WHICH IS MORE LIKELY? 2 (FEATURED ARTICLE)
So you want to pray to a god you claim created diseases because two people ate a fruit after a talking snake told them to. That's akin to asking a guy you claimed has stabbed you for a bandage.
But let's leave all that nonsense aside and look at what we know about zoonotic pathogens, how they spillover, and what this means for those who insist invisible cloud people are going to help them. Let's look at what we actually know.
Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that cause diseases in animals and humans. They often circulate among camels, cats and bats, sometimes evolving to infect people. In animals, coronaviruses can cause diarrhoea in cows and pigs and upper respiratory disease in chickens. In humans, the viruses can cause mild respiratory infections, like the common cold, but can lead to serious illnesses, like pneumonia.
Coronaviruses are so named for the crown-like spikes on their surface. Human coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s. They have been closely monitored by public health officials for quite a while.
There is a fundamental principle of biology that helps us understand infectious diseases, but we know the invisible cloud people fan club don't like talking about that "E" word. So let's assume we got it wrong and these deluded genie lovers are right.
This would mean that your genie created microbes that can co-exist happily with their natural reservoirs. Bats carry a myriad of coronaviruses as well as filoviruses like Mengla, Marburg and Ebola without getting sick. This invisible cloud person they love so much saw it fit to bequeath to bats an immune system that could handle these viruses but not to give humans the same benefit. Such a god sounds woefully inept.
We now have good evidence that reservoirs reach equilibrium with their viral passengers and both can eventually co-exist relatively happily. There is now evidence that some populations of chimpanzees have evolved resistance to SIV. I wonder if they prayed for that.
This is also one of the fundamental reasons why the female Anopheles mosquito is able to host Plasmodium falciparum (the human malaria parasite) with no ill effect. Its immune system allows it to host the parasite and transmit it to a human host successfully. We know what happens when the human malaria parasite enters the blood cells of its human host. 400,000 people die annually from malaria, and most of these are African children under the age of five. We know the human malaria parasite has to undergo its life cycle inside a female Anopheles mosquito (its primary host) and humans (its secondary host). So the mosquito is both a vector and a host. The female Anopheles mosquito requires a blood meal to nourish its eggs, thereby making it necessary for it to bite humans and feast on the protein in our blood. (Whose idea was this?) So the carrier of malaria is immune to the parasite that kills hundreds of thousands of people annually—it used to be around two million a year until recently. And every time we take steps to defend ourselves, this parasite responds. Africans used to be immune to Plasmodium vivax because of a mutation known as the Duffy Negative Mutation. Not anymore! Apparently, Plasmodium vivax prayed and god gave it the tools to outwit this mutation! When artemisinin was discovered as an anti-malarial drug by Tu Youyou, it was hailed as a wonder drug. But Plasmodium falciparum obviously prayed and evolved resistance to it!
Now back to our burden of disease and how we make sense of things. Viruses infect virtually all organisms on earth. They infect each other and they also infect bacteria. In fact, most of the viruses on earth are bacteriophages, which specialise in killing bacteria. There are also viruses that only infect mammals, amphibians, reptiles etc. (You get the picture.) What is clear is that the natural world provides enough evidence to suggest that if indeed gods exist, they must be insane.
The same coronaviruses that give you a mild cold are also related to the strain that is causing this current outbreak. We understand why a novel coronavirus can be a problem. This is essentially what happens when a virus jumps into a new host. But why would an allegedly capable and benevolent god give you an innate and adaptive immune system that is not up to the job? Why would you have to pray for god to finish a job he did so well with bats and other natural reservoirs? (And I ain't never seen a bat pray!) The bats that carry Marburg, Hendra, Ebola, Nippah or Coronaviruses never had to pray for the immune system that allows them to harbour these viruses. Only deluded humans admit their god is incompetent and also ask him to please finish the job.
I wish people could be taught about the mechanisms of diseases. Smallpox killed an estimated 300 million in the 20th century alone. Yersinia pestis, which was responsible for the Black Death, has now been traced to around 3000 BCE. Various strains of this bacterium decimated humans in the 6th century during the Justinian plague and between 1348 and 1351. The Antonine plague killed an estimated 5 million people in the 2nd century CE, and the Spanish flu killed an estimated 50 million in 1918. The Athenian plague decimated ancient Greeks in the 5th century BCE, and the ancient Egyptians left significant records about epidemics. We could go and on and on. But we have a good idea as to why and how pathogens emerge. We understand why there are various strains of Avian flu and how they jumped into humans in the past, and might still do so in the future. SARS-Cov-2 won't be the last outbreak if we don't change some of our bad habits.
There is enough evidence to suggest that talking to your imaginary friend to help you with a disease is no more useful than talking to your toilet bowl. The same god allegedly gave bacteria the means to remove viral invaders from their genome with the aid of tools like CRISPR, and they did not have to pray for it. We also suspected that bacteriophages may have anti-CRISPR tools. And guess what? They do!!! These are some of the predictions you can make when you understand the fundamental principle (evolution) that underpins modern biology.
If indeed god exists, it must be a microbe!!
The problem with social media is that it gives people whose knowledge of the microbial world would fit in a gnat's testicle a platform to display their ignorance, and a great majority of people are quite adept at this.
For prayers to make any sense, you would not have spillovers in the first place, or, at the very least, this god you keep prattling about could just give humans a comparable immune system to bats. Bats are awash with viruses and they do fine without having to pray. So god is either inept, stupid, needlessly cruel, or non-existent.
Or maybe Batman is god!!
