Even though there is argument for whether viruses are living or not living factors, there are part of ecological systems that maintain evolutionary process of species. Viruses can alter the gene sequencing of our cells to make us less or more adaptable to survive. This COVID-19 virus seems like its a new form of virus that has wracked havoc across the global scale. With increasing population densities such as Wuhan China its not even a matter of chance, but a period of time till a new virus brings havoc to our population densities. A virus could be natures way of controlling exponential population growths.
In a wild market exotic species DNA is continuously coming into contact with human DNA; one of the its shed RNA molecules will finds its way to human cell receptors. A continuous gambling game that will finds its winner. If you spend thousands of dollars on the lottery chances are that eventually you will get lucky and win some sort of money. Viruses are bound to find a matching receptors in the cell's body after many trials. Humans are a host for vector of these viruses. If the population is dense such as in cities, the spread of viruses can be very quick. Isolation barriers in today's world don't even exist with the use of cruise ships, airplanes, fast train travels, and cars. One epidemic can spread to other parts of the wold and can quickly become a pandemic. One can only see that with 1918 flu pandemic after WWI when troops started coming back home spreading the influenza. The virus ended up killing about 50 million people world wide with a population of 1.8 billion people back then. We are at 7.8 billion today and still are growing exponentially thanks to our long stored carbon fuels that have propagate this steep growing curve. Will it keep growing or will a deadly virus or parasite will finds its way to flatted the curve and place a limit on it? Time will tell, but its something we should be on a look out for. Principles of ecology always tell us that exponential growth will eventually finds its population crash. If natural resources are still at its abundance could the spread of virus be the limiting factor of population growth?
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