How Viruses Are Misunderstood
Humans only see viruses when they hurt us, like an ant only notices the foot. But they are much more than that.
Right now, you have 380 trillion viruses all over your body and they’re not hurting you at all. Across all humanity, we carry more viruses than there are stars in the known universe. If we include my son, who still licks tables, it would be a multiverse.
Viruses are the oldest biological entity on the planet and they exist in balance with everything else. We’re the ones messing that up.
Right now you don’t notice the universe of viral activity in your very own body because they are perfectly balanced with 38 trillion bacteria. Every year you shit out your entire weight in bacteria, and viruses help keep that all in balance. Get rid of viruses and bacteria and you’ve gotten rid of life. In a very real sense, humans are just the latest handbags for higher beings.
We view viruses as invading us, but in reality, we are invading them. We torture cows, or steal habitat from bats, or crowd human beings together. Viruses create a necessary balancing of those conditions and, frankly, they’re not doing enough. We view viruses as some abstract threat without seeing the whole ecosystem. This is a wrong view of them, and of us.
