COVID-19: The revenge?

By: Daniel Valle Basto

They say riding a bicycle is something you never forget, so long as you’ve learned enough to leave the training wheels behind.

Every single one of us who rides a bicycle knows we have to get used to the vehicle. Adjust the seat, lower or rise the handlebars’ stem, get used to the brakes. Learning how to ride a bicycle lasts you forever.

Now, imagine you ride that bicycle frequently. Not daily, but frequently. One day, your sister ask you to take her with you. You know your own bike, and you feel confident enough in it, so you know you can take her if she sits up front on the stem. You get on, she gets on, and you start to pedal. Nothing goes wrong. You both reach your destination. You both have fun.

Imagine, another day, you and your sister go out in your bike: she goes on the stem between the handlebars, and you go on the seat. However, after a block, your cousin appears. He’s younger than you, and he’s tiny. He asks you to take him on your bike, that he can stand on the small poles extending from the rear cassette and hold onto your shoulders. So the three of you go out on your bike. You ride around, have fun, and get to where you want to go.

This goes on for several days. The three of you on the bike. Until, one day, you all fall. It’s true, you hadn’t fallen before. But it’s equally true that the bike is certainly NOT designed to regularly carry three people.

The three of you falling WASN’T the bike’s revenge, because it was mad about you making it carry thrice the intended weight. The fall WASN’T a matter of destiny, nor divine punishment (regardless of what is it you consider divine). You fell down from the bike because it was very likely you would. You fell, because the probability of falling down from a moving bike is real, and it only goes up the more people or weight you put on it.

You fell, because it’s a matter of PROBABILITIES.

It’s exactly the same with the coronavirus – COVID-19. We’re not falling because the planet is angry with us. We’re not falling for divine punishment, regardless of what is it we consider divine. We fall because it was very likely for something like that to happen. We fall with the coronavirus because of a matter of PROBABILITIES. Viruses have always mutated, and will always mutate (even if they aren’t living beings). And, because that’s how PROBABILITIES work, once in a while one of these mutations will have an impact on us.

Now that we have stacked the planet with more than it can handle, the PROBABILITY of us falling because of this virus is very real.

And not only is it real, but it’s high. And it will happen, because it’s a PROBABILITY. And the more we continue to stockpile our planet with our demands, the probability of us falling for a viral epidemic (bacterial or not) is only going to continue rising.

It’s all a matter of PROBABILITIES.

PS: Remember that, in science, there is no such thing as an absolute truth. There is only the Probabilistic Truth.

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a Arbio

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