Science’s approach to virus evolving for the better
The good news is that if you get COVID-19, you stand a better chance of getting better sooner, without having a long, if any, stay in the ICU, and you may not have to suffer on a ventilator.
The bad news is there may be no silver bullet of a vaccine by the end of the year, and if one is approved, there may be a free-for-all among vaccine developers, countries and special interests.
For the improvement in treatment outlook, thank a process called exaptation. The term has been appropriated from evolutionary biology and means essentially work with what you have, adapt and deploy. The most quoted example is how birds developed wings for warmth and found they could be used for flying.
One of the great exponents of exaptation, Omar Hatamleh, chief innovation officer, engineering, at NASA, says: “There is an abundance of intellectual property that can be repurposed or used in areas and functions outside of their original intended application.”
There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of medicines — generally referred to as “compounds” in the pharmaceutical world — that have been developed for specific purposes but