virus – Harmonia Philosophica

Coronavirus epidemic. Hand washing. The art of simple. And other ‘little things’…

According to scientists, to fight an epidemic, focus on hand washing. (1)

An advice which came into light just as the epidemic of the coronavirus is gaining momentum.

We have been so much focused on high-tech and elaborate methods of dealing with diseases, that we have forgotten the greatest weapon we ever devised against disease in the first place: Hygiene. And despite our best efforts, even today this still remains our best and most effective weapon.

It is the simple things.

The things we have forgotten.

In a cosmos with the best medical technology, nothing can prevent a virus if people do not wash their hands. In the most developed nation, nothing can save you if there are not sewers. In an era with methods for advanced gene editing available, people can still die for not having soap.

If philosophy can teach us something, anything, this is humility. The ability to look at the simplest things and still stare in awe. If philosophy can teach us something is lack of fear towards the storm. For even in the face of the greatest one, we can dare to say “I am the storm”.

Wash your hands.

Think small.

Those little things.

There is nothing bigger, as David Aames used to say…

Infected by a virus. Thinking. Being alive. Being subjective. Being You.

While conducting a totally separate experiment, a group of scientists from Johns Hopkins and the University of Nebraska accidentally discovered something unexpected and potentially disturbing.

A virus was living in the mouths and throats of a good portion of the people in the study, a virus that the researchers didn’t think was capable of infecting humans. Worse still, it seemed to be slowing some of the subjects’ mental abilities, especially their ability to process visual information.

The surprising part about this for researchers was that a microscopic organism that we thought could only infect algae — plants — was living in about 40% of the small number of people tested.

For the rest of us, the bigger surprise may be that this virus could join the ranks of microorganisms that live inside and on us, changing the way we think. (1)

Seems amazing. But think again.

We are all “infected” by everything.
We live with everything.
We affect everything. And vice versa.

Our view of the world is never clear.
Our view of reality never unobscured.
And yet we feel “reality” out there.
And yet we feel the “world” being.

It is not our eyes who see at this cosmos.
It is the virus which infects us.
The microbes which live in us.
The sand, the blood, the bones, the star dust which makes our bodies.

Everything watches the universe.
Through our eyes.
This is why it can see everything.
This is why it can really see the world’s reality.
This is why we can see “reality”.
Think about it.
Through your virus-infected mind…

Gut, viruses, life itself…

Odds are, there’s a virus living inside your gut that has gone undetected by scientists for decades. A new study has found that more than half the world’s population is host to a newly described virus, named crAssphage, which infects one of the most common gut bacterial species, Bacteroides. This bacterium thought to be connected with obesity, diabetes and other gut-related diseases. (1)

We are all sick.
We all have viruses and bacteria inside us.
We all have that disease called “life”.
And it has 100% mortality rate.
Can you live with that?

Medicine into Law…

Problems have risen related to who owns the new MERS-CoV virus that stroke Saudi Arabia. [1] Some even say that IP (Intellectual Property) claims over the new deadly virus could hinder scientific research towards finding a cure.

Medicine turning into Law…

Synthetic vaccines, natural fears…

British scientists develop a new way to create an entirely synthetic vaccine which does not rely on using live infectious virus, meaning it is much safer. [1] Safer for the virus it is supposed to kill, that is… Because if vaccines based on live viruses have problems with success rates, I can only have nightmares on the success rate of something purely artificial.

According to the scientists, this kind of vaccine has less probability to turn into an infectious form. OK. I get it. But the final goal of the vaccine is to help the organism eliminate the threat. If you do not imitate the threat correctly (and a vaccine based on a virus could be potentially dangerous, indeed), then you are not helping the organism develop its defences properly. Sure it is a dangerous thing to have a gun in your house. But if you are a police officer, I think you kind of have to… If you want peace prepare for death. And any kind of war entails the probability of death…

Our fear of death and our aversion to nature, will finally make our society so sterilized that we will be soon dying like flies out of a winter flu…