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Coronavirus

COVID-19 Is The Borg

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 28, 2020
Filed under
COVID-19 Is The Borg

Keith’s note: As a biologist who once ran science review panels on infectious disease for several government agencies at one point in my career, it is frustrating to see rocket scientists pontificate about viral epidemiology. So, for the record, from a rocket science/Sci-fi point of view:
This COVID-19 pandemic is all about Biology. It involves the virus SARS-CoV-2, a relentless molecular machine that has one design role – to copy itself. It uses animal bodies – including human bodies – as factories. The closer that human bodies are to each other the faster this thing can copy itself to other human bodies so as to copy itself again and then spread and copy itself again. It does not care about who you voted for since it does not have the ability to care. Your job is irrelevant since it works for free. It cannot read the Constitution.
SARS-CoV-2 is a simple machine that does one thing and does it well. Our defenses are imperfect and vary from one human host to another. The illnesses that often result are a side effect of human bodies reacting to being taken over as virus factories. Once you get sick you have likely already completed your job as a virus factory by spreading the virus – often before you even got sick – even if you did not get sick. You are disposable.
With regard to “Herd immunity”: If you decide to just let humans (or any other animal) interact freely more of them will get infected, get sick (or maybe not) and then recover and have some immunity. Or they die. Eventually the infected people who survived will no longer be infectious. As a result the statistical probability that any one person can be infected eventually drops since there are fewer infected people to infect others who are not infected. That is “Herd immunity”. But those people who have not been infected are still just as vulnerable to the virus and all of its deadly effects. It is only the probability that an infectious human can infect them that goes down.
OK so let’s do the herd immunity thing. By opening up free interaction between humans you knowingly allow the disease to kill more people. You also run the risk of the infection process getting out of control and possibly swamping your health systems.This can, in turn, cause more people to die due to lack of health care than would otherwise be the case if you limited human to human interaction and the number of sick people seeking health care at any given time. Or you can develop a vaccine/cure and stop the ability of the virus to infect and spread. And that takes time – even when a crash program is undertaken. Or you can keep humans apart – which is what we are all doing.
This molecular machine is “novel”. We still do not totally understand how it works. We do not know all of the ways it affects its human factory hosts. Our current collective ignorance leaves us vulnerable. If you are a Star Trek fan then imagine the Borg as “nanites”. That is what SARS-CoV-2 is. Right now reistance is futile. But staying apart from other humans to slow the spread is not. So stay apart until a vaccine and/or proven treatments are developed.
If NASA can talk to – and reprogram – the Voyagers in interstellar space then its employees can certainly figure out how to get through this.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

5 responses to “COVID-19 Is The Borg”

  1. Blaise A. Darveaux says:
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    Very good, Keith. You presented another way of explaining a complex issue to people. We need many types of explanations to get through to people who don’t have expertise, or even much knowledge, about this organism and our present situation.

    One nit pic that you probably know but didn’t make clear. The name of the disease is COVID-19. The name of the actual virus that causes the disease is SARS-CoV-2. SARS-CoV was responsible for the 2006 pandemic.

  2. Bob Mahoney says:
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    Excellent, Keith. But will your target audience be able to get it (so to speak) if it’s not in a PowerPoint?

    Someone on an immune deficiency forum just passed along this link. The article is long but it illuminates quite a bit:

    https://www.vox.com/science

  3. kcowing says:
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    With regard to “Herd immunity”: If you decide to just let humans (or any other animal) interact freely more will get sick and either die or become immune and eventually not be infectious – then the statistical chance that any one person can be infected eventually drops since there are fewer infected people to infect others. Herd immunity. But those people who have not been infected are still just as vulnerable to the virus – its only the probability that an infectious human can infect them that goes down. And by opening up interaction between humans you allow the disease to kill more people. You run the risk of it getting out of control possibly swamping your health systems and thus causing more people to die due to lack of health care than would otherwise be the case if you limited human to human interaction and the number of sick people seeking health care at any given time. Or you can develop a vaccine/cure and stop the ability of the virus to infect and spread.

    • Bob Mahoney says:
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      Indeed. Even if my school were to open up before the end of the year (not currently contemplated), we’re pretty certain I’d continue to teach from home…but perhaps with help from surrogates on-site.

      The presentation of statistics all too often carries a perception danger. While 99.9% sounds great, the 0.1% person with an underlying condition who catches it anyway and dies…well, the statistics don’t offer much comfort to him/her or the friends and family.

      My underlying immunodeficiency gave me a 75% chance of NOT developing malignancy. I caught TWO different types of lymphoma 11 years apart. Yay (sincerely) for all those not in my quarter of the odds pool. I have taken to saying that God doesn’t pay attention to statistics, especially since I should be dead already at least 5 times over.

      A coworker at NASA once put probability into perspective for me (long before my two cancers): “A probability assigned to any particular outcome doesn’t say whether or not that outcome will occur; it only defines how big to make the exclamation point when it does occur.”

      Thanks for elaborating on these matters, Keith.