‘Imprisonment’ may make coronavirus kill people – our fight cannot be ZERO SUM GAME

We should find whether the novel coronavirus entered human population with full preparations to attack man or it was so naïve in the beginning and then learned to adjust with the human host (mutation and adaptation) and became successful.

From the evolutionary sense, any pathogen would tend to choose its habitat only to settle. The above revolutionary postulates of the pathogen should be valued only for academic purpose and also for taking several measures to control the pandemic. 

Whenever a pathogen enters a new host (by accident or internally) it would tries to understand the new habitat or host, would adjust and then see whether it can continue in the same host. 

During the early phase, if the microbe faces hostility from the host, in all probability, the pathogen might hop onto to another host if an easy transport system (transmission possibility) and recipients are available.  Otherwise the microbe may fight with the host immune system and may either die or may result in the death of the host.   Whether during the early stage of the pathogen entry, the immune system may get inflated after recognizing the identity of the pathogen to be new or during its active multiplication phase (which happens only at the cost of destruction of our several cells of the host), is not clearly known.

When the host dies, the pathogen has a great chance to gets back to its original host through pathogen ‘swarm’ and that is how the evolution would always organize the pathogen-host interaction. 

The process of cremation or burial is nothing but the product of human culture and civilization and is never an approved process by evolution and nature.   The dead body of all animals in wild are left free for a variety of carnivore’s animals and scavengers to eat and thrive.  When an animal including man dies of a pathogen, the pathogen swarm during scavenging of the dead, helps the pathogen to enter into several other hosts; one of them may be its original host.

The death of the host is mostly useful to the pathogen to trace back its original or near preferred host because the pathogen might have hopped onto man accidently and may not intentionally. Such possibility is high more due to the frequent interaction of the natural host of the pathogen and the recipient – the man.  

If the pathogen has great commutation system and the recipient (host) is also available, the pathogen may jump from one human host to another until it reaches its original host, and then may escape.  But when we lock-up the pathogen in a single host in the name of lockdown, quarantine, confining people in containment zones, the evolutionary compulsion memory may be alerted in the pathogen either to adapt or fight and then escape or perish, before or along with the host. 

If the pathogen learns to adapt in the new human host, then the pathogen may lose its ‘pathogen’ identity.  If the pathogen is compelled to fight due to effective immune surveillance, that may prove detrimental to both the host and the pathogen.  In most cases, pathogen may perish and man may survive.  From the evolutionary perspective, the choice of ‘perish’ shall be the most unlikely consequence. 

The problem of imprisonment or captivity within the same host may pose bigger threat to the pathogen as well besides the host and the threat for the pathogen would be higher if the chance of reverse transmission to its original host is limited and spread of the pathogen in the community is vast.

Imagine Pangolin being the original host of novel coronavirus and then the virus would attempt to get back to Pangolin from an infected man only when the infected man and Pangolin come face to face at great frequency.  If the viral spread is several folds high in the community than the reverse transmission scope, naturally the pressure would be on the virus to learn and adapt in human host than look for its original host.   It is like, if hiding places are available, the snake might runs to its hiding place than be available in open land exposing its death certainty.  

Some expert may argue that how we can apply all such evolutionary theories and principles to a virus that may survive just a few hours only.  Evolution of any new species whether it is virus or blue whale, several considerations would have been analysed in advance, checked and tested and only then a new species would evolve.  Therefore all principles and theories of evolution are applicable to viruses as well.  

Imagine the donor and recipient immune defenses are non-comparable besides the host differences at ‘mega context’, in other words, the recipient host is relatively ‘virgin’ immunologically (man) than the donor system (Pangolin or Bat) which is ‘crude’, the adaptation compulsion would be more on the pathogen to move towards forward adaption in the new host and forgetting the original host or migrating back to its burrows.

Such adaptation would be detrimental to the new host- the man.  Man cannot play tunes to the evolution with the postulate in mind that man and pangolin must interact frequently only then the virus that has come to man from Pangolin would escape back to its original host.

It looks like novel coronavirus hasn’t come fully prepared to attack man.  It would have been accidently entered into human host.  Since the recipient host is much weaker immunologically compared to the donor host (Pangolin or bat), although the new host may not pose much resistance but still the virus may face elimination in the beginning due to severe habitat change. 

Further, if the adaptation demand is forced upon the virus, it may struggle to exist than exit from the same host and even after death of the host, through pathogen swarm, the pathogen may try to migrate to another host. 

We also must remember the reaction and responses of other pathogens and pre-existing microbes in the host with the new pathogen – novel coronavirus. 

When the new invader shows great replication, demands more space and encroaches the territories of those microbes in the host; naturally several pre-existing microbes are likely to react violently against the new invader.  The combat between the new entrant and the pre-existing microbes are likely to trigger ‘an agnostic’ immune reaction of host which may prove fatal to the host.  Such disastrous possibility is quite high among those who suffer from a variety of co-morbid conditions with age on the wrong side of their life, wanting an extension at any cost.   During pathogen swam, many other pathogens are also going to increase their chance of infecting man in near future.

In India, the horizontal transmission scope for the virus is quite high when compared to Europe or US.  The ‘sustenance’ demand in the same host and the associated mutation possibilities are quite limited for the virus in Indian contest prima facie due to high population density per unit area in India whereas in EU and US, due to sparsely distributed population, the virus has greater necessity to adapt in the same host because the horizontal transmission scope is quite limited.  Until it finds another host, the pathogen has to rely on the invaded host.   

The above situation may create an imbalance, chaos and high entropy at immunological and organ-al level in the host which may ultimately push the host to death and the pathogen to swarm.  In the case of novel coronavirus, the viral swarm may not favour the virus to trace back its host and hence the saga may continue, i.e., the virus needs man because we cremate or bury the dead body. 

Now knowing the possible point of escape (exit) of novel coronavirus is difficult because we have caused so much of confusion between man and virus, therefore the virus is going to live with us with several valleys and dales of virus in our population at different time points. 

Sadly we have applied the theoretical or academic approaches than India specific approaches to contain the virus which looks like, have worked against India.   

Lockdown was and is not a wise option for India and instead we should have allowed the virus to rapidly skips through people and get eliminated.  The recent report on the mutation in novel coronavirus making the virus more infectious could be due to the horrible lockdown measure that is adopted. 

Specialist and generalist species evolve mostly due to habitat compulsion.  A deer may eat dried leaves and other similar stuff during acute summer whereas during monsoon the deer may eat only green stuff.  The big cat opts to hunt during night not only due to the limitations of the prey animals during night hours but also due to own energy conservation. 

Since the virus has not come prepared, we should not have allowed the virus to prepare and instead we should have kicked out the virus by allowing it to spread through, in the beginning.  But we imposed lockdown, quarantine etc., and made the virus to undergo several series of mutations to live and die in human host.  

The misery that we face today is purely due to the floppy lockdown measure. 

A virus of such communicating ability should not have been imprisoned in a few human hosts. At least from here on, we must realize the truth that whether we run under the carpet or hide behind the door curtain or shelter inside a blanket cover or keep neem leaf and curcuma water in the front porch, intoxicate with divine hymns and chanting, nothing is going to help us.  

 

The virus must find us somehow, sooner than later.  Unless we allow the vast majority of Indians to contract the virus soon, we are going to have big problem. 

Sooner we reach 70 or 80% of our population contract the virus; we can save India from the present crisis. 

We must accept the BIG TRUTH that our fight against the virus is not ZERO SUM GAME.