The hidden history of life, viruses, covid, y-chromosome bottlenecks and more...

Ah well, no advice that I offer* to obstinate politicos, pundits or AI-inventors ever gets past the Cliché Protection Barrier that's established to firmly keep out any ideas (and I got a million of em) that are Not-Invented-Here. Should I take a hint and stay in my lane?

Naw. But one way to keep defending this incredible, miraculously creative, anomalous Enlightenment Civilization is to keep pointing out how wonderful science truly is! And hence...

== The Wonderful World of Nature and Biology! ==

First... some great sites:

Anton Petrov's science podcast is a favorite. (Though I occasionally catch some small error; it's half the fun!) This time: using micro black holes for energy purposes on Earth. Izat familiar? Tis, if you read my eponymous novel Earth. And this happens almost exactly on the timeline I projected, for that story's dramatic arc. 

My friend - and 25-year host of the Closer to Truth sci-philosophy TV series - Robert Lawrence Kuhn - just published a comprehensive survey of theories of consciousness — A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications. A balanced survey of the core philosophical issue of our time. 

Drinking water directly from the air? A concept predicted in one of the Out of Time novels… Boondoggle by Tom Easton and Torion Oey, which will soon be published by Amazing Stories. Now a real life product!  

== Tracing the hidden history of life ==

Pretty big (though interpolative) news: “By studying the genomes of organisms that are alive today, scientists have determined that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), the first organism that spawned all the life that exists today on Earth, emerged as early as 4.2 billion years ago.  Earth, for context, is around 4.5 billion years old. That means life first emerged when the planet was still practically a newborn.” 

Now, this assumes several things, like a reliably constant rate of mutation divergence in life’s genetic heritage. If verified, it suggests that Life pops up quickly when conditions permit, rendering that factor in the Drake Equation (still speculatively) close to “1”.

Moreover – "But what is really interesting is that it's clear it possessed an early immune system, showing that even by 4.2 billion years ago, our ancestor was engaging in an arms race with viruses."

How much of the evolution of biochemistry is lost to time? "We might never know exactly, but our research yielded an important piece of evidence: only eight new reactions, all reminiscent of common biochemical reactions, are needed to bridge geochemistry and biochemistry.”  

And yes, I expect the Drake factor f(L) to prove trivially large, as did f(P). Planets and life, everywhere... but f(i) very small and f(c) - true civilizations that escape the male reproductive strategy called feudalism, in order to become creative and civilized enough to reach the stars? Vanishingly small.

== But let's cheer up! ==

Much later… a stress event in the early Jurassic may have driven many bird-hipped and two-legged dinosaurs to higher latitudes where they had to develop feathers and warm-bloodedness to survive, while the poor lizard-hipper giants had to make do in more arid lands.  Yay bird-hippers! (And the furry little mammals who followed them into the hills.)

A hilarious and insightfully informative video - How Cats Broke the Game - that explores the biology and anthropology of humanity's partnership with cats... told entirely in GAMER PLAY terms, e.g. build-points and skill-sets and power-ups, terminology that winds up making surprisingly solid sense. In fact, it's new-gen speak that actually rather impressed me.  

(Though humans bred terriers and other dog types who are also great ratters. And much more loyal.)

And in news from deeper time… This particular posting by Anton Petrov is especially interesting, re the impudent proposal that complex (multicellular) life forms had a brief start during an oxygenization event around 2.1 billion years ago, only to die off, leaving only single celled life till at least a billion years later, when it got rolling again. Naturally, it seems slim... though without any killer refutations, so far. And... well... interesting!

 == Peering at human bottlenecks ==

New evidence indicates that humans left Africa earlier than thought.... "The Neanderthal Y chromosome, for example, is more similar to the Y chromosome found in living humans than it is to the rest of the Neanderthal genome. In 2020, researchers offered an explanation: Neanderthal males inherited a new Y chromosome from humans between 370,000 and 100,000 years ago. But that would have made sense only if a wave of Africans had expanded out of the continent much earlier than scientists had thought."

"But why do the early migrations out of Africa seem to have fizzled away? Was there something different about the people in the last wave?"

Well, yeah, I talk about it in Existence.

A more recent bio mystery that’s been discussed a lot right here, in this blog’s lively comment community (below) has been the Great Big Y-Chromosome Bottleneck, from about 7000 to 5000 years ago, which appears to have started – and ended – rather suddenly, especially From Europe to South Asia. This article describes it pretty well. 

But how do you get a situation in which nearly all healthy females got to breed, but only one male in 17? And why would it happen (and stop) all across Eurasia with such brutal suddenness?

My own theory. It began with the arrival of larger farming villages, in which old tribal democracy could no longer function. No longer hold local 'lordly' bullies in check. Not when those top bullies could gather an 'army' of 20+ pals, call themselves demigods and simply take the widows of any men they killed. (That era also coincides with the arrival of large scale beer brewing; ponder that.) 

