Daf Insights - Berachos Daf 6

I find it very interesting to see how attitudes and approaches to certain concepts can change over time. I noticed today several people discussing that the concept of shadim found on today's Daf may refer to microorganisms. This idea popped into my head one day as I was teaching a few years ago and I had no idea then that anyone else thought so. I shared it with the attendees at my shiur and subsequently, after mentioning it to a few people and getting a mixed response, one person told me that he had heard such an idea.
It was when I was teaching Meseches Chagiga and the Gemara speaks about how shadim eat and drink like people, defecate like people and reproduce like people and I saw a commentator who said that some of them reproduce sexually and some asexually. It popped into my mind that they must be microorganisms. After all the Gemara in Berachos says that they are all around us and if we could see them it would be terrifying. That fits. They look horrifying and scary in a few place in the Talmud. That fits too, ever see some microorganisms magnified? They take over peoples' personalities sounds like what some parasites can do.
A couple of years ago when teaching Berachos I saw that Rav Yitzchok Meir Morgenstern in his Sefer on Berachos discusses this concept. While he is initially dismissive, saying that shadim are a spiritual and not a physical concept, he subsequently says that microorganisms can be the physical manifestation of that spiritual idea. Shiruiim B'Aggados Chaza"l also discusses this concept.