Who would have thought we need viruses?

The total number of cases of coronavirus in the world has risen over 9.7 million with 491,797 deaths, according to Worldometer. In comparison, the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, also known as Swine Flu, affected "700 million to 1.4 billion people -- or 11 to 21 percent of the global population of 6.8 billion at the time". Some 150-575,000 people died. The Spanish Flu, also a H1N1 virus, in 1918, infected 500 million people worldwide, killing at least 50 million. Though the coronavirus has infected far fewer people it has caused much more economic pain due to lockdowns of entire economies, with the International Monetary Fund predicting "the world's gross domestic product (GDP) is set to contract by 4.9% in 2020". The stimulus package, amounting to a total of Rs 20 trillion announced by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman over 5 days in May was actually just 1-2% of GDP. "The impact of the Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) on fiscal deficit is unlikely to be over 1-2% of GDP, say experts." "State Bank of India chief economist Soumyakanti Ghosh and EY's chief policy adviser DK Srivastava pegged it at 1.01% of GDP or Rs 2.02 lakh crore (Rs 2.02 trillion)." Such a weak stimulus is likely to depress demand for a prolonged period leading to a weak recovery, wrote an editorial in the Mint. "The West's mega-stimulus, meanwhile, might have the unintended effect of inflating asset price bubbles everywhere", as shown by the buoyant share markets in India. Viruses cause a lot of misery to people. Smallpox killed 200 million people in the 20th Century alone. So, wouldn't it be marvelous if all viruses disappeared? wondered Rachel Nuwer. "If all viruses suddenly disappeared, the world would be a wonderful place for about a day and a half, and then we would all die -- that's the bottom line," says Toby Goldberg, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Zayed and colleagues analysed viral DNA found in the world's oceans and "found nearly 200,000 populations in five ocean zones around the globe, with the species in each zone comprising their own viral community". Some viruses are 'phages', which means 'to devour', because they kill bacteria. "Phages are the primary regulator of bacterial populations in the ocean, and likely in every other ecosystem on the planet as well. If viruses suddenly disappeared, some bacterial population would likely explode; others might be outcompeted and stop growing completely. This would be especially problematic in the ocean, where more than 90% of all living material, by weight is microbial. These microbes produce about half the oxygen on the planet -- a process enabled by viruses." The old problem: can't live with them, can't live without them.