Welcome to the first episode of the Black Swan Orange podcast. I’m your host, Joe Kornowski. 

Economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the term black swan in his book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” According to Taleb, what distinguishes Black Swan Events are their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the subsequent widespread insistence that the event was obvious in hindsight.

 Two examples often cited are:

·      The 2008 financial crisis and U.S. housing market crash; and

·      The 9/11 terrorist attacks.

 The COVID-19 pandemic, on the other hand, was not a true Black Swan because it was both foreseen and foreseeable by governments and knowledgeable individuals, including Bill Gates. Major anticipated earthquakes are not really Black Swans either, like the so-called “Big One,” the expected high-magnitude earthquake along California’s San Andreas fault, or a similar devastating magnitude-9 quake expected to strike the Cascade Range in the Pacific Northwest. Both are foreseeable and expected.

The paradox of preparing for a Black Swan Event is resolved by not preparing for any particular event, like we do with fires and earthquakes. We can’t know exactly what kind of catastrophic event will happen, or when, or where, let alone the likely consequences. Trying to prepare without even basic facts would be futile and a huge waste of precious time, attention and resources. 

Instead, with so many unknowns, we can work with the known and the knowable — ourselves. We can make changes within ourselves to enable us to face various potentially catastrophic unforeseeable events. 

This podcast aims to explore strategies, skills and tools that can help us achieve a state of personal readiness for the unknown, to face and potentially engage with an unpredictable event or situation beyond what’s normally expected that produces potentially severe consequences.

 Let's turn to the medical field to better understand how we can do this. In the early days of COVID-19, a debate surfaced within the public health community about dealing with this unknown virus. They even called it the “novel” coronavirus because it was a new and previously unknown form of coronavirus that did not respond to any existing treatments for the other known coronaviruses.

 The debate focused on the “terrain” approach versus the “vector” approach as two different ways of thinking about how to fight off pathogens. The terrain approach emphasizes strengthening the human immune system and creating an environment that is unfavorable for any pathogens to grow and multiply. The vector approach focuses on controlling the transmission of pathogens — viruses and bacteria — by eliminating or reducing their so-called “vectors,” or modes of transmission, such as mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas.
 
 According to the terrain approach, disease is caused by an imbalance in the host's internal environment, such as poor nutrition, stress, and toxins. Therefore, the best way to prevent and treat disease is to restore the balance and harmony of the human body and mind. This can be done by improving diet, hygiene, lifestyle, and using natural remedies such as herbs, vitamins, and minerals. The terrain approach emphasizes the importance of individualized and integrative care for each person.

According to the vector approach, on the other hand, disease is believed to be caused by exposure to specific pathogens that are transmitted by vectors. So, the best way to prevent and treat disease is to interrupt the life cycle of the pathogens and their vectors by using insecticides, repellents, nets, traps, vaccines and drugs. The vector approach emphasizes the importance of population-based and evidence-based interventions for each disease. The ideal solution, of course, would be to integrate both, but that would be too costly, impractical and confusing to people.

 With COVID-19, the medical professionals in developed countries quickly chose the vector approach because the greatest number of people were already very familiar with taking medicine like pills or shots to fight illness. If you open any medicine cabinet in the developed countries, you will see rows of prescription and over-the-counter pills, capsules, drops and ointments meant for various diseases. Those early public health officials assumed correctly that people would be more willing to get a vaccine than make significant lifestyle changes. And even THAT became a major controversy.

 The downside of this vector approach to treating COVID was the need to gather sufficient information at the front end to know where to begin in developing an effective vaccine — which took some time. And, then modifying the vaccine every time the virus mutated.

 Both approaches do work. People have successfully eluded COVID altogether or experienced only a mild case using both approaches.

 Given that Black Swans are, by definition, novel, unforeseeable, sudden and extremely rare, we can’t know if any vector-based solution could even work.  But what we DO KNOW is that WE can change our terrain to bolster our defenses, immunities and survivability when a Black Swan arrives.

