The Nightmare of a Supervirus

I was endlessly fascinated by viruses when I was growing up. I remember reading Richard Preston's classic chilling account of American virologist's battling ebola in Zaire in The Hot Zone. I first read that book on a packed airplane, and it dawned on me at one point that I was sharing air and germs with about 400 other human petri dishes at that very moment.

It was a terrifying realization.

That was some time ago, back when America was still renowned for its scientific competency, its global leadership in fighting disease, and its messy but functioning democracy. American expertise in battling diseases was once unrivaled.

Did you know that it was an American who first developed the vaccine that ultimately eradicated polio? His name was Jonas Salk.

Sadly, these days things are very different. We're living through the worst global pandemic in a hundred years, and yet still 30% of America remains indifferent, or indoctrinated by a Republican Party intent on stirring up fears of a lifesaving vaccine, rather than the deadly disease it treats. It's as inexplicable as it is destructive.

It's a cultural moment where Americans increasingly doubt expertise, after years of our democracy failing to deliver on its most basic promises. Instead of jobs and good schools and health care, we've gotten vicious foreign wars based on lies, and an economy that only really works for the top 1%.

Donald Trump exploited this distrust, creating far more of the same to get power and keep it.

Now we're suffering the consequences of a dysfunctional democracy. We have a population that can't discern fact from fiction, with a virulent segment that unwittingly endangers their own lives to prove a political point, showcasing their defiance of the hated establishment. How did it come to this?

Rather than condemning the conspiracy and roiling disinformation breeding in their ranks, Republican politicians are spreading it. This is an era where reality itself is in question, to include medical advice and public health.

It's an insurgency of ignorance in a nation of brilliance. This surly defiance of evidence and facts has its origins in America's seething right-wing politics, amidst religious Christian fundamentalism that wouldn't be out of place in rural Afghanistan, except that it's in middle America.

Instead of innovation, America is now in the business of producing political amnesia and burning populist anger. These are conditions that are perfect for a lethal and contagious virus to exploit. It seems we are at its mercy, now.

Alive and dead

Viruses are like zombies, neither truly alive nor dead. They're simply long strands of RNA or DNA that exist, looking for life, for cells. They exist only to copy their own genetic information.

When they find a cellular host, they infect that cell and replicate inside of it. They're simple, elegant biological machines, programmed to kill.

They're apex predators. Our hubris is their weapon.

In fact, there are more viruses on planet earth than any other kind of living creature, and some 9,000 have been identified so far by scientists. Viruses greatly outnumber humans, and they seem to outwit us. We've always existed together, for better or worse, and usually worse.

That's the thing about these little biological assassins. They're indifferent to our existence, our linguistic skills, and our political debates. They just don't care.

They simply replicate, on and on into infinity. Oh, and they mutate, and become better at spreading themselves from host to host, and human to human. They adapt and evolve, as we attempt to build our artificial defenses.

Omicron is about what you'd expect from an evolving Coronavirus. It's important to remember, successful viruses aren't necessarily the most lethal viruses. The most effective viruses are the most contagious. The goal is to replicate, and when the virus kills its host too fast, that happens less. A good host is a living host, one that spread's the virus far and wide.

America has become a viral paradise.

Thus, Covid-19 has mutated several times now, and in its latest iteration it is both more contagious or virulent, and perhaps not quite as deadly according to preliminary studies. This is an effective mutation, if the end goal is to keep spreading forever and ever.

Human hubris

Viruses don't have goals, though. Humans do. We want to live, and love, and breathe, and be.

We want to travel and dance. Most of all, we want to be with other human beings. Viruses love this about us. It helps them spread.

Right now, though, it's America's broken politics that's helping them spread. With 30% of America still stubbornly unvaccinated, and unwilling to even consider getting vaccinated, we've become one giant national petri dish for Covid-19 to infect, and reinfect, and so on, ad infinitum.

The virus will continue to perfect itself as it does this. More than a thousand American citizens will continue to die every single day of every week. Hospitals will become stressed and overtaxed, diminishing our care for every medical problem, not just Covid. People will have difficulty receiving chemotherapy for cancer, treatment for diabetes, or an inpatient surgical procedure.

The Biden administration is struggling mightily to contain this bug, yet because of these stubbornly unvaccinated Americans, it is failing. It seems there's nothing anyone can say to these people, who are so sure of themselves as they court their own destruction.

The virus merely acknowledges their insolence, as microscopic saliva particles containing massive loads of virus enter their unmasked throats and begin to replicate. They will sicken, passing the disease on to their friends and loved ones. Many will perish.

The virus remains indifferent to our agony, and our helpful dysfunction. It is utterly aloof.

I am reminded of a man, a Republican politician, who has come to symbolize the shattered American response to Covid-19. His name was Doug Ericksen, and he was a right-wing Washington state senator who fought fiercely against vaccine and mask mandates from his perch in the local Republican Party. He was merely one inconsequential node in our political failure.

Senator Doug Ericksen died from Covid-19 last week, at the age of 52. He leaves behind his wife and their two young daughters. More than anyone else I can possibly think of, Senator Ericksen has come to represent America's bitterly failed war against what Donald Trump called, "the invisible enemy."

As Omicron spreads this winter, perhaps the United States might attempt to learn from the mistakes of last winter in order to save American lives. My deep fear is that we may never learn, even as the virus continues learning, adapting, and improving itself. That is my greatest misgiving.