Feel a little off – mentally and bodily?
Like some remedial level awkward octopus fumbling around through life?
Well, maybe you’re just stupid.
No, really. I mean you may be a genuine victim of viral stupidity, says science.
Not even the meme on the internet kind, either.
But an IRL in your body infectious agent.
Because in a study recently done at Johns Hopkins, they stumbled over some very interesting information about the bacteria that we carry (for non science folk, we all carry bacteria – which is mostly good – because it makes up our microbiome). They weren’t even setting out to discover anything like this, but if Alexander Fleming taught us anything, sometimes that’s how the most paradigm shifting shiz gets found out. In this case, however, it wasn’t a life changing cure that got discovered. Rather, it was a problem (albeit very good explanation for society in general) that got discovered while they were taking samples from folks’ throats:
A virus that makes you stupid.
Well, what they found was a virus known to infect algae in these peoples’ mouth holes. Although they had never been observed previously in healthy people, the tests they ran came to show that they correlate with effed up cognition (like processing the world around you with your eyeballs and knowing where your body parts are with respect to the world around you).
Dr Robert Yolken, a virologist who led the original study, says it’s a “a striking example showing that the ‘innocuous’ microorganisms we carry can affect behaviour and cognition,” adding that, “physiological differences between person A and person B are encoded in the set of genes each inherits from parents, yet some of these differences are fuelled by the various microorganisms we harbour and the way they interact with our genes.”
(Let’s put a bookmark in that quote and come back to it.)
The report I read went on to say that of the 90 participants in the study, 40 tested positive for the algae virus – and that those who did test positive performed worse on tests designed to measure the speed and accuracy of visual processing. Also, they got lower scores in tasks designed to measure attention.
Mmkay. Let’s look into some points on this virus going viral.
Which the news implies is the cause of diagnosable dumbness.
1. To my friends: I’d like to say that my friends sharing this story clearly are infected with the same idiot sickness they’re sharing news about. (And that’s not just the conspiracy theorists sharing this story from corporate news sites they say they don’t read, either.) I say that for several reasons – but the main one is this: they didn’t read the whole thing. Or, worse, they did and failed to do so critically. And the next two points are why.
2. Correlation does not mean causation. Do the stats match up in a disconcerting way? Sure. But you know what else has a weird correlation? The fact that people who drink milk every day tend to get dead far earlier in life than non-milk drinkers. Despite my own personal veganism, I’m about the facts. And the facts here are that none of us know if milk kills you. The research doesn’t prove anything. Maybe milk drinkers also just happen to be the type of people who hire a helicopter to drop them in the middle of the woods with nothing but a machete and a single MRE so they have to badass their way out. And that’s why they die. No one knows because proof is as missing here as the face on the side of that milk box that may or may not be killing you.
3. Is the solution in your microbiome? Homebody talks about how genes and bacteria interact – and I wish they’d expounded on that. Because, yes that’s a thing and it’s very relevant here. I actually read about it a while ago when I wrote on “tummy bugs” and how the forest of micro-creatures living inside you can either contribute to things like awesome health or chronic fatigue and obesity. Why? Because they interact with our body chemistry – just like the esophogeal dumb virus is said to do. The upside? We can evict the bad bugs squatting in our stomachs and move in some pleasant residents who actually contribute to making our body house feel homey. All we have to do is change our diet and exercise regimen. Now, I don’t work in a lab or have any extra letters after my name, but I’mma go out on a limb here with a Keanu-meme level thought: if my throat is connected to my tummy, and the bugs in my tummy can be altered to improve the other illnesses I’m suffering, then maybe… they’re associated with the ones going down my food chute? And if I tweak my lifestyle a bit… I can kick them out? And get smarter? And stop moving through life like I’m doing a perpetual Seinfeld Kramer entrance? (*Granted, viruses are not the same as bacteria. But it’s worth seeing if they interact.)
4. Will this be an official diagnosis? If so, I’m really interested to know how the first news-breaking-to-patients events are going to go down. In a way (if I’m right about point 2), it almost makes a doctor’s job way easier now that there’s a virus to blame it on. For years, these poor dudes have been trying to find a way to tell people they’ve got a serious case of stupid. And that it’s probably their own fault. Because they’re lazy and unhealthy. Now they can say the virus is the problem – and the patient’s resolve is the solution. People love a good struggle as much as they love denying that they caused it in the first place. That way they can be a victim of life and a survivor at the end.
I feel like the biggest takeaway I got from this story was the part they took away before sharing:
Hope. A solution. The “why not to panic” parts based on research other scientists have done.
As a result, I’ve got friends in tinfoil hats littering my feed with “this is what they’re spraying on us!” And, as we all know, nobody thinks rationally while panicking. That’s the meta moronic element to all of this that’d be comical if it weren’t so awful: by making people afraid about contracting a case of the dumbs, you make them even dumber. That’s the real virus. And it is memetic. So keep calm and carry on while asking, “What’s missing here?” and “what might be the solution?” anytime you read a story like this that blatantly fails to offer it voluntarily.
Because that practice is the best antidote to stupidity – virus or not.
And if you’re too dumb to remember that, write it on a post-it and slap it to the screen you’re reading.
There’s your news.