The term “ISOLATION” has gained enormous importance and frequency in use in our present life. Since the beginning of 2020, the entire world is no longer like it was before. We are living in an incredibly extraordinary time. There have always been dangerous virus pandemics – but never been of such magnitude. Since the Spanish flu, they have not been that close to us, at least not in Europe.

However, I would like to try to show the ambivalence of the term “ISOLATION” and to bring it into another, wider context.

In biology, isolation leads to new species which are perfectly adapted to this specific environment.

If an original population is separated into two sub-populations through geographical isolation so that no more gene flow can take place, we speak of allopatric speciation. The gene pools of the two subpopulations now develop differently, since different environmental factors have an impact in the geographically isolated habitats and therefore randomly occurring mutations are passed on to the offsprings with different success.