Natural virus killers
If the nightmare of COVID-19 has illustrated anything we can all agree upon, it is that we in the twenty-first century are still very fearful of viruses and other unseen vectors of disease. The unparalleled pandemic media coverage of tens of thousands of deaths worldwide from coronavirus infection this year has stoked our panic like nothing before; the resulting lockdowns have changed our lives in ways that would have seemed like science fiction just months ago.
Yet most of us encounter these same killers, including COVID-19, and experience only a mild illness lasting a few days. Many don’t have symptoms at all; they don’t even know a virus has hitched along for the ride. What is it that makes the difference between catching a light cold from a virus and dying of pneumonia?
A cutting-edge field of research called “neo-virology” is beginning to understand the 1031 viruses (that’s 10 followed by 31 zeros) that inhabit our world in a completely different light.1
This study of the human“virome” is finding that trillions of viruses exist in and on just about every surface of healthy human bodies: in our saliva and intestines, on our skin and in our lungs. They even multiply in our blood, which scientists long presumed to be sterile.2
WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CATCHING A COLD FROM A VIRUS AND DYING OF PNEUMONIA? CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH IS BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND
Though they are 10 to 100 times smaller than bacteria, viruses outnumber the bacteria in our bodies by a factor of 10, and those bacteria in turn outnumber our own cells.3
Rather than considering them just innocuous travelers along for the ride or deadly killers lying
