We live in a dangerous world. Its a place where one species has to prey on other species in order to survive. In turn they are preyed upon.
We consider this the natural order of things and justify the lion killing the antelope as the circle of life. Not so much so for the antelope who by the way had no issue ending the life cycle of numerous plants.
Some of us have created hierarchies in our minds to justify eating the creatures we consider less conscious or less animate. Science tells us that we share over 90% of our DNA with plants so how different are they really?
We tend to think that we have escaped this cycle, at least as far as being prey, but that's not true. I'm not talking about the rare times we get attacked by a shark or another animal, we are prey to micro-organisms that need us to survive.
We host all sorts of bacteria that need us to survive. In some cases we need them. Viruses tend to be inherently more destructive since they just want to hijack us so they can replicate. In doing so they can make us sick or even kill us.
We have developed defenses but the viruses continue to adapt also and new ones become deadly. Before science developed vaccines we simply had to live with the risk and many succumbed to things like measles, polio, smallpox, etc. It was a world where we were lucky to survive childhood and the risk was always there.
We now live in a world where we can combat viruses. For some reason fairly large swaths of our population won't. Its sort of like Antelopes who aren't afraid of lions.
They end up as dinner.
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