It’s a long way to a situation where enough people in our society have some kind of immunity to Covid-19. Apparently there is no guarantee there will ever be such immunity, but Sweden’s man of the moment, Anders Tegnell, epidemiologist in chief, otherwise known as ‘the monkey’, still believes that ‘herd immunity’ is the only way to go – get as many people infected as possible.
Although Sweden has introduced a few apparent restrictions in daily life, if you look at them more closely you may conclude their aim is something other than protection of individuals. Take restaurants for instance. Sweden’s life changing social restriction is that you can’t stand, eat or drink at a bar – you have to sit at a table. This is now the law. This means that people who once might have perched on a stool on their own, or at right angles to their companions now sit dead opposite one another instead. I leave you to judge which position would be most advantageous to an opportunistic virus.
We all know that a vaccine is the only convincing way to achieve community immunity, but we also know it’s a long way off. So why waste all this time trying to develop a vaccine, or waiting for someone else to develop one? There is a way we can achieve maximum infection and maximum ‘herd immunity’ much faster, and the tool for this is right here in the far north of Sweden.
I give you, the humble mosquito. OK I know that at the moment the mosquito doesn’t spread the virus. But it could. All we need to do is to breed some mosquitoes that can pick the virus up on their feet. Mosquitoes with spongy feet perhaps, or sticky feet. It sounds a lot easier to me than developing a vaccine.
Once you’ve bred this kind of mosquito we potentially have the fastest spreader of the virus in the world. Those of us who live in these northern areas know, no-one escapes the mosquito. They seek you here they seek you there they seek you everywhere. That will mean, 100% spread of infection – job done. They would be the Monkey’s Mozzie Army.
The detail of the process would be straightforward. First, take an already immune Finnish man. Famed in the northern world for their extreme hardiness, when it comes to biting insects, the Finns even have competitions to see who can acquire the most number of bites in a set period of time. So a Finnish man it is then.
Next, spread virus droplets liberally over his bare skin and leave him out in the forest. Mosquitoes from all around will come to feast on his blood, and in the process pick up those magic virus droplets. They will then take them to everyone else living in the nearby areas. And that’s it.
Of course this will need to be repeated all over the country, so there will be a big demand for immune Finnish men. That might be the flaw in the plan now I come to think of it, since Finland has managed to keep their virus spread very low and unlike Sweden they plan to keep it that way. Who else would like to volunteer for this worthy cause? Please send in your details.
