022, from https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/historys-seven-deadliest-plagues#:~:text=1918%20flu%3A%2050%2D100%20million%20(1918%2D1920)
The bright side of the black
death | American scientist. (n.d.). Retrieved October 25, 2022, from https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-bright-side-of-the-black-death
What are viruses and how do
they work? (2020, April 03). Retrieved October 25, 2022, from https://now.tufts.edu/2020/04/03/what-are-viruses-and-how-do-they-work
Anthony King, King is a freelance
science journalist based in Dublin, & Profile., F. (n.d.). Characteristics
that give viruses pandemic potential. Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://www.the-scientist.com/features/characteristics-that-give-viruses-pandemic-potential-67822
Pandemics: Definition, prevention, and preparation. (n.d.). Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/what-are-epidemics-pandemics-outbreaks
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