“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
Richard Feynman
Yes, this is the age of information. It is the age of overwhelming achievements on the basis of acquired knowledge, the same knowledge we humans are capable of retain, spread and re-organize.
What is Science at the end of the day? Is it not the rational, schematic re-organization of pieces of information? But, are we able to filter it?
If we know that the novel Coronavirus is an RNA molecule of about 30k bases containing only 15 genes with a strong genomic coincidence with SARS-CoV, what does it mean?
If we read that the R0 of Covid-19 is around 2.5, while in Measles is 16.0 do these numbers make any sense?
Then, what is a vaccine? Is it promoting an effective response? Does it provoke a natural infection response? Is it evil?
Where should we look for unbiased answers?
Good point, carry on questioning. Our most powerful weapon is the ability to question, not the invention of fire, not the invention of the internet. These are again byproducts of an intense, unstoppable desire of investigating our reality. The gentle, understimated act of observing ourselves and the environment and ultimately observing us as objects within the environment. The roots of phylosophy, the core of an openminded natural mind. Well, did you think that science was an ungraspable concept for the common man? Not true, we are all innately scientists, explorers of the vastity of the unknown. We need only to educate ourselves, to retrieve intuitions, logical thoughts and most importantly to filter out unnecessary information like our brain naturally does through constant inhibition of background noise data. I said it, innately we are already there.
I now have a golden rule; before even adsorbing any news, article, information coming from different sources I see if I really have time to check its authenticity. If I can’t, I drop it.
There is something though, I very resonate to and love to study more: the wonderful magic of an healthy body. Through my university years within the medical and biogical fields I have learnt that it is widely accepted and standardized to study the pathology so to solve the riddle. A very few pioneers instead wonder how it is that not all are sick and most are just fine, which is the study of homeostasis, the natural balance we gain when healthy. It is indeed not a static balance, it has all the necessary dynamism required to be flexible. Likewise our adaptive immune system, our body learns, memorizes and corrects itself with openess.
At the moment I’m writing, the room is probably hosting several trillions of unidentified microbes in between yeasts, viruses and bacteria..not to mention fine particles of chemicals in the air and other potential hazards. I love the word ‘potential’ because it describes perfectly that there could be a probability or more to get infected by one or many of them. But guess what? I’m not sick and I’m not special. We can observe this fine dynamic in all living systems: there is an healthy birch tree within a mixed population of healthy trees within a rich biodiverse ecosystem and no parasite will attack the lovely birch tree, still there are many fungi would potentially do it. This ‘opportunistic’ behaviour is a key role in many biological contexts; if the forest is brutally cleared, we lose biodiversity, nasty chemicals are spread in the soil..and we observe the failure of the poor birch tree. Pathogens attack indisturbed. Trees fall down. End of the story.
How is that?
Simple facts. A human being like other animals rely on a very effective, intelligent immune system (when not compromised or at early stage of infancy). Through millions of years of interfacing exogenous agents, our bodies do have strategies. Beyond a first line of action which is quick and strong, we orchestrate serious and targeted attacks to what we perceive as a menace. You don’t even need to be conscious of these fierce cells to be responsive. Unfortunately, modern medicine failed to focus its attention on healthy bodies. It embodies perfectly the paranoid aspects of humanity, when we frantically run in desperate search of a cure without spending enough time to strenghten our envelopes. And this is when we also omitt any holistic approach, the emotional and psychological influences and the vital environmental co-factors.
Let’s speak about co-factors.
It is very real, not just one bad, aggressive virus will suffice the insurgence of disease. It’s often not enough. Through observation of complex biological systems from the dynamics of a social beehive to the analysis of human pandemics, all biologists agree with admitting that predictions are difficult, greatly diverging from reality. It means that there are in place so many factors that the way a single body will react to a certain situation is quite impossible to estimate. Many disorders from various types of cancers to autoimmune diseases are in fact linked to a multiple cascade of happenings, not just a crazy cell out of place and control will be sufficient to begin a disaster and disrupt an entire body.
As an herbalist I often say, not a single thing acts as a poison or a medicine. You need to observe how they interact together and the resulting balance will be the outcome. To be healthy doesn’t mean to have a splendid diet or have constant intake of medicinal plants. Poison and medicine are not only to be ingested. There are toxic relations or healthy thoughts, there are abundant factors in everyday life to make you reflect.
A classic long-term exposure to a virus will give you the chance to prepare. If we adopt a preventive approach in our lives, we’ll naturally have the right strenght to face turmoils. We don’t have to rely on a cure when we are sick, we should integrate healthy and conscious practices on a constant basis.
What if the pathogen is too strong? What if conspiracy theories are true?
Wrong questions.
What if truth is not rooted in monotheism? What if there is a collection of truths here and there, not specifically organized in a single institution or stream? Could it be that even here we need many dots, not only one?
By now, you know that infinite probabilities are a more realistic picture, that many factors are present everytime. Why sould the truth be that different?
We all may learn how to gently refuse prejudice because even the belief that all the main media are lying is affecting the way we filter information. To avoid blindness means to keep our eyes and mind opened. To avoid sickness means to expand this concept straight to the core of ourselves, to our attitude, to our flesh, to our relation to the environment.
I haven’t talked about the science of immunity because for that we have books. Read them, along with research papers and traditional folk medicine passing through the speech of common people and the prophecies of ancient civilizations. More dots, more connections. Less dots, less picture.