Tavian Oladapo is a Microbiologist working at the Imperial College, London. He also writes scientific articles for his own blog and Atheist Alliance International. Follow him at @curiousityfeeds on Twitter.
But let's leave all that nonsense aside and look at what we know about zoonotic pathogens, how they spillover, and what this means for those who insist invisible cloud people are going to help them. Let's look at what we actually know.
Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that cause diseases in animals and humans. They often circulate among camels, cats and bats, sometimes evolving to infect people. In animals, coronaviruses can cause diarrhoea in cows and pigs and upper respiratory disease in chickens. In humans, the viruses can cause mild respiratory infections, like the common cold, but can lead to serious illnesses, like pneumonia.
Coronaviruses are so named for the crown-like spikes on their surface. Human coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s. They have been closely monitored by public health officials for quite a while.
There is a fundamental principle of biology that helps us understand infectious diseases, but we know the invisible cloud people fan club don't like talking about that "E" word. So let's assume we got it wrong and these deluded genie lovers are right.
This would mean that your genie created microbes that can co-exist happily with their natural reservoirs. Bats carry a myriad of coronaviruses as well as filoviruses like Mengla, Marburg and Ebola without getting sick. This invisible cloud person they love so much saw it fit to bequeath to bats an immune system that could handle these viruses but not to give humans the same benefit. Such a god sounds woefully inept.
We now have good evidence that reservoirs reach equilibrium with their viral passengers and both can eventually co-exist relatively happily. There is now evidence that some populations of chimpanzees have evolved resistance to SIV. I wonder if they prayed for that.
This is also one of the fundamental reasons why the female Anopheles mosquito is able to host Plasmodium falciparum (the human malaria parasite) with no ill effect. Its immune system allows it to host the parasite and transmit it to a human host successfully. We know what happens when the human malaria parasite enters the blood cells of its human host. 400,000 people die annually from malaria, and most of these are African children under the age of five. We know the human malaria parasite has to undergo its life cycle inside a female Anopheles mosquito (its primary host) and humans (its secondary host). So the mosquito is both a vector and a host. The female Anopheles mosquito requires a blood meal to nourish its eggs, thereby making it necessary for it to bite humans and feast on the protein in our blood. (Whose idea was this?) So the carrier of malaria is immune to the parasite that kills hundreds of thousands of people annually—it used to be around two million a year until recently. And every time we take steps to defend ourselves, this parasite responds. Africans used to be immune to Plasmodium vivax because of a mutation known as the Duffy Negative Mutation. Not anymore! Apparently, Plasmodium vivax prayed and god gave it the tools to outwit this mutation! When artemisinin was discovered as an anti-malarial drug by Tu Youyou, it was hailed as a wonder drug. But Plasmodium falciparum obviously prayed and evolved resistance to it!
Now back to our burden of disease and how we make sense of things. Viruses infect virtually all organisms on earth. They infect each other and they also infect bacteria. In fact, most of the viruses on earth are bacteriophages, which specialise in killing bacteria. There are also viruses that only infect mammals, amphibians, reptiles etc. (You get the picture.) What is clear is that the natural world provides enough evidence to suggest that if indeed gods exist, they must be insane.
The same coronaviruses that give you a mild cold are also related to the strain that is causing this current outbreak. We understand why a novel coronavirus can be a problem. This is essentially what happens when a virus jumps into a new host. But why would an allegedly capable and benevolent god give you an innate and adaptive immune system that is not up to the job? Why would you have to pray for god to finish a job he did so well with bats and other natural reservoirs? (And I ain't never seen a bat pray!) The bats that carry Marburg, Hendra, Ebola, Nippah or Coronaviruses never had to pray for the immune system that allows them to harbour these viruses. Only deluded humans admit their god is incompetent and also ask him to please finish the job.
I wish people could be taught about the mechanisms of diseases. Smallpox killed an estimated 300 million in the 20th century alone. Yersinia pestis, which was responsible for the Black Death, has now been traced to around 3000 BCE. Various strains of this bacterium decimated humans in the 6th century during the Justinian plague and between 1348 and 1351. The Antonine plague killed an estimated 5 million people in the 2nd century CE, and the Spanish flu killed an estimated 50 million in 1918. The Athenian plague decimated ancient Greeks in the 5th century BCE, and the ancient Egyptians left significant records about epidemics. We could go and on and on. But we have a good idea as to why and how pathogens emerge. We understand why there are various strains of Avian flu and how they jumped into humans in the past, and might still do so in the future. SARS-Cov-2 won't be the last outbreak if we don't change some of our bad habits.
There is enough evidence to suggest that talking to your imaginary friend to help you with a disease is no more useful than talking to your toilet bowl. The same god allegedly gave bacteria the means to remove viral invaders from their genome with the aid of tools like CRISPR, and they did not have to pray for it. We also suspected that bacteriophages may have anti-CRISPR tools. And guess what? They do!!! These are some of the predictions you can make when you understand the fundamental principle (evolution) that underpins modern biology.
If indeed god exists, it must be a microbe!!
The problem with social media is that it gives people whose knowledge of the microbial world would fit in a gnat's testicle a platform to display their ignorance, and a great majority of people are quite adept at this.
For prayers to make any sense, you would not have spillovers in the first place, or, at the very least, this god you keep prattling about could just give humans a comparable immune system to bats. Bats are awash with viruses and they do fine without having to pray. So god is either inept, stupid, needlessly cruel, or non-existent.
Or maybe Batman is god!!
Tavian Oladapo is a Microbiologist working at the Imperial College, London. He also writes scientific articles for his own blog and Atheist Alliance International. Follow him at @curiousityfeeds on Twitter.
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