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How Creationism's Putative Designer COULD Have Given us Immunity to COVID-19 But Chose Not To
How Creationism's Putative Designer COULD Have Given us Immunity to COVID-19 But Chose Not To
Photo: wildpixel/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Early in January, 2020, when stories of a potentially dangerous infection in China were beginning to emerge in the world's news media, my partner and I had a daytrip to London to see the Lucian Freud exhibition at the National Gallery. We drove to the Westgate Centre in Shepherd's Bush where we left the car to avoid congestion charges, then took a London Underground train to central London. It was a popular exhibition, so the gallery was crowded, as were the underground trains on our return journey during rush hour, when commuters pack like sardines into the trains.
The following day, my partner developed a cough and a fever and was quite ill for several days with what we thought then was a nasty cold. Two weeks later, I developed the same symptoms and was quite ill for about 48 hours.
Had we had those symptoms today, we would assume we had COVID-19! That was three months before Britain went into full lock down. Since then both of us have had every vaccination offered and always observed the precautions like wearing face masks, regularly using hand cleanser, avoiding crowds, regular testing, even leaving anything delivered to the house for several hours before touching it, and we haven't had so much as a cold.
Did we have COVID-19, in January 2020? There is now no way of knowing, of course, but it is very unlikely that we both have a genetic immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus - the explanation now being offered for why some people have never been infected, despite the prevalence of the virus in the environment. The probability is that we either caught it early on and were immune during the first major wave, then had immunity from vaccinations, or we had it asymptomatically - as a high, but indeterminate number are now believed to have had.
But, do a small proportion of us have a natural immunity to the virus, as seems likely? If so, this takes some explaining for Creationists who will need to explain why some of us were 'designed' with this resistance and not all of us. Given their insistence that their putative intelligent [sic] designer is omniscient, they must assume it knew about the virus, having designed it, because evolution can't account for it, given their dogma that there is no such thing as evolution, and then gave a small proportion of us genetic immunity to the virus it had designed to harm us, but chose not to give that protection to everyone.
And it's worth remembering that a significant proportion of us suffer long-term from the effects of the virus with long-COVID now becoming a major problem.
In other words, it deliberately designed most of us to be susceptible to its nasty little pathogen, and some of especially so, which it designed with the ability to evade the immune response it had designed to protect us from its pathogens! It takes some special mental gymnastics to see this as the work of an omni-benevolent, intelligence!
But what are the facts regarding natural immunity is a small proportion of the population? In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, Lindsay Broadbent, Lecturer in Virology, University of Surrey, explains the work being done to determine that, and the possible genetic basis of such immunity. The article has been reformatted for stylistic consistence; the original can be read here.
Genetics might explain why some people have never had COVID – but we shouldn’t be too focused on finding out
Source: LL_studio/Shutterstock
Lindsay Broadbent, University of Surrey
It’s been over three years since the first known COVID infection. Since then, we’ve seen hundreds of millions of cases around the globe.
You’ve probably had it – at least once, if not multiple times – as has nearly everyone you know. As continued waves of infections arrive, fewer and fewer people have never caught COVID. But, even taking into account those who have had it and not realised, there are probably still some people out there who have managed to avoid the virus altogether (so far).
Last year, I wrote about people who had yet to be infected. Were they somehow immune? Did they possess some advantageous genetic mutation? Were they simply avoiding people and continuing to take precautions? Or had they just been lucky, and their time was inevitably going to come?
Unfortunately, we still don’t know why some people have managed to avoid COVID for so long. Science takes time. We saw research occur at unprecedented speed in 2020 to understand SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) and to develop treatments and vaccines. But that level of funding and collaboration is hard to sustain in a world with so many worthwhile areas of research.
That said, some research is looking in particular at whether a genetic element helps explain why certain people have never caught COVID. But while this research is important, we shouldn’t lose focus on those who are suffering from the disease and its longer-term effects.
Is immunity in the genes?
The COVID Human Genetic Effort, led by researchers in the US, has recruited people with known exposure to the virus, but who haven’t had it themselves. This includes, for example, healthcare workers or people who lived in a household with a confirmed case of COVID.
Scientists will be examining their DNA and looking for unusual mutations that may explain an apparent resistance to SARS-CoV-2 infection. This may be a mutation in the cellular receptors or enzymes needed for the virus to gain entry to our cells, or perhaps a mutation in a gene involved in the immune response to infection.
Studies that look to uncover anomalies in our DNA, termed genome-wide association studies, have already been able to identify genetic mutations that make some people resistant to other infections like HIV and norovirus (the winter vomiting bug). If we can identify the reasons people may be immune to a particular virus then, theoretically, that knowledge could be used to prevent the infection.
But is it really that simple? Despite our understanding of the genetic mutations that protect a lucky minority of people against norovirus, there’s no vaccine or treatment for this virus. And the infamous “CRISPR babies” (several children born in 2018 whose genomes had been edited in an attempt to make them immune to HIV), received criticism for dubious ethics, not to mention being illegal.
Genetic mutations might explain why some people have never caught COVID.
But understanding the genetic mutations that make someone resistant to COVID could provide valuable insight into how SARS-CoV-2 infects people and causes disease. In other words, it may be interesting scientifically, but perhaps not clinically.
While it will be some time before we have answers from these studies, scientists do believe there is a small group of people who are naturally immune to SARS-CoV-2 owing to their genes.
Time to shift focus?
As scientists, we can become fixated on certain details of our research. It’s always important to remind ourselves that there are people on the other end of these infectious diseases.
Although SARS-CoV-2 continues to infect people across the world, and is constantly mutating and evolving into new variants, its severity has in general been greatly reduced thanks to effective vaccines.
At the same time, an estimated two million people in the UK report long COVID, of which nearly one-fifth have symptoms so severe the condition significantly limits their day-to-day activities.
While there are a few theories as to what contributes to long COVID, including microclots in the blood and chronic inflammation, we don’t really know why some people are affected and others are not. So perhaps our focus should shift from the genetic determinants of immunity to SARS-CoV-2 to exploring whether some people may have a genetic predisposition to a potentially life-altering chronic disease.
Lindsay Broadbent, Lecturer in Virology, University of Surrey
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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