A virus is a vicious interloper. A tiny package of protein that can infiltrate a cell and insert its genetic material into the nucleus, a virus hijacks the reproductive functions of its host to generate many more copies of itself. If the hijacking is not malicious enough, the virus causes serious damages to cell structures and the host dies after making many copies of the offender. Imagine a bandit overtaking an auto factory. Instead of churning out sleek vehicles, the factory now produces deadly weapons of war. After making off with brand new wares, the bandit demolishes the factory and leaves it in a pile of ashes.
This marauding bandit can travel far and wide. Blood is its super highway. Although viral transmission can occur through airborne droplets, blood is where the virus thrives. A viral infection is a most peculiar and baffling form of intimacy. The contents from one person’s body enters the next person’s bloodstream and proliferates in its new host. The interchange of pestilent humors become a sordid sacrament: what lives in you now lives in me. For the virus, each host is merely a station in a vast network of bloodstreams.
We don’t think of ourselves as waystations along a sanguine highway, but the virus is a reminder that we are linked through a network of global blood flow — our bodies are connected through invisible capillaries that stretch across continents. The thought of a virus now making conspicuous all the invisible connections that bind us together reminds me of a word I learned years ago. Consanguineous means “of blood relations”. The word is derived from the Latin roots Com (with, together) and sanguineous (of blood). We are, all 7 billion of us, connected via this shared blood, which is now the playground of the novel Corona virus. If we thought we were discrete, separate, biological units, the virus must surely give us pause.
The mighty human civilization at the peak of its technological prowess brought to a sudden halt by a tiny pocket of protein resembling a harmless squeak toy, a global economy sunk by a particle that is hardly even alive! Whatever the outcome of the pandemic, the least of its lessons is a reminder of human frailty, the folly of human grandiosity. Above all, the virus reveals how we are all inextricably bound to one another in a dense web of shared blood.