Why COVID-19 is an apex predator, and what you can do about it

Coronavirus emerged successful out of a countless number of experiments by viruses blindly exploring ecological niches through differentiation.

It has been successful because it has found a winning combination in its niche — it can successfully reproduce and transmit itself without killing the host organism in too many cases, or too fast. But that’s not what makes it so dangerous.

What makes this Virus an Apex Predator

COVID-19 is adapted to our bodies, but more importantly to our social and economic structures. This adaptation has lead to its spread across the globe. This iteration got the right mix of contagiousness with the right cadence of incubation and the perfect mortality rate at the right point in its infection lifecycle, to rip through the world, traversing our social and economic structures.

It can travel between countries on planes, infecting the passengers, before the carrier knows they are infected (if they ever do — estimates are that up to 50% of infected people have no symptoms). It is highly contagious, doubling in its spread every 3–4 days. It is invisible in statistics in its spread without massive testing until mortalities start to show up weeks later. By that time it has spread up to 630 times — so at the point that you see a mortality rate for 1000 infections, there are up to 630,000 people infected, and the mortality rate for that shows up weeks later. By then, it has massively spread further.

This delay tricks people by not allowing them to connect their activities with the consequences through cause and effect — unless they operate based on protocols and an understanding of the maths. This is counter-intuitive for humans — both for your government, and for you as an individual.

We all want to disrupt its adaptation to its ecological niche by changing the biological conditions via anti-viral drugs and vaccines (or herbs and spices — the other flavour of this).

However, this is not going to happen fast enough. We have to disrupt the niche by changing the social and economic conditions that it is an adaptation for.

In areas where it has been halted, this has been done by halting the economy completely, and putting people under house arrest through martial law.

Predictable, but not believable

My mother warned me that this was coming months ago. A Chinese student who stayed with her in NZ skyped her from Wuhan during the lockdown. She shared with me about it, and told me to get ready for house arrest and buy tinned food.

I thought it was pretty dramatic, but didn’t see it happening here — because I based my prediction of the future on my experience of the past. SARS and MERS were hyped, but didn’t jump out of Asia.

However, this one has.

In addition to the biological characteristics of a successful virus, it has just the right combination of characteristics to traverse the social and economic structures in place in the global human society.

This is something you want to burn into your brain: the effect of this virus is predictable, but not believable.

It has landed in a blind spot where humans can’t project its future effect intuitively and connect that with their current activities. To do that, you have to study the maths of it, and act based on that. Read this article for a great overview: The Sober Math Everyone Must Understand About the Pandemic.

COVID-19 is especially well adapted for Liberal Democracies

COVID-19 is even better adapted for liberal democracies than for Wuhan— liberal democracies do not have the directive state power and the experience with viral outbreaks that China has. This is why the death toll outside China is greater, and growing.

Taking action is delayed because disrupting the virus requires disrupting the economic environment that forms its niche, which governments do not want to do; and disrupting the social practices that form its niche, which people do not want to do, and can’t see the need for, or effect of.

The lag between the impact of the spread, and the actions of spread make it particularly effective. In order to effectively disrupt it, you need to be acting like this thing just killed thousands of people — weeks before you see a single person die.

Then you need to be acting like it killed tens of thousands of people, weeks before you see that.

Take Action Now

How do you disrupt the economic and social niche that the virus is an adaptation for?

If you are not living like you are under house arrest in Wuhan, and living in Chernobyl where everything outside your house is radioactive, and every person has the Zombie virus, start immediately.

• Do not allow anyone into your house, or enter anyone’s house.
• Create decontamination protocols. Write them down. Induct everyone in your household in them.
• Place a radiation symbol next to your door to remind you that outside the door, everything is radioactive.
• Establish a decontamination zone at the entrance to your house.
• Remove all outside clothes at the door, and place them in a contaminated basket.
• Spray those clothes, your shoes, your gloves, your mask with 80% methylated spirits. Do not take them in, except the clothes to wash. Treat them as radioactive.
• Stop all physical interaction with people outside the house. This either happens now, or under martial law with significant death toll that is trailing the current spread of infection by weeks.
• Create infection protocols for how you will deal with infection in the house. Have a designated isolation room, and treat it as highly radioactive when someone is infected.
• Get connected online with people. Join communities and hang out with people over Zoom, Slack, and Whereby. Take care of yours and others mental health and emotional wellbeing.

This is going to cause an adaptation in our economic and social structures, or the destruction of our current civilisation. Which one is up to us — and I believe in you. Humanity has this.

This is a black swan event. The world will not look the same after this. What it looks like is up for creation: the past is no longer an indication of the future.

Make sure that you and your loved ones are alive to be part of creating and living it. Act now for the future three weeks out, based on the maths. That’s the way to disrupt the virus.