Thursday, 14 May 2020

Get over it. You always have viruses.

Get over it.  You always live with viruses, some 20 trillion of them call you their home.  Your body's immune system cleans the troublesome ones up.  Usually it's successful, even with a bad new one like the Wuhan coronavirus.  They are not going to go away.  As Bill Maher says, "You can't sanitize the universe".

You have about 37 trillion cells in your body.  And about 100 trillion bacteria.  When you step on the scales in the morning, bacteria account for several of those pounds.   There are about 10 viruses for every bacterium and some of them infect those poor little bacteria too.   Those cells of yours operate off about 22,000 genes.  There are another nearly 8 million genes beavering away in the same tissue, but they are bacteria and virus genes, not your own.   Add to that about 8% of your own genome which is re-packaged virus.  It's complicated in a lively way and not a simple fight between bad bat bugs and humanity.  (I Contain A Multitude by Ed Yong is an eye opener.)
About 8 percent of the human genome consists of retroviral DNA sequences that have inserted themselves into the human germline, where some of their functions have been adopted to serve essential functions for their host’s survival and development.

Here's one minute of common sense from Bill Maher:


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