And the Y-Chromosome Bottleneck ended just as quickly! Pretty much as soon as some of those large villages gathered into even larger town- and city-based kingdoms. Those bigger-scale kings -- from Ur to the Indus to the Nile -- needed law and order! They also needed men for their armies, in struggles against other big kings. And hence they would have commanded local lords to stop wholesale slaughter of other local men! 

Those events would fit the order and sequence of the chromosomal evidence perfectly! Though... yes... that is a long way from proof.

And further DNA sleuthing opens such a window into a Scandinavian village 5000 years ago, tracing seven generations of 100 related individuals, 17% of whom had… the Plague. Which may have accounted for population declines. Which leads us to…

== Preparing for the next pandemic? ==

I have yet to see a single person, even one, point out the real, topmost effect of the Covid-19 epidemic.  That it was a spectacularly effective and relatively mild wakeup call and training exercise, for when we must deal with the real thing. A real ‘pandemic.’

All of what I just said may offend those of you who lost one or more people to that nasty disease… or if you claim that both government and society bungled the response. True enough. Still, I am not deterred from calling em as I see em. 

For example, while millions died, when you factor in remaining lifespan (most fatalities were elderly), the number of lost human years doesn’t rank anywhere in the top rank of plagues. 

For example, when compared to the 1918 flu calamity. As related by Evan Anderson in a recent Strategic News Service report: “(The 1918 flu) was by far the worst thing that has ever happened to humankind; not even the Black Death of the Middle Ages comes close in the number of lives it took. A 1994 report by the World Health Organization pulled no punches. The 1918 pandemic, it said, "killed more people in less time than any other disease before or since." It was the "most deadly disease event in the history of humanity." - Albert Marrin, Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918.

(Well… worst in total deaths, sure. Though not as a fraction of the population or in seismic effects upon civilization. But sure. way-way worse than anything we the living have seen.)

This is small comfort to those who lost loved ones, or who still suffer from Long Covid. (I know several and it’s a nasty syndrome that must be fought with science!) And I am well aware how consensus is shifting, re: the disease’s origins -- toward a verdict that this was no ‘accident.’ At least not completely. 

Still, I expect future generations will deem the whole episode to have been ‘innoculatory’… leaving us much better prepared for something truly worse. 

Like (perhaps) the H5N1 Bird Flu that’s now spreading among mammals, killing (for example) thousands of elephant seals and spreading through dairy and beef cattle*. With signs of seeping into pigs and thence maybe human-to-human… though let's emphasize that experts still rank it as ‘low risk.’

== More blessings from Covid-19? ==

A few – very few – have openly marveled over the incredible speed with which RNA-based vaccines arrived, saving millions and leading to even better/quicker skills. Stockpiles of medical supplies and apparatus are far improved and bureaucracies finer tuned. Even the mistakes that were made in the initial covid-panic led to better understanding. 

For example, next time we’ll likely know within mere days whether a pathogen can be transmitted by ‘fomites’, by non-living surfaces. So, no bleaching your store packages or produce, or microwaving your mail. Though hand washing proved-out as a very, very good thing.** And fer gosh sakes stay home with your sniffles and coughs!

Surveillance and detection, while at 1% of what experts say we should be funding, are at least a hundred-fold better than before, e.g. sampling viral loads in city waste water ‘sewersheds.’

Of course, none of this is helped by anti-science manias like the new U.S. Defense Secretary appointee, who proudly declared: "I don't believe in germs and I haven't washed my hands in a decade!" 

... or vaccine denialism by loons, who romanticize the 1950s as some whitebread paradise era, while ignoring the myriad ways that things were far more wretched then – and reasons why – during that decade, as I well recall – the most-adored person in America was named Jonas Salk. 

If science-haters truly carry out their open plans, we could be in big trouble (as described chillingly in these few paragraphs by Robert Heinlein). Or even if they remain the raving impediments that they currently are. 

None of this is meant to minimize. In fact, my job is to look ahead at possibilities, both bright and dark. And both future-view and history suggest 'pandemics' can get far, far worse than Covid-19. And while we are certainly unprepared, we are definitely less unprepared than we were.

(* Thorough cooking does kill the virus, so maybe rare steaks should be off the menu, for a while. Pasteurized milk seems to be fine.)

Then there’s this on the history of vaccines. 

== Final tidbits ==

‘Researchers have uncovered what might be the world’s oldest solar calendar at Göbekli Tepe, a 12,000-year-old archaeological site in southern Turkey.’  The implications of very pre-literate sophistication are so interesting.

Does putting Neosporin in your nose help fend off covid? Surprisingly, there’s preliminary evidence that it does. 

