Covid-19 is Still a Problem, or: How Diseases Actually Work

Can we prepare ourselves for the reality of our world?

“Down the Rabbit Hole” by ky_olsen is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Between the 1860s and 1950, Australia attempted to kill a fuck-ton of rabbits using plague.

Australia has fought some interesting wars.

Like the time that their army lost a war against 30,000 emus.

Anyway, the rabbit plague eventually worked — it killed almost all of the rabbits. But then, the rabbit population that survived appeared to be less effected. This appeared to support conclusions for “avirulency” an idea partially popularized by a pathologist named Theobald Smith who observed that cows, when bitten repeatedly by ticks, appeared to develop less-severe infections over time.

General Safety Measures We Need to Normalize

The myth goes like this: viruses that kill their hosts can’t reproduce. Therefore, viruses tend toward a pattern of contagion without death to better their chance for survival.

But there is a problem with this theory.