The word ‘disease’ comes from the 14th century Old French word desaise which meant “without ease” and “lack, want; discomfort.”

It would be several hundred years before we would associate a set of symptoms with a specific microbe, and even then, questions persist such as:

• Why does the microbe not cause disease in everyone?
• Why are there so-called asymptomatic infections?
• How do host conditions and susceptibility relate to disease outcome (and why do our public health strategies often minimize or overlook this altogether)?
• What would happen to our immune system, and our overall health, if we successfully ‘eradicated’ every microorganism that we think causes disease (and not correct things like nutritional deficiency)?
• In an elaborate ecosystem where everything is connected and serves a purpose and function–is the obsession with eradication ultimately misguided (and just plain weird)?
• Are there instances where ‘the cure is worse than the disease,’ and does bias or fear prevent a critical appraisal of them?
• As medicine has become ever more profit-driven, does this capitalist motive interfere with true public health?

Our understanding of the human microbiome is still in its infancy. We only just introduced the term “good bacteria” into our vernacular (first mentioned in the medical literature in 2001!)–at what point will we have a comparable understanding of viruses? Will we adopt a similar term ‘good viruses’?

Think about it…packages of genetic information are so microscopically small they are able to spread across our species in an exponentially expedient fashion, bypassing our immune mechanisms just long enough, occasionally integrating into our DNA (8% of our genome is viral), and for a large portion of the population this “infection” is completely asymptomatic and unnoticed. What is that reason? What is the WHY?

Could viruses play a role in the health, adaptation and survival of our species? While scientists may predictably view viruses as a tool for drug vectors and to capitalize on them, there is a world and purpose and functionality beyond the marketplace mindset that we won’t understand if we keep relating to microorganisms as something to be monetized.

There is so much more that we don’t know and don’t understand about the human body, immune system, and how health is maintained–it behooves us all to stay curious. Because, at the end of the day, fully unvaccinated children are still healthier than their fully vaccinated counterparts. We must resolve this issue by looking at it, and studying it. We have not figured everything out. Nothing is “settled.”