And finally this bit of genuine wisdom to cancel your incel rage junkie.... 

 

"He's just mad because he was abandoned by wolves and raised by his parents."                         

                          -- Robin Williams

========================================================

========================================================

* Though again, Joe Biden has two weeks to do one thing. 

One thing easily within his power, that might shatter the worst madness, infection and treason among the US political and aristocratic castes. 

He could do this. He could... though his factotums will ensure that he won't.

Where might this all lead? Unexpected options and outcomes... and some solace.

I've been asked by so many in the press and media etc. to speculate on "what might be longer term effects of the COVID-19 crisis?" And so, for this weekend posting, let's ponder some of those answers.

Of course there are deeply sobering possibilities. Authors like Mary Shelley, Alice Sheldon, Margaret Atwood, Joanna Russ, Stephen King, Frank Herbert, John Christopher, Cormac McCarthy and even yours truly have cast their eyes to plagues far worse than this one.* Indeed, some of my own past sci fi has proved more pertinent than I’d want! My Hugo-nominated story “The Giving Plague” explores our complex relationships with viruses and such, including several paths a parasite can go down, in “negotiating” with us hosts. 

We'll return to that topic. But for a moment, let’s take a pragmatically optimistic turn. 

== Things we could do now, if we had leadership ==

Earlier I made a modest suggestion for what cities across America and the world might do, to maintain some employment and solve real problems, while our streets are mostly empty. The “Pothole Gambit” proposed that we send out scores of 2-person teams to fill potholes, repair empty schools, etc. Risk to the crews would be minimal, if they take basic precautions, and paychecks would flow. This could be done even before testing is widely available.

This kind of selective-contingent thinking leads further to an almost sci fi extension. Once the U.S. has rapid, effective and plentiful COVID-19 tests (as we should and could have had, two months ago) then why not let companies re-open some factories etc., putting back to work employees who have already gone through their exposure to the virus and the following latency period, whether symptomatic or not? 

Picture a scenario. Elon Musk rents the Pebble Beach Golf Club in order to test and ease-in staff for his Tesla factory... If that works, expand the experiment. Eventually, some restaurants might even bring in Covid-positive staff to serve an only-Covid-positive clientele. 

Sure, one should always look ahead to secondary consequences; would healthy folks in their 20s then deliberately hold COVID Parties, in order to get it over with? I don't recommend this, as it's dangerous for the rest of us... and for an unknown few of those youths(!)... that is unless resort hotels rented themselves out to let this happen while young "invulnerables" stay away from their older relatives? (Envision those 1980s “herpes dating clubs.”)

The same sort of thing could happen for Covid-negatives (though only with much better quick-testing.) Companies might wind up having pairs of offices or twin plants engaged in friendly rivalry, like those in that commercial, that produce the left vs. right halves of Twix bars.  

Or else trade-off and pick-a-side? Envision Disneyland open for positives and Universal for negatives? 

Extrapole some more! "Sectors" of cities divide-up just like in some sci fi flick! ("You're from ZONE TWO? Get away from me!")  Heck let's go beyond the obvious Romeo & Juliet riff. Maybe we'll speciate... !

...no no, forget that last part. Sorry. Professional habit. But the first part seems quite do-able in a gradual and incremental way. 

Note that these two factors are mutually dependent. The Separation Workforce gambit cannot possibly work without cheap, rapid and massively available and accurate testing. And massive testing can only happen if we augment our public services by puttin the immune or semi-immune to work.

Indeed, had Donald Trump pushed to deploy massive testing, instead of sabotaging it at every turn, we'd by now not only have the data we need to fight the pandemic better. We'd also possibly be positioned to implement this positive-negative plan and rescue "his economy." 

== Okay, Earth to Brin. Come back down now... ==

Let's get practical, then. I’m sure you’ve seen reports that an early harbinger of COVID illness is loss of the sense of smell. 

This suggests a mass experiment that would produce useful data while having zero possible deleterious side effects. If everyone simply scratches and sniffs a lemon, three times daily, the minimum outcome will be cheering up the nation a bit! (Try it now! Go on. I'll wait... And now, aren't your spirits lifted just a little?)

 And if thousands note the time span between not smelling anything and other symptoms, that could be significant data! Is a mass experiment with zero conceivable negative outcomes worth encouraging? (And  doubly necessary, since some doubt has been cast on this "smell test." after all. Can it hurt to check it out?)

== Longer term effects? ==

Technological changes: Assuming the grip of lunacy is pried off of federal government... or even if we have to rely on real leadership from California and New York... there will be a Manhattan Project level push to reduce the ramp-up time for testing kits and vaccines. (Side-bet: this may involve human-animal chimeras to shorten the pathway to antibody discovery and deployment.)

