Is it possible we already have a lot of information about the impact of viral load and just don’t realize it? Ever since we switched to agriculture and civilization, the human population has had a large fraction wiped out dozens of times. I don’t think we’re descendants of merely lucky or biologically “sturdy” people, but of people whose behaviors optimized viral load or had personality traits that helped them avoid it entirely.
Could we be looking at two distinct, competing behaviors which help survival that have evolved out of the ashes of the plagues that devastated humanity? One may be mysophobia/OCD, a behavior pattern about things we cannot see. If this trait has a large hereditary component, that would be strong evidence of why it came about.
The competing strategy may be deliberately attempting to introduce a small viral load frequently to avoid a large load from something like a sneeze to the face. Based on the quantity of recent memes lamenting difficulty in not touching one’s face, perhaps there’s a genetic component to it. It seems like a stretch to suggest a face-touching gene, but with how many droplet contagious diseases have killed so many of us, one would think it would be selected against by now if it didn’t have some redemptive factor.
I’d be most convinced if population modeling showed mysophobia and frequent face-touching were rarely traits that occurred in the same person, suggesting they were opposing strategies, an attempt to avoid exposure entirely and an attempt to deliberately take on a small exposure. Would a combination of both traits compromise survival? Do people at different ages have differing severity of mysophobia or face-touching corresponding to their immune system strength? Does the quantity of each trait in comparison to its population density or type of historical plague correlate strongly enough to these traits to draw any conclusions?
Are we saying “don’t touch your face” to people who’ve specifically evolved to do just that because it got their ancestors through dozens of plagues?
Is it possible we already have a lot of information about the impact of viral load and just don’t realize it? Ever since we switched to agriculture and civilization, the human population has had a large fraction wiped out dozens of times. I don’t think we’re descendants of merely lucky or biologically “sturdy” people, but of people whose behaviors optimized viral load or had personality traits that helped them avoid it entirely.
Could we be looking at two distinct, competing behaviors which help survival that have evolved out of the ashes of the plagues that devastated humanity? One may be mysophobia/OCD, a behavior pattern about things we cannot see. If this trait has a large hereditary component, that would be strong evidence of why it came about.
The competing strategy may be deliberately attempting to introduce a small viral load frequently to avoid a large load from something like a sneeze to the face. Based on the quantity of recent memes lamenting difficulty in not touching one’s face, perhaps there’s a genetic component to it. It seems like a stretch to suggest a face-touching gene, but with how many droplet contagious diseases have killed so many of us, one would think it would be selected against by now if it didn’t have some redemptive factor.
I’d be most convinced if population modeling showed mysophobia and frequent face-touching were rarely traits that occurred in the same person, suggesting they were opposing strategies, an attempt to avoid exposure entirely and an attempt to deliberately take on a small exposure. Would a combination of both traits compromise survival? Do people at different ages have differing severity of mysophobia or face-touching corresponding to their immune system strength? Does the quantity of each trait in comparison to its population density or type of historical plague correlate strongly enough to these traits to draw any conclusions?
Are we saying “don’t touch your face” to people who’ve specifically evolved to do just that because it got their ancestors through dozens of plagues?