It may sound funny, bizarre and unimaginable that humans may soon develop proboscis or long trunk like our elephant god or Tapir to fight novel coronavirus.
Evolution is never a prejudiced stepmother but instead an equal opportunity employer.
When evolution favours novel coronavirus to be omniscient in infecting everyone on earth, it is dumb to fear that man will not evolve to combat the virus. This is all about evolution. Evolutionary changes don’t occur as fast as viral communicability in our population. That is science and the rest is fun.
We are debating too much about novel coronavirus and COVID 19 and made a strong perception among lay population that if the virus contract them, they are sure to develop COVID 19 and then what would happen to them………is left open to the imagination.
Two strong possibilities for the evolution of novel coronavirus we cannot discount or dismiss. The first possibility is parallel evolution. Due to a signal that man could not comprehend until now, the coronavirus would have received and then evolved to infect man in all most every geographical region.
The second possibility being, the virus would have evolved in one particular area taking advantage over the movement of people across the globe to travel and infect people everywhere.
The second possibility is to be accepted then should we not also accept the possibility of novel coronavirus may be evolving in some geography as Darwin’s Finches of Galapagos……?
Every species evolve and adapt only to enhance its survival and not to kill others in the ecosystem. Exploitation of the weaker and weakness is part and parcel of the game of kill and get killed in nature.
Our politicians too use such principle effectively… imagine had there be no poor people, none of our political parties would have survived today. Imagine if there is no fear and ignorance, the lockdown would not have been imposed and then called it as Maha Yagna to save humanity in India.
The lockdown has killed our economy, life and livelihood of millions.
Darwin’s Finches are passerine birds distributed all over the world but in Galapagos Island, the bird has evolved with a peculiar character called vampire-ism, sucking blood from other animals to quench its thrust and such behaviour is uncommon among finches around the world.
Recent studies done by British scientists have shown the existence of three separate strains of novel coronaviruses such as A, B, C. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/did-coronavirus-outbreak-begin-in-september-not-december-as-china-says-1676044-2020-05-09
Interestingly the strain A was reported to be dominant in US and the said strain was not so dominant in Wuhan, China. Then should we assume that the strain A could not infect Chinese population that well but could infect western population easily and hence it spreads well to US.
Or all these strains would have traveled together and then survived based on their fitness. Or may be only one strain would have emerged, traveled to different parts of the world and then diversified genetically for its survival? Or else, is all these strains may be competing with each other to prove who is the fittest to survive?
If we look at the above confusion of novel coronavirus, one thing that popups up clearly is that the virus has not yet identified its final host and is still under natural selection process.
The genetic pleomorphism exhibited by the virus suggests its struggle alongside the struggle of Homo sapiens.
Another possibility of viral spread could be through various goods (extra-human sources) such as manufactured items; sea foods; semi-processed foods etc., and that have been moving across all countries in the world. The virus would have infected man from such sources, got mutated and the struggle of man-virus continues?
The big question is whether the virus or man remained calm during the pandemic? Certainly, the virus is calm and the man had only made so much of noise about. If the virus has travelled though ‘goods’, then what is the locus standee of the gospel instruction; use of mask, frequent hand wash, social distancing, lockdown etc.,?
From the evolutionary perspective, if novel coronavirus is the only pathogen that had emerged with such a strong infectivity and virulence in the recent times, then should we not assume soon that man may grow or develop proboscis or trunk like an elephant or tapir to prevent the spread of the virus?
India has not studied the virus even a little but did too much to prevent the spread of the virus by imposing nationwide lockdown for two months; killed the economy, life and livelihood of millions.
Before we press the panic button, should we not understand the ‘killer’, his or her idiosyncrasies? But we weighed only the medical problem due to the supposedly believed killer called novel coronavirus.
ICMR, NITI Aayog and other organizations must be asked to explain what effort, resources and time they had allocated to understand the virus during the lockdown other than they have been travelling across in air-conditioned cars, enjoying all paraphernalia at the expense of Government of India.
When we quote USA, we should realize certain facts about USA. On January 20, 2020, the first case of COVID (atypical pneumonia) was reported in USA and before January 28, 2020, complete bio-data of the virus, USA has studied, analysed, nomenclature, documented, deposited the strain in the referral centre…….
Even the WHO had to learn a lot about novel coronavirus only from USA.
What Modi government has done to deal the pandemic other than the draconian measure called nationwide lockdown?
We allowed the medical professionals and bureaucracy to dominate the scene and gave least space for science to do its bit of job.
Indian doctors in general are good only in diagnosis of diseases, prescribe medicine or conduct surgery. They are oriented more towards practice….to treat patients and earn from patients.
Whereas most of the medical practitioners in US, UK etc., are hard core scientists, engaged in intense medical and drug research, chair several research institutions, write research proposals for grants and publish research articles in several leading journals like PNAS, EMBO etc.
But the research of most of the Indian physicians is limited to case reporting and publishing such case reports in respective association’s journals.
Science and our research quest should have been made as champion to deal the pandemic but we missed. Our government may love to grant Ganga water for COVID 19 treatment project or clinical trial of some herbs with great pride.
How India will proper if we inculcate such regressive research engagements and allow the white collared bureaucrats and administrative agencies like ICMR, NITI Aayog to rule the roost?
We have to hope on evolution to save us and not by our government. Government knows at best only to lockdown the country and extent the lockdown; kill our economy, life and livelihood.
Lockdown has killed India the worst and not the novel coronavirus.