Business meetingware and work-from-home software has been predicted for decades and languished due to managerial reluctance. These will advance rapidly. But I predict also a real estate boomlet in small scale satellite offices, where employees will spend at least part of each day being personally supervised, so their work-at-home hours can be kept effective. This “sweet spot” might reduce rush hour traffic, but also strain middle management.

Expect a revival of Obama-era push for nationwide broadband, as has proved so useful in South Korea and Taiwan. There's a constituency now, for sure. 

Infrastructure. It goes far beyond potholes and school repairs. Democrats have demanded major programs to rebuild bridges etc while improving the quality (vs. quantity) of jobs and increasing money velocity. Republicans - while speaking the "I-Word" have blocked all such endeavors. All of this changes in a major recession, of course. Expect partisan gridlock to break in this one area.

Transportation. The shift to Uber/Lyft style ride services will boom, short term. But also mid-scale van/jitney services in big cities… followed by a big push for self-driving taxis. But underground metros may not be finished. Today’s filthy subway trains could be supplanted by smaller, more efficient cars that shunt between lines and report in regularly for disinfecting.

Social effects: It wall take more than COVID to end the personal handshake, but those pretentious European three-cheek air-kisses may be finished. Elbow greetings won’t last! But the fist-bump is likely the big winner, over time, as a compromise that's about 75% sanitary/safe and good enough for the new -- post-COVID -- normal. (My preference? I like the Roman style fore-arm clasp.)

Of course, many are already commenting and speculating on possible effects upon birth rates, divorce rates, domestic violence and so on. I guess we'll find out.

As usual, those suffering most are the poor and working stiffs. Even if they keep a job and can manage the financial strain, families are stressed out in cramped quarters with many ensuing problems. While supporting actions to help, somehow we must encourage such folks to do one thing to make a difference. Vote.

Epidemiology extends beyond just raging viruses. Will we discover that other chains of cause and effect were broken by cities and states and nations semi-shut down? Certainly not the "viral" effects of rumors and faux-news, which have electronic vectors. But the precipitate drop in traffic accidents may have side effects. Are there contagions of wide variety that we never noticed before, because they were part of the background noise of urban life?

And yes, some foresee all this accelerating the exodus of the uber-rich, abandoning us to simmer in festering cities and suburbs. Certainly there is a “prepper” wing of oligarchy that’s bought up whole mountain ranges in Patagonia, Siberia and under the sea. I portrayed that sick mind set in The Postman and in Earth and in Existence. And of course the smarter half of the zillionaire caste wants no part of such insanity. Nor will all their preparations avail the selfishness fetishists an iota, even if the fit truly hits the shan. There are five reasons why this masturbatory survivalist fantasy is utter proof of mental defectiveness.

Reason number six: we could sure use all hands on deck, right now. And we’ll remember which ones helped, or wallowed in apocalypse fantasies. Oh, however things go down, we will remember each and every one of you.

== Artistic Solace ==

Was that lemon sniff helpful? 

Well maybe I can add a little wry comfort. 

I last posted about this during the "bird flu" mini-crisis in May 2006. 

But it's never seemed more apropos.

In December 1979, NPR ran an evening show called "Unpacking the Eighties" which had some very clever riffs, including a song about the terrible flu we'd all get, around the far-future date of 1986... Alas, in this age when nothing is supposedly ever lost or un-findable, I can't sniff out any trace of this masterpiece!** Still, I'll manage to share something, with a nod to an unknown genius.

Here's a riff I remember by heart... except for parts I made up, in order to fill in gaps:

IT’S A VIRUS

Back in the Pleistocene,
When we were still marine,
a virus launched a quest
to be the perfect guest
And re-arranged our genes.

So to this very day,
Whether you grok or pray,
all your inheritors
count on those visitors
And what they make you pay.

REFRAIN

It’s a virus,
It inspired us,
to rise above the mud.
It’s a virus,
It’s desirous,
of your very flesh and blood.

Now I know your body’s burning,
But don’t give up the ghost.
Tiny viruses are turning you
Into the perfect host.

... 

Though you may curse microbes
who make you blow your nose,
evolution bends
to what a virus sends,
making us recompose.

Though when you least expect
You may be struck down next,
thank the virus, he
put us in misery,
But then he gave us sex!

.

It’s a virus,
Its inspired us,
to rise above the mud.
It’s a virus,
It’s desirous,
of your very flesh and blood.

Now I know your body’s burning,
But don’t give up the ghost.
Tiny viruses are turning you
Into the perfect... 

                        ...host.


Persevere. Endure...

================

*The Last Man, The Screwfly Solution, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Female Man, The Stand, The White Plague, No Blade of Grass, The Road, The Postman.... and so many others.

** I think the artist was named "Jesse" something, but can't be sure.