The Covid-19 epidemic is sure to end. There is no doubt about it.
We live in a ring of enemies - viruses, bacteria and other infection, which every now and then goes on the offensive, turns healthy people into sick, kills. The pernicious coronavirus Covid-19 is a fresh example of this.
It would seem that humanity should have disappeared long ago, having fallen in unequal battles with infectious diseases. But it is still alive. Why?
“All epidemics, like any wars, end sooner or later,” says Pavel Vorobyov, MD, professor, chairman of the board of the Moscow City Scientific Society of Physicians. - And the current one is no exception. Will soon decline. If you haven't already.
And this, according to the scientist, is not so surprising. At least for him. Because our relatively peaceful coexistence with viruses and bacteria is predetermined by nature. The human genome is about half composed of the DNA of viruses that have been embedded there in the process of evolution. And there are more bacteria in our body than the cells of the body itself. Various microbes help to digest food, produce all kinds of useful substances, strengthen the immune system.
Viruses are generally considered instruments of Mother Nature. With their help, she brought some living beings to their current perfection. Including you and me. It adapted to changing environmental conditions, taking advantage of the ability of viruses to embed their DNA into the host's genome. Someone was killed by nature. Or didn’t fit. And the species, for some reason, "rejected" died out themselves.
With bacteria, which, sometimes moving from habitual habitats to unusual ones, begin harmful activity, the defenses of the organism itself and antibiotics created by man come into conflict. Bacteria resist, developing resistance to antibiotics and attacks of defenses, but so far they are losing this opposition. The resulting immunity overcomes the disease. If the body, of course, is not too depleted, not spoiled by the years lived and bad excesses.
Our internal defenses, as a rule, deal with viruses. Recognizes old acquaintances and activates long-established defense mechanisms, synthesizing appropriate antibodies. Viruses, however, mutate - mutate, becoming unrecognizable for a while. They freely enter the cells. They breed there. But sooner or later, immunity also appears on "strangers". Antibodies capable of resisting them accumulate. It is they who stop the further spread of epidemics. The interaction between man and infection again goes into the stage of peaceful coexistence. Until the next mutation.
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Attempts to kill the virus are physically not the most effective. Immunity is safer.
- Pavel, Andreevich, - I am interested, - there is such a semi-mystical hypothesis: viruses, for which we are a habitat and reproduction, "understand" that it would be unreasonable to destroy all of us, since it would eventually destroy them. So viruses are retreating, preserving themselves as a species and us as its carriers. Encouraging …
- One gets the impression that it really is so, - the scientist answers.
The worst viral epidemics in human history
Spanish flu of 1918: 50 to 100 million victims
According to the controversial, but very popular version, the Spanish flu, also known as "Spanish flu", originated in China. Allegedly, its causative agent - the H1N1 virus - mutated from a completely harmless "progenitor" that inhabited ducks. Together with the Chinese workers - "coolies" - he quickly made it to Europe, then to the rest of the world. Affected mainly the lungs. People who did not have any immunity to the "alien" then began to suffer from high fever, severe sore throat, and then - sometimes in three days - turned blue and died of suffocation. Although many - out of more than half a billion infected, about a third of the world's population at that time - still survived. The mortality rate was between 10 and 20 percent - much higher than the current epidemic caused by the Covid-19 coronavirus, which does not exceed 3 percent.
Hospitals were overcrowded with the * Spanish flu *.
Experts still argue: some believe that the "Spanish flu" and the current coronavirus infection are similar - both in the appearance of viruses, and their source, and symptoms and the most vulnerable organs, and even the history of spread. The only difference is that a century ago they sinned on the ducks that infected people, and now bats are blamed for this. By the way, the Chinese ate and eat both.
Skeptics deny the similarity of epidemics, claiming that viruses - the past and the present -, although relatives, are still very different. As well as the diseases caused by them.
We were sick with * Spanish flu * not for long: 3 days - and made room for new arrivals.
The Spanish flu epidemic ended as suddenly as it began. According to the most common belief, the H1N1 virus has mutated into less deadly strains. Nature has mercy.
Smallpox: 300 to 500 million victims in the 20th century
Smallpox or smallpox is caused by two types of viruses, the mortality rate from one of which reaches 90 percent. Genetic studies show that the "human" smallpox virus is close to the "camel" one. And today it is generally accepted that he somehow passed from camels to man at the beginning of our era. And it happened somewhere in the Middle East.
Smallpox * mowed * people from ancient times.
It seems that smallpox is mentioned in the Bible among 10 Egyptian executions: "… and there will be an inflammation with abscesses on people and on livestock, throughout the land of Egypt …". (Exodus, ch. IX, verse 9-10).
Smallpox was defeated by vaccination. The most recent case of the disease was recorded in 1978. Then a British woman who worked as a medical photographer became infected. Infected in a viral research laboratory. And she died.
AIDS: about 35 million victims since the beginning of the epidemic
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is caused by human immune deficiency viruses (HIV). It is believed that they began to hit people in the 60s of the last century - they mutated from those that lived in African monkeys.
AIDS has not yet been defeated: the epidemic continues.
The first cases of AIDS were reported in 1981 after 30 cases were announced in the United States. The virus itself was identified and studied in 1983. In 2008, the scientists who made the discovery received the Nobel Prize. Surprisingly, HIV is similar to coronavirus - also a kind of ball with pimples.
AIDS was originally thought to affect exclusively gay men and drug addicts. In the end, it turned out that no one was insured.
Swine flu 2009: approximately 500 thousand victims
It seems that 11 years ago the mutated H1N1 showed itself. The origin of this human-to-human strain is unknown. But the disease first became widespread in Mexico and the United States.
In the summer of 2009, WHO declared swine flu a pandemic and assigned it the sixth - highest - severity level.
The swine flu virus can. somewhere * to sit out *, mutate and again attack people.
The symptoms of swine flu and the common flu are the same - headache, fever, cough, runny nose. Viruses are outwardly similar, like all those that have killed almost a billion people around the world.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY