COVID-19 Is The Borg

Keith's note: As a biologist who once ran science review panels on infectious disease for several government agencies at one point in my career, it is frustrating to see rocket scientists pontificate about viral epidemiology. So, for the record, from a rocket science/Sci-fi point of view:

This COVID-19 pandemic is all about Biology. It involves a relentless molecular machine that has one design role - to copy itself. It uses animal bodies - including human bodies - as factories. The closer that human bodies are to each other the faster this thing can copy itself to other human bodies so as to copy itself again and then spread and copy itself again. It does not care about who you voted for since it does not have the ability to care. Your job is irrelevant since it works for free. It cannot read the Constitution.

COVID-19 is a simple machine that does one thing and does it well. Our defenses are imperfect and vary from one human host to another. The illnesses that often result are a side effect of human bodies reacting to being taken over as virus factories. Once you get sick you have likely already completed your job as a virus factory by spreading the virus - often before you even got sick - even if you did not get sick. You are disposable.

This molecular machine is "novel". We still do not totally understand how it works. We do not know all of the ways it affects its human factory hosts. Our current collective ignorance leaves us vulnerable. If you are a Star Trek fan then imagine the Borg as "nanites". That is what COVID-19 is. Right now reistance is futile. But staying apart from other humans to slow the spread is not. So stay apart until a vaccine and/or proven treatments are developed.

If NASA can talk to - and reprogram - the Voyagers in interstellar space then its employees can certainly figure out how to get through this.

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