Let’s look at a recent news event to illustrate. On May first of this year, a family in Las Vegas called 911 to report that something crashed in their backyard and they saw two human-like creatures, 8-10 feet tall, with big shiny eyes and big mouths outside staring at them. The male caller said, “They’re 100% not human.” Now, when the police showed up, the creatures were gone, but one of the officers saw a bright light moving in the sky – which was captured on video. And the local television news report stated that several different agencies were reporting that they believed that something HAD landed or crashed.

 First, this qualifies as a Black Swan Event — certainly unforeseeable and rare, with a potentially severe impact.

 Let’s focus on the “terrain” of the family members who were part of this close encounter.  Human terrain consists of 3 basic components: mind, body and spirit.

 For our example, let’s consider just the physical human body and the potential severe threat that contact with extraterrestrials might pose to it. Given that the 2 unknown creatures did not appear to be aggressive or threatening to the humans, the risk of human injury from violent attack appeared very remote based on the 911 call.

 But what about an unintentional threat of severe impact on the human body? In terms of the human “terrain,” when humans get sick, doctors look to find the source of an infection, which is either viral or bacterial. Bacterial infections are treated with anti-biotics, but those don’t work on viral infections, which must be treated with antiviral medicines — as with COVID, chicken pox, shingles, and all forms of herpes.

 Many people, maybe most, equate bacteria and viruses with disease. But the reality is very different.

In terms of bacteria in the typical human body, 1-3% of body mass is bacteria — that’s 2-6 pounds in a 200-pound adult. Measuring another way, we have roughly an equal number of bacteria and human cells in our body, estimated to be 30-40 trillion each, depending on age, health, diet and environment. 

 As to viruses, its estimated that around 380 trillion viruses live in us at any one time, collectively known as the human virome. Some of them — about 8% — are now actually part of the human genome as viral gene sequences called “endogenous retroviruses.”

 To clarify, it’s reasonable to say that the normal healthy human body is about 50% non-human! There’s some overlap of viruses with bacteria because many of the virus cells in us actually live on the bacteria.

 We NEED most of those bacteria and viruses to survive and stay healthy. The good bacteria help us digest food and absorb nutrients, produce vitamins like B12, K and biotin, protect us from the harmful bacteria by competing for space and resources, strengthen our immune system by stimulating the production of antibodies, and regulate our hormone and cholesterol levels.

 The healthy benefits of typical viruses in the human body include infecting and killing off harmful bacteria, acting like natural antibiotics; delivering genes to our cells which can correct some genetic diseases or enhance our immunity; help us understand how the mind works through techniques like optogenetics to manipulate neural activity; and they can train our immune system to respond to changing threats and environments. That last benefit is what a good vaccine is intended to do — a combined vector and terrain approach to help alter the human body to better fight off a potentially deadly virus like COVID.

 Okay, so returning to what we can now biologically regard as our Las Vegas half-humans (50% virus and bacteria) and their 100% non-human trespassers, can we safely assume that humanoid-like beings from another planet will be completely devoid of their own unique viruses and bacteria? No. In fact, just the opposite.

 If these creatures that showed up in Las Vegas WERE extraterrestrials, then they likely carried extraterrestrial micro-organisms like bacteria and viruses — NOT native to Earth. Talk about NOVEL! 

 We already know of viruses here on Earth that are safe for some animal species but dangerous to humans, like the herpes B virus that, while harmless for macaque monkeys, can cause fatal brain inflammation in humans.

 However much we might want to partner with friendly extraterrestrials to learn about advanced technologies or how to avoid self-annihilation, such partnering could unexpectedly give new meaning to the term “toxic relationship” … unless we figure out how to prepare our human terrain for such an encounter. 

 If you want a better flavor for this kind of threat to the human body, check out the documentary, The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.

 Please join me next time as we delve into how we can enhance our ability to engage with extremely rare and severely impactful events. More Black Swans ARE coming….