What is a virus? Comprehensive view on Complex Dynamics

Summary of my current thesis on the subject + brief notes on SARS-CoV-2 & COVID

This is just a summary. References in support of these views will be added to future scientific reports and/or had been added already in my previous substack articles. The main consideration here is that anyone can arrive to similar conclusions just by observing the Natural World (there is no need for hundreds of papers from the literature), be it as Scientists; as I did as a kid while using an Optical Microscope to investigate protozoa, cultured from lakes, rivers, forests, gardens…

be it as Naturalists; observing the flora and fauna of any given ecosystem, hiking, sleeping in the forest, doing astronomy sessions in nature while observing the skies and hearing the sounds of the forest at night, the movement of bats, the insects, owls and other entities that look and sound mysterious to the mind…

To Observe the Natural World, especially as a child, is by far, the best way to learn about viruses, believe it or not.

The stars and the forest at night have a lot more to teach about viruses than you might think. All children should experience these adventures before they become blind to the mysteries of Nature, before they become easy to manipulate and control by Sci-Fi stories of WorldWide Contagion Events that in actuality never happened.

My current thesis (Summary with AI generated audio available):

1) Viruses ARE NOT Disease-Causing Agents per se, they have a biological function within the ecosystem in a considerably complex manner, mostly unknown to our current understanding. Although in some instances and for some species, they can present themselves in association with disease, same as bacteria, fungi, protozoa, allergens… or even parts of our own immune system. In such cases, unregulated signaling pathways can lead to proliferation, cascade events and harm, thus presenting as infectious diseases (case for some viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa...) or autoimmune diseases (allergens, internal dysregulations of the immune system…). In this instance, and for lack of a comprehensive view on the whole dynamics of the system, some viruses have been classified as pathogens due to reductionism.

2) They indeed are both exogenous (e.g. non retroviral elements with a distinct genotype of non-cromosomal origin) and endogenous (e.g. retroviruses, transposable elements...); and they indeed can be highly mutagenic as well as stable, if we understand that they are an integral and functional part of the ecosystem within and between species. Different signaling pathways might increase the rate of mutagenesis, like APOBEC and many other mechanisms that are currently unknown, as well as reduce it, making their production (by cells) more stable and of higher fidelity; depending on the function and/or dynamics of the system in which they are involved (as I said, in a considerably complex manner).

3) They are clearly NOT self-replicating autonomous entities that could spread in perpetuity in a susceptible population. They are produced by cells, as an essential part of the network of information transfer at that scale. Only via dysregulation, phase transitions within the ecosystem, or other “favorable” conditions they will proliferate in a harmful manner (of course, solely in the case of viruses that are capable of pathogenicity), same as bacteria, fungi, protozoa... That process might produce cascade events in spatio-temporally localized regions of the network in which they exist, usually affecting differentially different cohorts of the population. An example would be a localized outbreak of a given disease in places with poor hygiene, lack of clean water, no access to food, war, floods, extreme weather events, close contact with animals kept in poor conditions... Another example is seasonality, where pathogenicity extends to several hundreds of different species of bacteria, viruses… and severity is highly dependent on age, comorbidities, social status… Of course, in all these cases, the etiology of disease is multifactorial in nature. Far from the simplified cartoon depictions of complex phenomena such as seasonal influenza, where a myriad of other viruses, bacteria, allergens, fungi… are involved, and the main factors of disease are related to weakness, poor diet, age, not wearing appropriate clothing, body temperature dysregulations…

4) As to why viruses were attributed the label of toxins, pathogens, obligate intracellular parasites, disease-causing agents... the reason is very simple, our naive attempt to find monocausal explanations for so-called infectious diseases; that is, those who manifest as infections, like an infected wound, an infected throat… not those who are transmissible. However the etiology of most infectious processes is multifactorial in nature, it cannot be reduced to a single disease-causing agent.

5) With regards to contagion events, evidently, spatio-temporal dysregulations of the network of information transfer on any given ecosystem, as I said, due to poor hygiene, lack of clean water, and so on and so forth, will create a cascade effect. However, for the most part, viruses are already ubiquitous throughout the ecosystem, therefore the transmission chain is not sustained by any biological structure per se (e.g. viruses, bacteria. fungi...), but by states of non-equilibrium.

6) Given all of this, a worldwide pandemic event, consisting of multiple outbreaks spreading all around the globe, could only happen after a world war or a similar global catastrophe. And even then, the biological elements involved in the process of reestablishing equilibrium, would be of different origin/nature (e.g. different species of bacteria, viruses…) in different regions, based on regional constraints. It will NEVER be a single pathogen, affecting uniformly different populations, within different ecosystems, in different climates and under different behaviors, population densities, cultures, interactions…; as it is often portrait in Sci-Fi movies like ‘Contagion’ or ‘12 Monkeys’.

Picture from the movie Contagion where healthy people are all behaving in a very odd fashion for no apparent reason and under no threat whatsoever, as the air is clean, the water is clean, the food is everywhere, the weather is fabulous… and as I said, everybody looks pretty healthy here.

7) As a conclusion, as you can see, the COVID pandemic NEVER happened.

*Does SARS-CoV-2 exist? Of course it does, it has been genotyped and phenotyped by several independent laboratories all over the world.

*Is it associated with disease in some instances? Of course it is, it belongs to the cluster of biological elements associated with respiratory infections.

*Is it a novel entity that emerged in late 2019? No it is not, otherwise it would not be endemic worldwide, but regionally, in an adaptive zoonotic process that might take centuries to fully adapt to human populations.

*Does it come from a bioweapons lab in Wuhan China or anywhere else? That sounds like a serious question so I will answer it appropriately: 😅😂🤣

*What happened in 2020 then? A Public Health Emergency of International Concern, that is, a PHEIC, pronounced as (fake /fāk/) as you can clearly hear in the video below.