Since we are not allowed to travel right now due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, I thought I would actually write something about the problem. So here is the first of my “Scientific Rambles”, being a sketch of where we are, what we think we know about it all, and how it might all pan out in the end.
I have shown below a graph taken from a trusted website (health.gov.au) which shows the trajectory of each of the waves of Covid infections we have so far had in Australia, up to today (August 28, 2021).
It is interesting to note that each wave has risen sharply, reached a peak, and then subsided just as sharply as it went up. Between the waves, infections have remained constantly very low. For nearly two years now, not a day has passed on which we have not been told something about Covid. A constant stream of politicians (who would be expert epidemiologists) has occupied hours of our television and radio news and current affairs time. And not far behind them has been a stream of expert epidemiologists (who would be politicians), filling in the rest of the news. But what have we actually learnt? Each time a new wave starts we are told that it is a ‘new and highly infectious variant’ and that we must have restrictions and go into lock-down in order to ‘drive down the numbers and get on top of it’. And sure enough, the numbers do drop; the political and epidemiological experts congratulate each other, and thank us all for the efforts and sacrifices we have all made to get the numbers down. The lock-down ends and the restrictions are eased, and the numbers remain low—-for a couple of months following the first wave, and for about 9 months following the second. The third wave is still at, or near, its peak, but I wager it will subside as quickly as it went up very shortly.
No explanation is given for the precipitous decline in numbers (other than ‘the success of the lock-down strategy’), or for the very low plateau. But again, when the third wave started, we were told that it is “the highly infectious new (Delta) strain”. Instant panic on the part of the politicians and the epidemiologists, and we are in lock-down again, following advice from the ‘Modelers’ in the ivory towers of biomedical research. Now don’t get me wrong—I have the highest respect for our biomedical, and all other, research workers. But the models rely on assumptions, and if they are not quite right, then neither will be the predictions. Having listened to a recent podcast by a very prominent health journalist, it seemed to me that one crucially important factor is missing from the assumptions, and that is related to the reasons for the collapse of the waves, and the failure of a wave to raise itself up again from its own ashes; that is, the bit we are never told about. That no-one ever mentions!
Now I can’t believe that our top virologists have no idea why the waves end and stay down as they do until a new variant comes along. I have read one report which claims it is simple Darwinian natural selection—-but I am not convinced that viruses are natural competitors in the way that Darwin had in mind; and I cannot accept that the emergence of a new strain necessarily prevents the earlier one from infecting people. I read another report claiming that ‘scientists are baffled by the decline and fall of the waves’, but as I said before, I cannot believe that our top virologists are ‘baffled’ to that extent.
So, once again the question “what is going on?”
In the absence of any other information, I am going to try to provide an explanation which I think is a real possibility—-but for which I admit I have scant evidence. Maybe the real experts will look askance at my efforts, but if so, I hope that they might actually then try to provide a better explanation; one that might be helpful to those who are trying to guide us through the pandemic. So far, it seems to me to be a gaping hole in the collective knowledge about Covid.
My belief is (and by definition a belief is something one holds to be true despite the total lack of evidence) that the very mechanism that gives rise to each of the many variants of covid, is the very mechanism by which each variant enjoys its rapid rise to fame in a wave, before collapsing, never to rise again. In other words, each new variant has an inbuilt self-destruct mechanism that necessarily leads to its downfall—-a bit like the central character in a Shakespearean tragedy.
Now, you might like to dwell on this thought as you await the next edition of Slingsby’s Miscellany, which, in a couple of days, will include a blog with the grand title of “Scientific Rambles 2”, and in which the main body of the theory will be set out.
Slingsby's Miscellany 