MULTI-LEVEL PANDEMIC CHESS
There are many more than three “boards” of individual pieces structurally related to each other but playing against each other while affecting the levels above and below them. Small wonder it's hard to think about. People who say "three dimensional chess" are underestimating.
1. Molecular: proteins, enzymes, structural variations
2. Cell structure: the way the molecules are arranged per cell, like the construction of corona virus spikes.
3. Transmission routes: how to find and exploit a vector (insects, bacteria, animals, humans, surfaces, air)
4. Human vectors as interactors (proximity, intimacy, fluid exchange, entrances into the body)
5. Co-species: pet animals, livestock, wild animals, primates
6. Assumptions and management of basic mammal nature: sex, family, inheritance, culture, violence, health
7. Individual psychology: narcissism, paranoia, greed, compassion, sanity, general health
8. Social structures: class, economics, demographics, form of location density (city, country, solitary), criminal infiltration or co-existence, infrastructure for health and travel, institutional allegiance including religious, stigma
9. Awareness and identification: education, media portrayal, attitude to information, knowledge of history, internet global
10. Willingness to adapt (politics, security, experience) Consciousness. Options.
11. Actual terrain, environment, climate, altitude, latitude, plant life or lack (forest, desert, arctic, grasslands)
This is a list meant to be suggestive rather than definitive. That is, there are probably more “gameboards” and more chessmen on each level. But it does suggest why this pandemic is more complicated to manage than an elephant being felt up by blind men.
In the beginning I was just thinking about our amazing knowledge of viruses, so detailed that it took very little time to realize that covid-19 was no less that a second version of the SARS virus already known. The new name is SARS-CoV-2. Covid-19 was sort of a provisional handle, but the scientists had worked with its genome so much that they recognized “words” out of the genome sentences. Linked below is the most recent article I’ve worked my way through, very slowly because I don’t have the vocabulary and look everything up.
Sometimes I think I’m understanding when I’m really not. I didn’t know that the way one studies viruses and other proteins is by “crystalizing” them which makes them stop moving. Then specialized microscopes that can “see” things that small can be used.
The work started right off with those obvious observable “spikes.” It’s like looking at a new plant or animal. “The spike is formed of three identical molecules stuck together in the shape of a pyramid, with a hinge-like trapdoor. This opens to expose a portion that grabs onto a receptor on a human cell (see ‘The key coronavirus proteins’). Graham and McLellan’s past work on a similar protein suggested that presenting the spike protein in its pre-grab state would provoke the human immune system.”
“They found that the new coronavirus spike protein has small molecular differences in its binding region compared with that of SARS-CoV, which might be why the new virus attaches to ACE2 more strongly. These changes could also explain why it seems to infect cells better and spreads faster than the SARS virus.” So this version of the corona virus, out of all the other constantly morphing viruses, was “improved”. Such small, host-less bits are so surprisingly mechanical, like little watchworks made of molecules that have variations in shape and attachments and must be “folded.” We learned a lot from figuring out prions, which cause disease because they are folded wrong, because a few atoms are in the wrong place or use different elements.
We live in a sea of genomic fragments, almost like the plastic debris everywhere. I keep asking, “If a virus is a half-of-a-genome with no cell machinery, how is it different from a sperm? Is a human sperm a virus? Is conception an infection?” Viruses are classed as “obligate parasites.”
I finally got an answer: DNA is a 2 strand four-letter chord playing a melody down its spiral, and so is sngle strand RNA; but the fourth “chord” is different between the two so the tune comes out differently. This is a metaphorical answer so some people will make fun of it. That’s okay with me, because it ties this early level of consideration to the cultural level and every level in this list I’ve made reached up or down to the other levels, Some of them — like saying sperm are viruses — can be quite incendiary. Which is partly why this is all so interesting.
It’s also explanatory. A whole infrastructure of persons carrying knowledge has woven its way around the planet and the political layer interferes with it through the allocation of funds, permission to travel, publication means, and so on. Our lives depend on them in ways that many legislators don’t care about while daily voting on them.
Their young, often female, assistants may know more since many keep cats. There are thousands of viruses that can infect cats. Mainly, there are five common kinds, one of which has forty variations. All are incurable except for the secondary infections that take advantage. All, of course, are contagious. Also, it is almost impossible to avoid attachments from the humans whose pets they are.
The identification of Cov-2 “ was a lot faster than even the fastest one we’d previously done,” says Graham. Because of research on SARS and MERS, coronaviruses were probably the only viral family for which that was possible, he adds. “If it was a bunyavirus or an arenavirus, we would have been lost for two to three years.” I looked them up. We have hantavirus around here. I didn’t know you could catch a virus from a snake.
The Bunyaviridae are a very large family of single-strand, enveloped RNA viruses (more than 300 viruses) and consists of five genera of viruses: Orthobunyavirus, Phlebovirus, Nairovirus, Hantavirus, and Tospovirus (Tospoviruses infect only plants). They are found in and transmitted by arthropods (e.g. mosquitoes, ticks, sand flies) and rodents, and can occasionally infect humans.
An arenavirus is a bisegmented ambisense RNA virus that is a member of the family Arenaviridae. These viruses infect rodents and occasionally humans. A class of novel, highly divergent arenaviruses, properly known as reptarenaviruses, have also been discovered which infect snakes to produce inclusion body disease.At least eight arenaviruses are known to cause human disease.
Inclusion body disease in the boid family of snakes, particularly Boa constrictor, has been recognized since the mid-1970s. It is so named because of the characteristic intracytoplasmic inclusions which are observed in clinical examinations in epidermal cells, oral mucosal epithelial cells, visceral epithelial cells, and neurons.Wikipedia
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