THE SICKNESS

It takes a pandemic to put the microscope back on the deadly Sickness that haunted part of the LOST story. In today's world, people fear the coronavirus. It preys on people with pre-existing medical conditions and immune disorders. It is a novel virus which means there is no past immunity. It can spread quickly as it is a respiratory virus.

Characters in LOST were deathly afraid of The Sickness.

The Sickness manifested as a severe mental change on the part of the afflicted. In 1988, shipwreck survivor Robert tried to kill Danielle, his financee. In fact, except for Danielle, her entire party was taken over by the Sickness, which we thought was caused by the Smoke Monster attacking them at the Temple. Danielle began exhibiting what appeared to be similar paranoid delusions, though she claimed to be the only crew member to escape the sickness. Danielle personally killed all other members of her expedition and other characters wrote her off as insane. Sayid, after his infection, killed even more readily than usual, and he said he could no longer feel emotions. The Others were paranoid about the infection. The medical labs were obsessed with reproduction and Claire' baby. They injected her with an alleged vaccine, which did not work.  Claire post-infection became a mentally unstable, paranoid murderer and cradled a boar's skull to replace her baby.

Dogen, the Temple leader, tortured Sayid in order to measure his level of good and evil. According to Dogen, the infection was irreversible. As a result, he tried to trick Jack into poisoning Sayid.


What is believed the infection was in reality a demonic mind possession by MIB (Smoke Monster). It was part of his plan/game to get back at Jacob, who kept his "imprisoned" on the Island. If MIB could develop an army of infected followers, he could take down Jacob to get his freedom. In the last season, MIB was succeeding in the role as fake Locke when he massacred the temple occupants. Those who survived but not directly infected, were controlled by fear. Once there free will was compromised, they could be manipulated against Jacob.

It is a natural human instinct to fear the unknown. Death is the greatest unknown. Something you cannot see in the darkness, is a great unknown. A virus so small it is invisible can enter one's body to reek havoc. In today's panic world, daily updates of confirmed cases and fatalities has the world on edge.

People are told to stay at home. Shelter in place. They have panic purchased supplies including a vast run on toilet paper. It gets to a point of irrational behavior.

Just as in LOST's story line, it plays out in a similar fashion in real life.

BRAIN FOOD

 A new study links what one eats to how one thinks.

A study conducted by researchers at Oregon State University and published in the journal Neuroscience  suggests that high-fat, high-sugar diets have a detrimental effect on what they refer to as “cognitive flexibility,” or the power to adapt and adjust to changing situations. 

The research was performed using laboratory mice that consumed different diets with varying levels of fat and sugar before facing a gamut of tests—primarily mazes and basic puzzles — to monitor changes in their mental and physical function. The researchers paid specific attention to the types of gut bacteria present in each control group.

“Bacteria can release compounds that act as neurotransmitters, stimulate sensory nerves or the immune system, and affect a wide range of biological functions,” Kathy Magnusson, a professor in the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine and principal investigator with the Linus Pauling Institute, said in a statement. “We’re not sure just what messages are being sent, but we are tracking down the pathways and the effects.”

In about four weeks, the mental and physical performances of the rats fed on a high-fat, high-sugar diet started to drop significantly, especially when one or more variables in the test changed. One of the most disparate physiological factors within the groups of mice, and the suspected reason for the decreased brain function, was gut bacteria.

People have been paying more attention to their guts than ever. Yogurt companies are using the term “probiotic” to peddle their sugary treats to would-be health junkies, and celebrities like sportscaster Erin Andrews are now digestive health spokespeople for hire, trying to finally make gut bacteria the hip and cool subject it deserved to be all along. But the scientific community has also started paying keener attention to those trillions of stomach-dwelling microflora as well.

One of the first studies to ever to link gut bacteria to brain function was performed by researchers at the Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology and Stress.  They took three groups of women and had one group eat yogurt loaded with supplemental probiotics daily for four weeks, another group eat a substance that looked and tasted like yogurt but had no probiotics, and the third group was given nothing specific to eat. Not only did the sans-probiotic group suffer in cognitive tests, just like the mice did in the recent Oregon State study, but they also faltered in emotion based tests, linking poor gut health to stress. 

“This work suggests that fat and sugar are altering your healthy bacterial systems, and that’s one of the reasons those foods aren’t good for you.” Magnusson said. “It’s not just the food that could be influencing your brain, but an interaction between the food and microbial changes.”

The old wise tale, "you are what you eat," seems to have some scientific foundation. 

This could explain why the LOST main characters, the survivors, were slow to adapt and adjust to the changing situation of survival. The diet they had was sharply diminished from their standard life style until junk food was reintroduced with the Hatch discovery and food drop. One of the nagging issues during the series was that the main characters never asked viewer questions to each other in order to figure out what was going on. It was more action without thinking than thinking of a plan then acting it out. The latter leaders who had better brain food diets such as Ben or Sayid seemed to grasp island situations better than Hurley, Charlie or even Jack.

TOXIC BRAIN

Researchers are finding that toxic proteins, including tau, may be the cause of Alzheimer's disease.

A defect that causes a plaque build-up on the brain could cause patients to lose all memory.

But what takes the place of those lost memories.

We really do not know because Alzheimer patients lack the communication awareness to explain what is happening to them. They become a version of an adult newborn.

The Others were quite keen on using drugs to ward off the effects of the island's "illness," a disease which at least attacked the fetus and the pregnant woman.  Claire was given shots by Juliet in alleged attempt to save her baby from the disease.

However, many people believe the disease was a hoax, as Desmond found out after leaving the Hatch to find his co-worker stealing his boat.

Using fear of a deadly disease to manipulate other people is a powerful weapon. You get the intended victims to surrender their free will and decision making if you offer them a cure. A snake oil salesman was the older version of this kind of con-man predator.

But what if there was some truth in the tall tale of the island illness.  The island's unique electromagnetic condition could lead to neuro-chemical disruptions in normal human brain activity. This could mimic the adverse affects of sustained memory loss. It could also have the effect of causing hallucinations, illusions and paranoia (all elements shown in the show).

The island itself could have started as a laboratory to test the bio-chemical warfare tools of a prior era, but were released into this limited environment to mutate into a psycho-tropic drug.  Claire was left in the deep jungle, and she turned bat crazy just like Rousseau.

What if the characters that left the island carried with them the island illness?

Could it be passed to the general population like an epidemic virus?

Or is it contained within the brain matter of each victim, so as to slowly cause them to go deeply insane?

Or the reverse, the deeply insane were the "test" subjects sent to the island to see if the illness could reverse their behavior which conventional treatments, including electro-shock, could not.

The concept that the island was a loony bin laboratory has some appeal, especially if the viewers were put into this sinister loop. But we were not let in on the real secret of the island and its past purpose.