If the Coronavirus behaves like a Coronavirus... will there be an outbreak in October?

"How many brave men, how many beautiful women, how many gallant young men whom Galen, Hippocrates or Aesculapius would have judged to be very healthy, had breakfast with their relatives, companions and friends, and in the evening they had dinner with their ancestors in the other world!"

In the Decameron Giovanni Bocaccio tells how a group of ten young people (seven women and three men) run away from the plague and take refuge in a villa on the outskirts of Florence. (The Black Death epidemic hit Florence in 1348). The last devastating pandemic we suffered was the 1918 flu. As it was the most recent, we tried to draw conclusions and certainties from it: the outbreak in October 1918 was much more deadly than the one at the beginning of the year. Therefore, there are many scientists trying to solve this question, what will happen next Autumn?

We must bear in mind not only that the conditions of 1918 were very different from nowadays (a world at war and thousands of soldiers in trenches), but also that that virus was the H1N1 flu virus, which is not the same as our COVID19 or SARS Cov-2. For example, it affected more people between the ages of 20-40.

What can we know? That question has been asked since Philosophy was born, going from Plato's theory of Ideas, to Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" (Rationalism) to Hume's purely empirical knowledge (“we can only know through our senses”).This empiricism in its most radical form, can lead us to the dangerous situation of not having the capacity to make decisions. When we face new situations, we could not make any choice because there are no precedents (no experience). Kant, the great man of Konigsberg, set the basis of modern philosophy when he stated that it is true that knowledge comes to us through the senses but then there is our understanding to analyze and evaluate it (he combined Cartesian Rationalism with Hume's Empiricism). It is true that there are many things that we do not know with certainty about this coronavirus because it is new, but we can try to make decisions by looking at those that most resemble it, and these are not the flu virus but other coronaviruses

Well, let's start with SARS 2002 in Hong Kong. This apparently more lethal virus (30% mortality) than the current one ended up disappearing. In fact, after the confinement, the big shows returned and the Galactic Real Madrid (Figo Beckham, Ronaldo...) played in front of 40,000 people in Hong Kong (the genome of the beta coronavirus SARS-Cov-2 has a homology of 80% with SARS 2002). On the other hand, we have the MERS that appeared in the Arabian Peninsula in 2012 and that until 2019 have been reported 2494 cases. It seems that these viruses have been losing virulence and that today they do not represent a major threat.

https://applications.emro.who.int/docs/EMRPUB-CSR-241-2019-EN.pdf?ua=1&ua=1&ua=1

This is the Beta family, but there is also an Alpha family (besides Gamma and Delta) which are the common cold viruses that live with us, in fact they cause 10% of the cases of common cold. So that means the virus will come back in Autumn…maybe it will do it like its relatives of common cold, or not come back like its Beta brothers... what is clear is that if SARS Cov 2 comes back it will not be so aggressive.

I don't know if you have had the opportunity to read Antonio Damasio's "Strange order of things", but in this book he brilliantly explains how all living things, including viruses, need to cooperate with others in order to survive. What do you think is more successful, the flu virus that returns every year infecting millions of people or the much more deadly Ebola virus that only affects a few thousand and not every year? The virus is an USB (contains information) but by itself it is worthless; it needs a computer (another living being) to extract that information and modify it. The Coronavirus uses the most efficient strategy: cooperating with other living beings. As it mutates, it will become less aggressive in order to survive, and therefore even if it returns in autumn it will not be the same version that was born in Asia. The virus is a selfish living being that will look for the most optimal strategy to achieve its survival and this is cooperation.

When Pandora accidentally opened the amphora, the evils contained in it spread throughout the world. She tried to close it to avoid releasing even more misfortune, but only one remained: Hope. Some say that there is no greater evil than false hope, I wish that these ideas that I expose here are not false hope…