COVID-19 Pandemic: The Importance of Microbial Ecosystem Diversity
We have brought this COVID-19 pandemic upon ourselves by our willful and widespread disruption of natural ecosystems on a global level. We have only ourselves to blame. Humanity must learn from past errors and take responsibility and initiative to restore biodiversity at every level- from microbial and invertebrate, to large land and water creatures, to the fungi and plant kingdoms. Perhaps only by this course of action will we mitigate catastrophic illness caused by COVID-19 and avoid future pandemics that devastate human populations.
Science teaches us that the healthiest and most resilient ecosystems are those that have maximum biodiversity of species. This is true within human bodies as well. Over thousands of years, humans have evolved within very complex ecosystems that includes life forms that we can see and those too small to see. We have developed intimate symbiotic relationships with countless micro-organisms that live on us, within us and around us. The healthy human is host to a diverse microbial community. These mostly symbiotic micro-organisms enhance our well being as they benefit themselves from the relationship.
An ecosystem with enormous diversity is better able to withstand disruption in the form of injury and invasion, and it recovers more quickly. Diversity reduces the likelihood that an individual species will multiply beyond its natural bounds, thereby upsetting balance and causing disruption, symptoms and illness. With diversity, there are countless checks and balances that help to maintain the healthy function of the whole. When an organism not usually found in the ecosystem invades, the diversity of indigenous life forms acts as a defensive shield and a buffering system that engages the invader. The system adapts to the newcomer, selecting indigenous life forms that can block and even prey upon the invader, thereby reducing the threat and minimizing the potential damage.
An analogous process occurs within the human body and across human populations. When the human supports a diverse microbial ecosystem, there exists a healthy and helpful balance among the various bacteria, fungi and such that live on and within us. We know that when a major disruption to the balance occurs, both the health of the ecosystem and our own health suffers. For example, we are well aware that a course of antibiotics that kills bacteria often upsets the balance such that the host experiences an unhealthy increase in the population of fungi. This results in symptoms of illness such as thrush. Often we respond with application of anti-fungal agents to reduce the fungal population. Frequent employment of such biotoxic chemicals leads to a cycle of chronic employment of chemicals to maintain the health of the host. This leads to dependence on chemicals, rather than balance, to preserve health.
When the human who possesses a diverse microbial ecosystem encounters an invader such as a virus, they are better prepared to ward off invasion and prevent damage in the form of severe illness. Like any diverse ecosystem, the human’s microbial population acts as a defensive shield and buffer system that mitigates damage to the human host. Once the ecosystem recognizes the invader, indigenous microbes attempt to neutralize it to maintain balance. You can imagine there may be bacteria or fungi that are parasites of viruses, subverting them somehow for their own gain. While the virus establishes a foothold, the ecosystem prevents it from multiplying unchecked, thereby preventing the host and the entire ecosystem from collapse.
I can imagine a microbial ecosystem with the complexity of a virgin forest or jungle that lives on and within the healthy human host. We must assume that the principles we observe in macro ecosystems apply to these micro systems as well. There are the herbivores, the grazing herd microbes that live off our waste products such as dead skin, fiber we cannot digest and intestinal nutrients. There are the scavenger microbes that metabolize wastes left by other micro-organisms. There would be varying microbes adapted to live in each niche of our body. Some have specialized to inhabit our mucous membranes and nasal passages, perhaps feeding like flycatcher plants that trap and digest outside microbes that enter those regions. In a healthy host, areas of entry such as mouth, nose and eyes perhaps host a diverse ecosystem teeming with life forms and covering every surface such that an outside invader is challenged to find a foothold. Where there are grazers, there are also predators. Like every natural system, striving to maintain balance, predator micro-organisms have evolved to feed off the grazers and invaders. White blood cells, the guardians of our immune system, patrol our corporeal ecosystem, perhaps aided and enhanced by various predator microbes that have developed symbiotic relationships with the WBC’s. I can imagine there are symbiotic micro-organisms that aid us in healing injuries while invaders and others take advantage for their own gain. There is no good and bad in Nature. If there is balance and diversity, then every life form has its place.
COVID-19 has been able to spread like a California wildfire through the human population, bringing the global economy to its knees, because humans have brought about widespread global disruption of natural ecosystems along with devastating loss of biodiversity at every level of life. By destroying forest, prairie, marsh land, desert, tundra ecosystems, and waterways, we have vastly reduced biodiversity thereby greatly compromising the ability of ecosystems to withstand invasion by predator species that further destroy balance and health. We have not only destroyed plants, animals and insect life but also the unimaginable diversity of micro-organisms that reside within those macro-ecosystems.
Not only have we physically destroyed much of the planet’s natural habitats that support diverse life forms, but additionally, we are killing the remaining life forms with our excessive use of biotoxins in the form of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and other life-killing chemicals. For the past 100 years, since the deployment of petrochemical toxins which were originally developed for warfare, humans have poisoned and killed life for military, industrial, agricultural, monetary profit and cosmetic reasons. In warfare, militaries have deployed biotoxins such as mustard gas, nerve gas, napalm and agent origin to directly kill combatants and destroy forests and farms that may support their enemy. Industrial farming employs massive amounts of poisonous chemicals that essentially creates sterile environments which only support desired crops through constant and ongoing application of chemical fertilizers and poisons. Essentially we choose selected life forms that we desire and then kill all of the rest. Multinational corporations have employed massive persistent marketing campaigns to create a multi-billion dollar industry selling biotoxins to civilian consumers to maintain cosmetically perfect landscapes and labor saving ways to eliminate, i.e. kill undesirable life forms.
Widespread global use of chemical biotoxins has created billions of acres of land that is devoid of any semblance of a biodiverse ecosystem, or even life at all. These chemicals kill not only plants, insects and animals but also the vast system of micro-organisms that form the bedrock, the foundation of life-sustaining ecosystems on the planet. Billions of humans currently live within environments that are catastrophically depleted of indigenous micro-organisms that have been partners with humans since the origin of our species- micro-organisms that have participated in and influenced human evolution. Most importantly, these indigenous micro-organisms have been integral to the evolution of the human immune system- the essential element that enables us to resist invasion from opportunistic organisms that damage our bodies and cause illness and disease. Because there are billions of humans now living with and within compromised and unhealthy microbial ecosystems, an opportunistic invader such as COVID-19 is able to freely sweep through the population, unchecked by the usual mechanisms that protect us.
In the 21st century, we are aware of the correlation between filth and disease. Unlike medieval Europe, we no longer dump human waste in streets and rivers while obtaining our food and water from these same sources. We no longer need to drink only ale, cleansed of harmful microbes by the presence of alcohol, because plain water will make us sick. Yet we are still vulnerable to pandemics akin to bubonic plague that historically ravaged those populations.
Billions of modern humans suffer from a disconnect with indigenous microbes. Millions of residential landscapes are constantly poisoned with petrochemicals that create microbial deserts. For many, such as urban dwellers, fresh food is their main potential source of symbiotic micro-organisms. However most food is produced by industrial farms that continuously spray crops with biotoxins that reduce or eliminate microbial populations. Processed foods that are widely consumed are also devoid of microbes. The consequence is that billions of humans live with extremely degraded microbial ecosystems that are like monocultures unable to withstand invasion by opportunistic microbes. We lack the microbial allies that potentially can prevent invasion, attack invaders and mitigate serious illness.
We are often routinely and directly exposed to biotoxins ourselves from our environments through our skin, by inhalation of airborne chemicals, and by ingestion of contaminated water and food. These chemicals are designed to disrupt normal cellular function. They degrade our immune systems, cause inflammation and allergic reactions, damage the ability of our internal organs to perform their normal function, result in blood cell dysfunction and cause cancerous growths. Any of these consequences impair our ability to resist microbial invasion and mount an effective response to prevent severe illness.
To compound the problem, billions of people suffer from degraded diets that lack not only symbiotic microbes but significant nutritional content. Processed foods and foods high in content of simple sugars and corn syrup chronically raise blood sugar levels which in turn provides nutrients for many microbes. The result is weakened internal organs such as the liver and kidney which metabolize nutrients, and eliminate toxins and waste products; this also results in a compromised immune system which has reduced efficacy to neutralize invasive microbes. In great part due to degraded diets and sedentary life styles, we are experiencing widespread epidemics of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and pulmonary disease. These medical illnesses are well known to reduce the body’s ability to withstand infection and increase likelihood of serious morbidity and invading viruses and microbes.
Industrial meat production contributes to the degradation of biodiversity as well as human body systems meant to maintain balance, health, healing and to resist invaders. Hormones used to expedite the growth of meat animals contaminate the flesh humans consume and unbalance body functions. Widespread and chronic administration of antibiotics to meat animals causes damage in at least two ways. At the meat farm, antibiotics destroy the animals’ microbial ecosystems causing imbalance within the animals. Antibiotics leach into the environment where they disrupt local ecosystems. Antibiotics are present in the flesh that humans consume, thereby dosing human bodies with microbe-killing chemicals that directly disrupt our microbial balance, killing many of the microbial allies that enhance our health and resist invaders. Additionally, since there is little indigenous flora living in these animals, consumption of their meat fails to enhance the consumers’ internal biodiversity which otherwise would occur by eating animals not treated with biotoxins. Industrial meat animals are also mainly fed a diet consisting of corn which fattens them quickly but is unhealthy for the animals and for the humans that eat them.
We have yet to estimate the ill effects on both humans and natural ecosystems from marked increases in baseline levels of radiation from radioactive materials around the world. Since the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945, there have been 2,056 nuclear bombs detonated on the planet resulting in release of immense amounts of radiation and heat into the environment. In the continental US alone, between 1951 and 1992, the US government tested 1,021 nuclear bomb explosions in the Nevada desert. Prevailing winds spread atomic radiation eastward, blanketing much of North America. Multiple nuclear reactor leaks have also contributed to baseline levels of global radioactivity- both the ones we know about and the ones never publicized. Common knowledge is the connection between radiation and cancers. We must assume that even low level radiation disrupts healthy immune and reproductive function in all life forms including humans.
Byproducts of warfare as well as industrialization also contributes to the degradation of biological systems. Pollution in the form of heavy metals- mercury, lead, arsenic and such have become ubiquitous or commonplace in many bodies of water, sources of drinking water, and in soils where they make their way into food sources such as fish and agricultural products. The damage to brain development and brain function is well documented. We can only assume that these industrial byproducts have additional deleterious effects on immune and other body systems, thereby compromising biological functions and reducing our ability to resist invaders.
The industrial medical system, which includes the very billion dollar pharmaceutical industry, contributes as well to the degradation of our microbial ecosystems. Besides producing tons of antibiotics for use in meat farms, the medical establishment has evolved, either by accident or by design, to focus its attention and resources, not to preserving health, but to treating illness and disease. The economics of medicine rewards poor health such that most resources are directed towards those most ill and impaired. Establishment medicine relies almost exclusively on the promotion and dispensing of costly medicines, also diagnostic and surgical procedures, to treat every condition once symptoms of illness become obvious. In the treatment of both physical and psychiatric illness, industrial medicine seldom intervenes to prevent illness but rather waits for illness to develop and then administers multiple chemicals that more often control but not eliminate symptoms, thereby requiring long term chronic administration, i.e. dependence.
Vaccines are one of the few examples in which the medical establishment works to try to prevent disease. Certainly vaccines have prevented millions of people from developing terrible illnesses such as polio and smallpox. No one would refute that is a good outcome. However industrial medicine has been complicit with the petrochemical industries, the military industrial complex, industrial agriculture and meat production, and the industrial food industry that floods the market with processed foods laden with fats, sugars, corn syrup and chemicals including biotoxins such as pesticides. A true health care system, one with integrity, would lobby and advocate to change, reduce or eliminate those practices that adversely impact the health of the population for which it is entrusted to care for and keep healthy. The current catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic highlights the monumental failing of the for-profit industrial medical establishment that has dominated healthcare for the last 30-40 years. It has resulted in an American population that is profoundly vulnerable to a virus such as COVID-19 due to widespread epidemics of obesity, diabetes, cardiac, immune and respiratory diseases, and psychiatric disorders such as addiction, depression and chronic complex PTSD.
Much of the population is dependent on drugs much like our suburban lawns. For a huge percentage of Americans, if we withdrew all pharmaceuticals, millions would sicken and die. Probably at least half of suburban lawns have been doused or dosed with biotoxic chemicals for many years, stripped of any organic matter other than the actual grass that is growing, and “sandblasted” with high power leaf blowers so that the only means to keep them alive and looking pretty is to continue to dose them with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Similarly millions of humans live extremely unhealthy lives. They eat chemical-laden food devoid of nutrition, drink water contaminated with toxins, and breathe polluted air. They are sedentary, stressed out, overcrowded, overworked, and routinely exposed to violence either directly or vicariously. Like those suburban lawns, millions are dependent on drugs to maintain their health.
As a population, we are addicted to chemicals of all kinds. We are dependent upon them and without them we would suffer, at least in the short term, until we learned to adapt to living without them. Presently our solution to the challenge of sustaining large populations of humans has been to deploy even more chemicals that kill other life forms. Genetically modified crops is mainly about creating strains that can withstand toxic chemicals so we can douse farmland with even more herbicides to kill every other form of plant life. We must find alternatives that recognize our membership in the biosphere and our interdependence with all life on Earth. We must acknowledge that the well-being of the human species is interconnected and interdependent with that of all life and that maximum diversity of species at every level of life is crucial and paramount to our survival and the sustainability of life on the planet.
