From old to new: contextualizing viral infections in childhood

Abstract

Reflecting on the natural history of human beings and microbiological agents and getting lost between vernaculars. At one moment we think we are combat agents, at another, we are subjugated to the condition of victim of an invisible executioner of great adaptive capacity. In this interaction that oscillates between the states of parasitism or commensalism, we are not allowed to play the role of cooperator, or to live in a kind of mutualism with different beings that cause different diseases. Because when we allow viruses, bacteria, and other pathogenic microorganisms to replicate, multiply, and spread, neglecting individual and collective orientations, we are feeding a deadly chain of events that will end with the definitive extermination of one of the sides in this war for survival. And day after day we are confronted, provoked, to choose which side to be on. Historically, we have gone through decades and centuries in which, despite the evolution of pharmacological and health areas, we have accepted the condition of victims of pandemics, both regional and global. The irony stands before the pedestal of history and shows us that if on one hand there was the emergence and expansion of intensive care units, the numbers of victims are sometimes expressed by the millions. In this temporal trajectory there were different protagonists: Influenza, Metapneumovirus, Adenovirus, Coronavirus, and, with avidity for children, the Respiratory Syncytial Virus, which again corrupts paradigms, leaving the status of seasonality for other times. These are silent wars that do not choose winners, but flirt with genocide; wars that require empathy for the susceptible and distance from attitudes that prize only vanity and self-centeredness.