The Bug

  There's a classic phrase, simpler is better.  You've likely heard it, especially as today's world grows more and more detailed and complicated.  Long ago I gave up the task of peeking under the hood of a car (I actually used to do my own oil changes in the day, but that was when you could actually see and reach the oil filter) or tearing apart a piece of electronics (inside the old hard drives, that is in the days of computers having optical drives, was a spinning disc of beauty).  Funny how such different thoughts emerge when one is ill.  It began with my wife feeling a bit odd, then succumbing to the flu that appears to be migrating across the globe (there are even articles on how to protect yourself on a flight --board late, keep the airvent on, etc.-- except that the air on a plane on most planes today is recirculated with fresh air coming in only every eight minutes or so).  I was fortunate, watching as friend after friend became sick and added to the tally of those hit with the virus and now emptying the shelves of cough suppressants and boxes of tissues; and then I also began to feel a bit odd.  As my own system began to give in, my wife became my guide in giving me a preview of what would come next, a daily and accurate mentoring of what I could expect and how I would feel (and also how long before I would return to the world of clarity).  And it was all so fascinating...

   The influenza virus is actually a study in simplicity, it ability to adapt and change far greater than our vaccines (reports say that the current flu vaccine was only 10-20% effective against this strain) and often a virus that poses quite the challenge for our body's defenses.  This particular strain, dubbed the Aussie flu, appeared to target the elderly and their compromised immune system, although other strains have hit primarily people in the 20s and 30s.  It would appear that the virus is as random as a roulette wheel as it moves from animal to animal (the original idea that the virus could spread from an animal to a human came when a ferret sneezed into the face of a lab worker, according to a piece by author Gavin Francis in The London Review of Books).  Here's his description of the current virus as expanded in a review of Laura Spnney's book, Pale Rider: There are two sorts of influenza A: H1N1 (a strain similar to the swine flu of 2009) and H3N2, the strain causing the current outbreak, recently arrived from the southern hemisphere (which is why the tabloids have been calling it ‘Aussie flu’).  H3N2 mostly afflicts the elderly.  The third strain is influenza type B, which affects children more severely than it does adults...H and N variants are in ceaseless evolution, and flu viruses can hide for long periods in host animal populations, many of which don’t suffer any ill effects.  This transmissibility between animals and humans is one key to its virulence; another is the ability of its antigens to mutate.   Animal ‘reservoirs’ allow flu strains to recombine until a new pandemic strain breaks out again – which it will.  Every flu pandemic of the 20th century followed the emergence of a new Haemagglutinin antigen: H1 in 1918, H2 in 1957 and H3 in 1968.  He goes on to point out that the flu of 1918 was estimated to have hit a third of the world's population at the time and killed between 50-100 million people* (extrapolate that into today's world population and that would mean about 228 million people affected).  The virus is small, 10-20 times smaller than the pneumonia bacteria that take advantage of the weakened lungs.  And he adds this: ....viruses are simply packets of protein and fat, together with some nucleic acids to encode proteins.  The flu virus carries just eight strands of RNA, with which it creates copies of itself.  Two kinds of protein jut out from its surface: Haemagglutinin is the skeleton key that allows the flu virus to slip into living cells; Neuraminidase is the battering-ram that bursts its progeny out.

    Okay, a bit too biologic-speak but you get the idea.  This, as with most viruses, is far simpler than say, our DNA or even our antibodies.  But zoom inside your body as this is going on and marvel at the battle occurring, a series of Ninja-like invaders capturing and taking over key portions of your immune system before your body can rally and (one hopes) fight off the attack...now add to this when you don't have a virus but discover that it's your own body fighting itself, the common puzzle of such auto-immune diseases as Lupus, Guillain-Barre, rheumatois arthritis and a host of other internal maladies.  One can lose sight of what is right or wrong at that point, even at the cellular and smaller level.  Which brings me to the recent movie by Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.  In the interview that follows the film, Denzel Washington talks about transforming himself, working to become the character who lives in a simpler time, a time when the law was more defensible with common sense and decency; in one encounter he tries to convey the simple act of chivalry, something the aggressive girl he's talking to rejects by telling him that times have changed and asking why she should give in to such old ways.  "Because it's polite," he answers.  Simple.  As the director mentions, the character is stuck in the 70s and 80s, but he's comfortable and it is actually the breaking out of his shell that throws him into an unfamiliar world, a sea of sharks so to speak.  

   It's a typical venture for Hollywood (in this case, highlighted by another spectacular performance by Denzel Washington, especially if you only remember him from his confrontation days with Gene Hackman in Crimson Tide, a suddenly all-too possible scenario in today's political environment), that of a person yearning for simpler times, a time he or she understood.  Change is inevitable for all of us, uncomfortable maybe but always echoed by that phrase in the background of change being good.  It happens.  Our bodies change, our memories evolve or disappear, friends and family and pets all enter our lives and seem to leave just as quickly; and soon it dawns on us that we are in that lineup, that soon we too will be little more than an image fading on paper or digitally reduced to digits, numbers we've created because we want to know more but...time is running out (or moving on).

   This bug, this flu, is hitting people more rapidly and more easily perhaps displaying to us the fragility of both our world and our bodies.  It is spreading as quickly as the plastics in our oceans (a recent piece by Frederick Wilmot-Smith in LRB talked of the contagion this way: The oceans are awash with plastic.  According to one study from 2015, 90 per cent of seabirds have it in their gut.  Another study indicates that a third of the fish caught in UK waters have it in theirs.  Unless something changes, it is estimated that by 2050 there will be a greater weight of plastic in the seas than fish.)  It's a problem we're turning away from, as certainly as we turned away from steel plants dumping cyanide into waterways and mercury fouling our skies.  It is a time of political stalemate, a time when we are afraid or too comfortable to change, to demand change, to wonder why something as simple as "because it's polite" is so misunderstood.  We can indeed feel content with the status quo, everything working A-OK...until it doesn't.  Until we discover that the plastics are breaking down and entering the cellular flesh of the fish we are eating, or that the mercury has continued to settle into the bloodstreams of our fish and grains and salads, entering our bodies as easily as a flu virus, until we begin feeling a bit funny and a bit debilitated, we may then wonder what happened and why our bodies were giving in, never realizing that our bodies and minds had been fighting the "good fight" for quite awhile...we just haven't had the will to pay attention.  Simpler is better, simpler times, simpler values, simpler common sense.  But there's another classic phrase, the future is now.  Simple...


*Author Francis notes that Donald Trump's grandfather died of the flu at 49, passing on his fortune to his son (Donald's father), who passed on his fortune when he died and thus created Donald's inherited semi-wealth.