Another day, another headline about discoveries of viruses causing cancer (and an aggressive one at that)...
Yeah... reading that, I'm reminded again of those biology classes where we first learned about viruses:
* Not "alive" in the conventional sense
* "Microscopic Particles"
* Can get into all sorts of weird + wacky places, and do stuff to the cells there (e.g. "bateriophages", and/or how viral genetic material has been detected in various DNA before...)
* As they aren't "alive", they also aren't that easy to "kill" (aka destroy + nullify)
* Oh yeah...and they mutate like hell.
Uh huh...
IIRC, I distinctly recall before justifiably somewhat scared of them then (IIRC, it was probably the bacteriophages that really creeped me out most at the time). But also, with what we now know having dealt with (and continuing to deal with) COVID, viruses are truly very nasty + scary things!
A Way Forward?
In any case, as I've mentioned in the past during my first encounter with COVID last year:
I wonder why we have not yet developed some nasal + throat spray (and/or possibly a liquid formulation for "drinking") that can be used to neutralise any viral particles that may have entered out nasal + throat passages, stopping any nascent infection in its tracks.
Specifically, what I'm thinking:
* 1) Surely there are some compounds - i.e. specifically, some mix of enzymes + straight-out solvents - that can reliably denature any "floating" viral particles that may get in.
This would be your "first line" preventative defense, for trying to stop infections before they even have a chance to take hold, by basically eliminating the culprits before they can get in to cause damage.
* 2) If we combine that with also some other treatment that will somehow target the surface-layer, first-line cells that may also get infected, causing those to well... die... or at least get roughed up enough that the immune system will do what they will to those... - This could well be an effective treatment then for anything that gets past that first line defense and actually infects some cells causing some "symptoms"
* 3) To prevent such treatments from causing cascading "runaway flesh eating", people using these treatments would also have this "restorative antidote serum" that they need to take regularly after each dose of the prophylactic. (i.e. Likely in the form of some "enzyme inhibitor")
Honestly, whenever I get sick in these ways, I often do wish there was something I could spray in there in the area where the infection seems to be concentrated, to "get in there and nuke the surface layer of 'foreign' gunk". It seems reasonable to expect that between aggressively doing a "scorched earth" tactic here, then nuking the treatment agent once it should've had a fair enough chance to clean up most of the bad stuff, and then aggressively kickstarting + boosting the body's natural reparative systems to tidy up the combined mess, we can hope to finally have an effective treatment that reduces our need to go through all the suffering we current endure every time we get sick.
I mean... you would too, if you knew that getting sick is a superhighway to feeling shit for a minimum of 7-10 days for a "standard" illness, or 6 weeks in worse cases, or 10-12 for "full-blown-COVID" (not to mention the risk of "Long COVID" / Post-Viral Chronic Conditions either).
Anyway... I'm very obviously NOT well versed in any of the latest biological literature and so forth (and heck... even in most rather "basic" biology / medical shit), so this is really just the random late-night rantings and ravings of just another rando on the internet!
That said, if this post inspires just one researcher and/or research team to earnestly look into the feasibility of developing such treatments, then that'd be a pretty cool outcome I reckon!
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