The human idea of vaccination, and modern ''vaccination'' even more so, is based on the following assumptions, which are not described anywhere in such a way, but which must be presupposed in such a way if vaccination/''vaccination'', according to science, is to be a good idea:
- all people live under the same environmental conditions
- all people eat the same food and have a good nutritional status,
- each person's metabolism works the same as everyone else's,
- every human being has the same immune system,
- every human being reacts in the same way to completely different external influences,
- every human being receives the same vaccination at the same time and in the same place,
- every human being has the same "normal" genome, whatever "normal" means,
- every human has the same viral gene sequences in her/his genome from previous infections,
- every human being reacts the same way to the same vaccination,
- every human being feels the same way about the administration of the vaccine,
- you are me and I am you and everybody is everone else
- we are all the same person and we hide this inconvenient truth behind different facades.
''an artifact of our pattern-seeking view of reality, which creates “difference” where there is none, and misses it when it is there''
Bull's-eye. Bio-logical coherence is based on simple correlations in all possible scales and over all possible periods of time, which are always repeated in different cycles with the smallest and smallest deviations. Man, however, tries more and more to simplify (!) what is already simple by fragmentation, by measurements and isolated observations. But the more such simplifications shape man's view of the world, the more complex the world appears to him because of all the fragments of simple natural connections. The finely (inter)woven tapestry of reality becomes thus an mere jumble of countless loose threads.
Fantastic. In my eyes, your best text yet. ''Best'' in the sense of bio-logical coherence and our place in that coherence.
Viruses are indeed the messengers between the epigenetic influences of the environment and the genetics of all living beings, including us humans of course. Thus, symptoms are the vocabulary of the course of each individual disease history. Ignoring or eliminating the vocabulary does not mean that the story never happened, only that it can no longer be told. And the longer it goes untold, the more untruths and misunderstandings accumulate.
"Who we are - our identity - is paradoxically defined by who we are not: Our differences from others, or the reactions elicited in others by our behavior."
I agree with this, and found it fascinating that our immune system uses this at the cellular level to determine which bits need to be attacked and which bits are ok to leave alone.
Well, if you believe that this virus arose naturally - as the influenza virus did in your example, you would have to believe that it could very easily get more virulent. A mutation could occur to allow this to happen.
However, if your Covid virus was made in a lab, and serially passed thru mammalian hosts in order to achieve the desired result of the GOF research, then likely most mutations will lead the other way.
Viruses become successful when they choose a replication target with specific characteristics which appear to indicate unnatural actions by the hosts. This one targets those who have chosen lifestyles contrary to our evolution, and have become unhealthy. Nature punishes renegades. Maybe a constructive outcome will be for more people to learn and adopt more natural lifestyles.
Viruses never get all of us, just a few. Important to learn what they did wrong, and don't do that.
It seems to me that a better model for a "novel" pathogen in the human population would be an initial worsening as the pathogen optimizes itself to infect and spread between humans, followed by a decline in virulence driven both by selective pressure on the virus (to have less-sick mobile hosts out and about transmitting) and immune evasion mutation pressure from the host (with most immune-evasion mutations also moving the virus away from a fitness optimum in terms of infectivity). The 1918 pandemic followed a similar pattern.
If we haven't completely messed things up with mass deployment of novel vaccines, we should be moving into the declining phase, with Omicron likely representing immune evasion at the cost of lower virulence.
I've never thought of it as an axiom, just more of a general tendency.
"Measured by ability to knock over full grown trees bare-handed, no human is “strong.”
Well, you missed one guy: Jazz singer/pianist Mose Allison in his song "Wild Man" :
"I cut redwood with a handsaw..."
Just to lighten things up a little...;>)
The human idea of vaccination, and modern ''vaccination'' even more so, is based on the following assumptions, which are not described anywhere in such a way, but which must be presupposed in such a way if vaccination/''vaccination'', according to science, is to be a good idea:
- all people live under the same environmental conditions
- all people eat the same food and have a good nutritional status,
- each person's metabolism works the same as everyone else's,
- every human being has the same immune system,
- every human being reacts in the same way to completely different external influences,
- every human being receives the same vaccination at the same time and in the same place,
- every human being has the same "normal" genome, whatever "normal" means,
- every human has the same viral gene sequences in her/his genome from previous infections,
- every human being reacts the same way to the same vaccination,
- every human being feels the same way about the administration of the vaccine,
- you are me and I am you and everybody is everone else
- we are all the same person and we hide this inconvenient truth behind different facades.
That's science, what else.
''an artifact of our pattern-seeking view of reality, which creates “difference” where there is none, and misses it when it is there''
Bull's-eye. Bio-logical coherence is based on simple correlations in all possible scales and over all possible periods of time, which are always repeated in different cycles with the smallest and smallest deviations. Man, however, tries more and more to simplify (!) what is already simple by fragmentation, by measurements and isolated observations. But the more such simplifications shape man's view of the world, the more complex the world appears to him because of all the fragments of simple natural connections. The finely (inter)woven tapestry of reality becomes thus an mere jumble of countless loose threads.
Fantastic. In my eyes, your best text yet. ''Best'' in the sense of bio-logical coherence and our place in that coherence.
Viruses are indeed the messengers between the epigenetic influences of the environment and the genetics of all living beings, including us humans of course. Thus, symptoms are the vocabulary of the course of each individual disease history. Ignoring or eliminating the vocabulary does not mean that the story never happened, only that it can no longer be told. And the longer it goes untold, the more untruths and misunderstandings accumulate.
"Who we are - our identity - is paradoxically defined by who we are not: Our differences from others, or the reactions elicited in others by our behavior."
I agree with this, and found it fascinating that our immune system uses this at the cellular level to determine which bits need to be attacked and which bits are ok to leave alone.
Well, if you believe that this virus arose naturally - as the influenza virus did in your example, you would have to believe that it could very easily get more virulent. A mutation could occur to allow this to happen.
However, if your Covid virus was made in a lab, and serially passed thru mammalian hosts in order to achieve the desired result of the GOF research, then likely most mutations will lead the other way.
Just a thought.
Viruses become successful when they choose a replication target with specific characteristics which appear to indicate unnatural actions by the hosts. This one targets those who have chosen lifestyles contrary to our evolution, and have become unhealthy. Nature punishes renegades. Maybe a constructive outcome will be for more people to learn and adopt more natural lifestyles.
Viruses never get all of us, just a few. Important to learn what they did wrong, and don't do that.
It seems to me that a better model for a "novel" pathogen in the human population would be an initial worsening as the pathogen optimizes itself to infect and spread between humans, followed by a decline in virulence driven both by selective pressure on the virus (to have less-sick mobile hosts out and about transmitting) and immune evasion mutation pressure from the host (with most immune-evasion mutations also moving the virus away from a fitness optimum in terms of infectivity). The 1918 pandemic followed a similar pattern.
If we haven't completely messed things up with mass deployment of novel vaccines, we should be moving into the declining phase, with Omicron likely representing immune evasion at the cost of lower virulence.