Viral monoculture is the primary reason for the surges in deadliness in airborne disease
that we see every single year. It occurs because our
Winter 'lockdown' behavior leads to
a virus that reproduces and concentrates in primarily one host, or a limited set of hosts,
and results in a 'concentrated' virus with a very extreme set of effects.
That deadliness then instantly dissipates after our Spring 'reopening', as the virus begins
spreading, and that monoculture is replaced with
a diverse array of 'spread' strains.
But why is it that a virus raised in a monoculture ends up being so much more deadly than a set of viruses?
Imagine that we had a criminal gang of five people. Every single member of the gang agrees on one thing - they
were put here on this planet to rob banks. They wake up thinking about robbing banks, go to sleep thinking about
robbing banks, wake up in the night to write down ideas from dreams on how to better rob banks, and
perform practice drills to perfect their bank robbing skills.
Guess what that gang is going to be pretty darn good at? Robbing banks.
That gang is going to be extremely dangerous to banks, who would probably want an innoculation
against that gang, but
would quickly find that any measures they take against the gang are immediately worked around, because they are
so focused on robbing banks.
Add guards at a greater expense, and the gang would probably figure out how to break in at night when the guards were away.
Now take that criminal gang of five, and give each member different goals. One still wants to rob banks, but another doesn't
like facing guards and wants to rob liquor stores. Another just wants to get his money directly through extortion. Another
wants to do kidnapping and ransom, and the last one just wants to pimp ho's.
What happens with this gang? Well, the bank robber tries to rally the gang's resources to rob a bank. On the way, the others
peel off to do what they'd prefer. The bank robber ends up at the bank alone, where the guard can easily overpower the one
bank robber - he's taken out. The liquor store robber meets a similar fate, as the liquor store owner has a gun behind the counter,
and can easily take out one robber. The extortionist starts making phone calls which are traced, and the police swarm in to
take him out. The kidnapper tries to kidnap someone by himself who turns out to be a kung fu expert, who beats him to a pulp. The
one who wants to pimp ho's ends up being fresh to the wrong person, who kicks him where it hurts, and takes him out.
This entire gang was easy pickin's against basic defenses, because they all had differing goals, and were never working together.
It is exactly the same with airborne disease.
With monoculture, you end up with a gang that all agrees, and all work together at one goal. If that goal is attacking the
respiratory system, it will be more difficult to stop, because all the virus particles will be of a 'single mind'. Simple
defenses of particular parts of the body may be easily overwhelmed.
But nature built-in the weakness to all airborne disease - because they mutate so readily, they are very easy to 'drown' in a sea
of differing strains of themselves, all of which will have slightly different behaviors, or goals, in interacting with their
hosts.
This has given animals a simple defense against airborne disease that has worked with 100% success
for over 300 million years:
the very act of our living our lives normally among each other guarantees that we will pass among ourselves a differing set of
strains that will compete against each other for a limited set of cells to reproduce in, and any resulting infection will be
easier to fight off.
Any time we try to pretend we know best, and change this winning strategy, it is a deadly failure.
Nature knows best.
