THE (MORE AND MORE) INTELLIGENT VIRUS

“No effect is in nature without reason, intend reason and you need no experience”. Leonardo Da Vinci(1)                                    

 We have widely told, on this blog, about the ecological function of viruses, accoding to the present knowledge (2) and also Leonardo’s thought. He was the first who supposed nature should send “some poisoned and pestiferous vapours and a continuos plague” to control the natural tendency of any animal and above all human population to increase indefinitely.

Very recent studies, the very beautiful Factfulness by Hans Rosling(3) among them, have concluded that the exponential growth of human population tends to stop since the more economic welfare increases the fewer children women have spontaneously. According to Rosling, in 2070, human population, after getting to eleven bilion people, will stop its growth. It isn’t here the seat where to explain why, with the growth of economic welfare only, the number of children decreases.

world population

Therefore it should seem the Virus’s action isn’t so intelligent because what’s the use of causing epidemics that, like the one of Coronavirus, have a rate of mortality decidedly lower than the one of  a trivial seasonal flu?

In order to understand let’s have a step back.

We saw, always in the blog “The Intelligent Virus” how environmental catastrophes are one of the dangers threatening the survival of man’s life on the planet Earth.

According to most scholars, I am one of them, environmental catastrophes are closely linked to pollution that is a direct consequence of overpopulation. Therefore, before the tendency to a spontaneous reduction of the numerical growth of human population becomes efficacious (in Rosling’s opinion more than 50 years will be necessary), environmental catastrophes will have time enough to destroy man’s life on the planet Earth or at least turn the latter into a sterile desert.

If we paraphrase the sentence “Desertum fecerunt et pacem appellaverunt “(4)” they made a desert and called it peace” we could assert “ Desertum fecerunt et humanitatem appellaverunt “they made a desert and called it civilization”.

Yet the Virus is much more intelligent than we can think. A recent study (5), carried out by Lauri Myllyvirta, says the epidemic of Coronavirus, by paralysing economic activity in China, could reduce the emissions of CO2, in the country, at least of a quarter.

If we refer to the relative links to study this incredible piece of news in depth, it ‘s clear that a microscopic creature like a virus can do what man hasn’t been able to do after a lot of worldwide meetings and protocols.

At this point a very complicated scene opens and consists in the study of the phenomena from an integrated, scientific and philosophical point of view.

Man with his passing from monkey to hominid considered himself quite emancipated from nature and as if he were a God. But reality is very different and, by denying Nature-God, man, actually, made himself dependent on other idols like economy. But we’ll say about this in other posts, now we suggest to have a look at the ones we have already published some time ago.

[1]  Leonardo da Vinci. Pensiero 14. Codice Atlantico. Biblioteca Ambrosiana Milano. 1487 (reprinted in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Literary writings. Pag. 65 BUR Milano 1991).

[2]  Stephen S. Morse. Emerging Viruses. Oxford University Press USA; New Ededition (1 Jan. 1993)

[3]  Rizzoli editore. Milano 2019

[4]  Desertum fecerunt et pacem appellaverunt, literally, they made a desert and called it peace is a traditional expression that closely follows, but very freely, the one taken from Calgaco (king of the Caledonians)’s speech, reported in the De Agricola by Tacito and referring to the position of the Britons as to the Romans: Ubi      solitudinem        faciunt,     pacem appellant.

Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci