The Pandemic Through the Lens of Alice in Wonderland
“Evolution has no aim, it does not have a start nor an end. A species does not get better or worse at surviving, rather, they get better or worse at surviving in a particular niche, for a particular time frame”
In the book Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity, author John Gribbin talks about 4 things in particular — Entropy, initial conditions, complexity and non linearity. He explains that our biological history shows how complexity arises from simplicity due to entropy. Chaos leads to complexity which in turn leads to life. The interesting things happen at the edge of complexity; in chaotic systems, total entropy has to increase, and tiny differences in the initial conditions often lead to massive differences in outcome.
To dive into any one of those concepts would be extremely interesting but I want to focus on the story about frogs and flies.
There are lots of ways in which the frogs, who want to eat flies, and the flies, who want to avoid being eaten, interact. Frogs might evolve longer tongues, for fly-catching purposes; flies might evolve faster flight, to escape. Flies might evolve an unpleasant taste, or even excrete poisons that damage the frogs, and so on. We’ll pick one possibility. If a frog has a particularly sticky tongue, it will find it easier to catch flies. But if flies have particularly slippery bodies, they will find it easier to escape, even if the tongue touches them. Imagine a stable situation in which a certain number of frogs live on a pond and eat a certain proportion of the flies around them each year.
Because of a mutation a frog develops an extra sticky tongue. It will do well, compared with other frogs, and genes for extra sticky tongues will spread through the frog population. At first, a larger proportion of flies gets eaten. But the ones who don’t get eaten will be the more slippery ones, so genes for extra slipperiness will spread through the fly population. After a while, there will be the same number of frogs on the pond as before, and the same proportion of flies will be eaten each year. It looks as if nothing has changed — but the frogs have got stickier tongues, and the flies have got more slippery bodies.
The key takeaway from Gribbin’s story is that the entire process of evolution did not give the frogs nor the flies any competitive advantage over each other. A species that gains an advantage over a competitor instantly incentivizes its competitor to improve. Perpetually.
This principle is known as The Red Queen Effect. In Alice in Wonderland, the Red Queen is a scene where Alice finds herself in a very peculiar place. Alice, gets schooled by the Red Queen in an important life lesson that many of us fail to heed. Alice finds herself running faster and faster but staying in the same place.
Alice looked round her in great surprise. ‘Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!’
‘Of course it is,’ said the Queen, ‘what would you have it?’
‘Well, in our country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’
‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives,
nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change.”— Charles Darwin
Today we find ourselves at an arms race with a virus that none of our 5 senses can comprehend. Thanks to our technology, we are able to understand what is going on and give a name for it. But viruses have been around since the beginning of time. How come we’re scrambling for our lives today?
For decades, our understanding of viruses have enabled us to develop vaccines that help the human race avoid viruses all together — think yellow fever, measles, mumps, and rubella. We barely even know they exist.
We’ve evolved! The advances in medical technology made us untouchable! As soon as you’re born, you’re given the various vaccines that preempts your white blood cells, the mugshot of the various viruses and diseases. Great! We have the advantage of science on our side.
However, some advantages create new disadvantages. Most species tend to get bigger(in numbers or size) over time because big things are strong. But being big also makes you slow, clumsy, and unable to hide. Aaron Clauset of the Santa Fe Institute and Doug Erwin of the Museum of Natural History said it wonderfully, “The tendency for evolution to create larger species is counterbalanced by the tendency of extinction to kill off larger species,”
In a world with 7.7 billion people, living unique lives, trying unique things, and eating unique food, it is no surprise that the permutations of events will give birth to a multitude of possible outcomes, one of which could include a lethal virus.
If you consider a one in a million event special, with 7.7 billion people, approximately 7700 people go through a one in a million event at any given time.
Is the pandemic a one in a million event?
Is it fair to say that the massive growth of our population, directly or indirectly, because of the advancement of our technology, together with increased travel democratization contributed to the virus we have today? — I don’t know. Anyone who convinces you that they do, is lying.
As vaccines are developed to combat the virus, the virus mutates because that is what viruses do when it is exposed to a body that can combat it — It is just the nature of viruses. It has nothing against you or me. For most viruses and disease-causing bacteria, the use of treatments and vaccines causes them to evolve ways of escaping them so they can continue to spread, which we will combat with better, more robust vaccines. — The red queen effect reigns true.
The truth is, there is not going to be a single point where we declare victory over a virus. As one ends, another begins. This repeats ad infinitum.
This is the basics of entropy too. It applies to every part of our lives. It is inescapable, and even if we try to ignore it, the result is a collapse of some sort. Disorder is not a mistake; it is our default. Any form of order is always artificial and temporary.
“No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.”
― Philip K. Dick, Galactic Pot-Healer
Just like the frogs and flies, we as humans evolve, but never actually become better adapted, because threats are always changing. This time is a strain of a virus. Next time, it’ll be a different strain. Or it could be something completely different. Can you adapt fast enough?
Black Rhinos survived for 8 million years before going extinct in 2011. Lehman Brothers adapted and prospered for 150 years and 33 recessions before it met its match in mortgage-backed securities. Poof, gone.
It’s hard to accept that you have to put in a ton of work just to stay in place, but that’s just how the world works.
So, just like what The Red Queen said to Alice, Keep running.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis
