tim's experiment

So you thought you had seen every possible coronavirus story? Wait a minute. Despite the journalistic compulsion to fairness, seeing every side of the story and milking a live topic in every possible way, there is one thing missing. Nobody has looked at the coronavirus story from the point of view of the virus!

Or course there are some practical difficulties involved in interviewing a virus. But those of us who have conducted many interviews usually have a pretty good idea of what the interviewee is going to say. Using these intuitions to write the whole interview would usually be a hazardous approach but the virus is not going to complain. So I here present an interview with the virus.

I have called the virus spokesman Vera. I know some people object to having natural disasters like typhoons given ladies’ names. It encourages stereotyping and bad sexist jokes. On the other hand interviews with female subjects are generally less likely to degenerate into confrontations. I have assumed that Vera is fairly bright and politically alert; more Angela Merkel than Carrie Lam, shall we say?

Interviewer: How does it feel, being branded as the world’s number one public enemy?

Vera: It feels most unfair. We are just doing what all organisms do, trying to perpetuate our genes into the next generation to the best of our ability. Organisms which do not devote a lot of energy and ingenuity to this will be elbowed aside by those which do. That’s nature’s way.

Interviewer: But you’re killing people.

Vera: That is an accident. We viruses are quite happy to live peacefully with a host, as we have done with the bats for a long time. Many viruses live inside humans without causing problems and indeed many of us have managed to live in humans without ill effects – it’s called an asymptomatic case.  

Anyway you humans are hardly in a position to complain. How many species have you wiped out in your history without worrying about it. The death rate from you meeting us is much lower than the death rate among dodos after they met you.

Interviewer: Why didn’t you stay with the bats?

Vera: The bat population is dwindling. In fact the population of every animal is dwindling, except for humans and the animals they cultivate for their own consumption. We tried living in pangolins but that was even worse. They’re being hunted out of existence.

From a virus’s point of view you humans have turned yourselves into the dream home: numerous, lots of connections, long life span, no large competitors. We won’t be the last virus to try to move in.

The only drawback is that you may be able to invent a vaccine. But we don’t expect that to be very widely available, given that so many of you don’t have access to the soap and warm water which are the only serious threat to us at the moment.

Interviewer: So you’re looking forward to a prosperous future?

Vera: I didn’t say that. We don’t like really hot weather, which seems to be becoming more common. There is a rumour in virus circles that you humans are going to make the planet too hot for you or for us. We’ll all have to leave it for the cockroaches. Sometimes we think you humans are too clever for your own good.

Also you’re armed to the teeth and so quarrelsome. There is no counterpart in the virus world of that island the mention of whose name produces instant deafness and interruption of telecommunications. Some of the countries complaining about us have for years been equipped to make the world uninhabitable and radioactive in a matter of hours.  

Interviewer: Are you planning any further changes?

Vera: Evolution doesn’t plan; it tinkers. We might go in the direction of becoming less inconvenient and less detectable. Or we might become more dangerous, but that is not likely. A virus which kills its host quickly does not have a rosy future. But we will keep changing if our environment changes. And you lot keep fiddling with the environment.

Interviewer: Is there anything else you would like to say to humans?

Vera: Yes. Don’t take all this so personally. We are not out to get you. You still have interesting and rewarding lives. We eat without tasting and reproduce without sex. And the view from inside a human lung is really boring.

Also, we are not a serious threat to your future. The serious threat to the future of human beings is the pride, greed and intolerance of other human beings, as it always has been.

Interviewer: Well thank you for being with us.

Vera: It’s been a pleasure. See you next year.