Stuck between Life and Death ft. Virus
Well, virus! The most hated thing on this planet earth since last year. But Novel coronavirus is not the only one that clings to our back. Viruses have been there with us, within us since the dawn of this species. They are actually way older than we are. They are indeed thought to be the most primitive form of life on earth, as they are not completely biotic and at the same time not completely abiotic, sort of stuck between life and death, much like a superposition of life and death.
Almost every single individual of this community is pathogenic to living organisms. And this stayed an established fact since its discovery in 1892, by Dmitri Ivanowsky from mosaic disease of tobacco. And later experiments established that it actually is stuck between life and death.
Viruses are the live superposition of life and death as they are non-living entities outside a living cell or cell product, but once entered a living cell, take over the cellular machinery and get control over the host cell, commanding the host to produce thousands of its kind so that it can end up causing infection according to geometrical; progression model, without showing any sort of care to the health conditions of the host cell, causing some major health issues to the organism constituted of the infected cells. Hence, viruses are either parasites or dead, it’s weird hah!
Viruses, to parasitise the livings, so for protection livings had to develop something to combat these zombies, so through billions years of evolution they developed some of the most advanced cellular defence systems. These systems rely on thousands of chemicals. And this makes the chemistry of life a bit more interesting, a chemical stand up protesting against another chemical. That’s cool.
But, unfortunately, all these chemical defenses are effective at a scale of nothing, as the naked DNA of viruses undergo mutation at a really fast rate as against highly protected genetic material of living organisms. This results in the ineffectiveness of evolution for thousands of years against mutation of a few months.
Viruses, those lifelets, seem innocent and lab material are not actually that. At Least people will believe this thing blindly because of the ongoing situations. They are actually stronger than wars, potent to wipe out the civilizations and probably have done that in the past. But some stayed with us, since the dawn of civilization, causing infection but not apocalypse, like the virus that causes viral flu.
Viruses are obvious speed breakers on the path of civilization, they cause disease which through infection spread on to others due to the lifestyle we adopted during the last few centuries, decreasing our productivity and in the meantime slowing our pace on the path of civilization.
But we decided that- that tiny, apparently lifeless particle should not decide our destiny. And that caused us to conduct more and more research on those lifelets, in the sake of knowing what it feels like being stuck between life and death. We set up organizations like World Health Organizations to monitor those research and publish an unified report for humanity as a whole.
We have been successful in unfolding many mysteries that stayed stuck between life and death for centuries, but we still are unable to invent any medicines to combat the health issues, diseases, infections, etc. caused by viruses. And these all are because of their rate of mutation and obviously the naked DNA. We are till date unable to substitute the naturally present cellular defense.
In some cases like cancer, AIDS, etc. viral infection and spread of disease are closely associated with our lifestyle. And it is to be noted that when a virus is able to cause more and more infections, its ability of mutation increases, making it stronger in causing infection, spreading diseases, and deteriorating health issues.
So, to some extent our move decides our fate.
“What are called viruses are always dead and incapable of any acts whatsoever. Dead matter may be acted upon but never acts of itself.”― The Great AIDS Hoax