With all of the above in mind, perhaps our current response to the threat imposed by COVID-19 is misguided and mistaken. We can cower in our homes with our plastic grocery bags, our electronic screens, our masks and gloves, and our gallons of antimicrobial gel and chlorine bleach to sterilize ourselves and our surfaces. That’s more of the same behavior that got us into this predicament. Every time we apply antimicrobial gel, we are not only killing COVID-19 but every other micro-organism, including those symbiotic allies that benefit us. Maybe what we need to do is stop over-using life-killing chemicals- in medicine, agriculture, and landscapes. Curtail and stop exposing the population to toxins. Transform food production towards sustainable organic which enhances human microbial ecosystems. Reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics. Instead of anti-microbial chemicals, go back to soap and water. Transform our human landscapes, cities and villages to provide safer housing, commerce, education, health care, recreational and entertainment infrastructure so that we can safely resume the activities of human life while behaving more sensibly by eliminating unnecessary events which entail thousands of people crowded together in one place. Continue sensible precautions such as curtailing long distance tourist travel. Stay within your region. Organize more outdoor events
Considering all the factors, all that is at stake, perhaps the eventual outcome would be better if we stop sheltering this summer. Reduce the use of masks. Start to reconnect within our local communities. We are a social species and have evolved that way. We display physical affection that reinforces bonds and enhances our mental health and our sense of well-being. Perhaps acts such as kissing has helped the human species be successful by exchanging flora and increasing each of our microbial diversity at every encounter. Prolonged sheltering may well backfire, causing large scale psychiatric problems such as complex PTSD which will haunt human communities for decades to come, resulting in increasing rates of addiction, disability and violence.
Maybe the outcome would be better if we allow COVID-19 to pass through the population while also implementing an immediate initiative to improve the general health of the population by legislating significant reduction in the use of biotoxins and providing people with cleaner air, water and healthier foods. High risk people can continue to shelter but the rest of the population must resume living. Children need socialization and education. Young adults need vocation, purpose and socialization, expressions of affection, love and sexuality.
Summer is the idea time to phase out social distancing and sheltering. Guarantee all workers sufficient paid sick leave to care for any illness in themselves and their families. Allow the virus to sweep through and move past the population so that we are finally on the other side and can look back at it and move forward. Don’t wait for or rely on a for-profit vaccine. Open up society now. Children and youth need to return to school in September, not sitting at home on their computers. Education is much more than academics. It includes social, emotional and other cognitive learning and growing. It would be a mistake to shelter until September and then send young people back to schools and universities. If we do that, we may see a tidal wave of infection all a once. Teachers will be standing on the beach in front of it and that is not reasonable, sensible or fair.
Better to open society over the summer, accepting the risk that many may become infected with COVID-19 and many will develop symptoms. Use publicly-funded media to instruct people how to care for themselves if they develop symptoms so that we may reduce the severity, shorten the duration of symptoms, and avoid more serious complications. Legislate reduced work schedules to reduce exposure and stress. Employ millions of laid off workers by offering federal jobs in a new WPA whose mission is to modernize infrastructure to transform every community to be safer and healthier. Use this opportunity to renovate and redesign transit and freight systems, food production and distribution systems, energy and waste management systems. These are all essential elements of homeland security that we have neglected, preferring to focus resources on surveillance and warfare capability. Create a federal post office banking system which protects working people from unscrupulous financial predators and guarantees a financial safety net. Create millions of new subsidized housing units that are designed to reduce risk of pandemic contagion and that provide housing security to millions of individuals and families.
Implement a single payer government option for health care which is open to everyone. Simplify licensing and credentialing for health care providers and educators in a federal registry to reduce obstructionist bureaucracy and facilitate quick deployment of personnel to any part of the nation that is in need. Train and deploy thousands of new health care personnel and create a network of local publicly-funded clinics, especially in regions that lack sufficient care. Legalize plant-based intoxicants such as cannabis and mushrooms that are not biotoxic and that are potentially potent and effective treatments for multiple medical and psychiatric conditions, including chronic PTSD. Invest heavily in public education at every level to modernize existing facilities, build thousands of new schools to reduce school and classroom size; train and hire thousands of new teachers. Take this time to green our environments, our cities, towns and villages, restore ecosystems and biodiversity of species, and in doing so restore humanity’s connection to other life forms on Earth. By measures such as these that insert morality and integrity into public policy, we can strengthen all communities, improve the health and well-being of all people, and embark on the next stage of human evolution that transforms civilization into a one that is responsible and sustainable for humanity and all life on Earth.