Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The world’s best virology lab isn’t where you think

Photo by Jane Barlow - WPA Pool/Getty Images

If you ever doubt how clever evolution can be, remember that it may take a year or more for the brightest minds on the planet to find and approve a vaccine for the coronavirus. Yet 99 per cent of otherwise healthy people seem to have an immune system that can crack the problem in under a week.

When I posted this on Twitter, I got a little abuse from a few strange people who thought I was calling scientists dumb. Quite the reverse. 99 per cent may be too high a figure, but it is surely evidence of some bizarre superintelligence within the human body that many of us can do unconsciously something that the combined brains of the world’s pharmaceutical industries so far cannot match. In a matter of days, it can spot, target, test and devise an antibody to eliminate a hostile pathogen that it has never encountered before. Each of us is walking around every day without realising that we are home to the world’s best virology lab.

Each of us is walking around every day without realising that we are home to the world’s best virology lab

True, the immune system does not have to wait for FDA approval.

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