Holman Jenkins Junior has got it back to front: <The virus would have to mutate in its animal host to develop the possibility of casual human-to-human transmission.
It would have to survive and reproduce until it reached a human host. It would also have to retain the virulence of bird flu in the few humans that catch it today, yet somehow not snuff out its own spread by killing its carriers.
This does indeed amount to a giant long shot. Jeffrey Taubenberger, a civilian Army pathologist who recreated in a lab the 1918 Spanish flu, says today's bird flu would have to accumulate specific mutations on each of its eight RNA segments. Presumably a powerful selective pressure would be required to drive the virus down this path. If so, it's hard to imagine the virus not also discovering the adaptive benefit of less human lethality, which would aid its spread.
For this, we can give thanks to the Lord for a nature that operates on principles of unintelligent design.
How a catastrophe with low probability of occurring became a focus of Washington's attention can be explained in one word: Katrina. Unlike the universe, politicians operate on psychological principles >
But he got the last part right about Katrina and a damn good think Katrina came along. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good and that wind has ruffled the politician's feathers and they are gung ho now to avoid a catastrophe of gargantuan proportions.
Apart from that, he's wrong.
The virus does NOT have to mutate in its animal host to develop human to human transmissibility. It specifically has to get into humans BEFORE being transmissible, pick up the human flu virus, mate with it, then be born again as a fully-fledged avian human flu ready to kill millions or billions.
These born-again viruses are more dangerous than born again Christians on a Crusade to Armageddon, the Second Coming and The Rapture. All the Christians usually end up doing is going up some handy mountain for a few days to wait for The Rapture. Though King George II seems to be angling right into the actual town of Armageddon in the middle east.
Also, the virus would NOT have to snuff out it's ability to kill its carriers. To remain in the population any length of time, it would have to lower the kill rate so that replacement humans could be born. But we are worried about the existing people. There is no reason why the virus couldn't kill the whole lot, then die itself.
There is no law of nature that says a virus has to go on living. That's just a backward-looking evolutionary demand of things which are still alive. Nearly all species and genes are evolutionary dead-ends. The H12N8 humanized H5N1 could just as well be an evolutionary dead end due to no humans being left to carry it. Holman doesn't understand that. Maybe dinosaurs ended like that - a virus which killed out them and itself. Both too stupid to live.
We are smarter and won't all go down, even if the virus kills everyone it touches.
The virus is NOT seeking an "adaptive benefit of less human lethality which would aid its spread". This is a dumb virus with zero plans. It is just bungling its way along. If it's fatal, it's of no consequence to the virus. It will just fail to be a long-lasting virus. That's fine with nature. Nature doesn't demand that all viruses be long-lasting with lots of happy hosts. Death on a grand scale is fine with nature. There is plenty more biosphere to fill any gaps.
Where does he get "low probability of occurring"? I suppose from his initial false premises. But with huge numbers of hens and other birds and world record numbers of humans, surging around the world in close contact, it looks to me like an excellent time for a virus to run a numbers game.
The probability of an adaptation to humanized form looks worth backing given the propensity for birds and humans to hang out together by the million.
<But the principle of unintelligent design gives us comfort that such cataclysms are vanishingly rare because otherwise we wouldn't be here. >
Again, he doesn't understand odds. The chances of any one of us being here is so near zero that I'd run out of room on the page. Yet, paradoxically, the probability, in retrospect, was exactly 1.0 as here we are. To be here, every single living ancestor of mine had to overcome great hazards in their lives and make it to reproduction time and succeed in hatching the next ancestor leading to my wondrous existence.
That process has gone on in an unbroken chain, with every single being succeeding against all challenges. Not once in a billion years did they fail. What's the chance of that happening. Yet here I am. It was trillions to one that I would NOT be here. Yet, you are reading this right now. That means YOU are alive too. Holy cow!!! What are the odds of that?
Both YOU and ME being here right now [though you might be reading this a bit later]. That's trillions to one x trillions to one = petatrillions to one against. But there might be more than one reader, which makes it so impossible that we can't believe it's actually happening.
Yet, it seems to be.
So despite cataclysms all day every day, with death everywhere over a billion years, with nearly all species and individuals being dead and extinct, we are in fact still here. So he is wrong with his theory, "cataclysm falsified by our existence".
HE is the best argument for "no intelligent design", not the bug.
He also goes on to write: <This is a delicious invitation to worry about everything. In all likelihood, however, each of us will die of something mundane, and in any case we'll all die. Very few policies recommend themselves as the answer to worst-case disasters, except perhaps a policy of space exploration to make sure mankind is not forever dependent on this planet and this solar system.
Panic is certainly not a sustainable response>
Having a response to a threat does not mean one is panicking. I have deliberately neutralized several threats to me by living in a particular place. My risk from volcano, tsunami, flood, earthquake are low though swarms of people within a few kilometres are under those threats.
His is the counsel of giving up, non-thinking, and fatalism. Note that nature has specifically selected for not giving up, thinking and optimism. The fatalistic unthinking defeatists are selected for coffins. Not always, as there is dumb luck and that's as good as a brain. But humans have not, in evolutionary terms, depended on luck for survival. Hence the big lump over our eyebrows.
Mqurice |
