Well said.
A hundred posts into this thread, and still something nobody has mentioned:
Evolution.
Somebody did already point out that some people seem to just have some natural resistance to the disease, or a better capacity to fight it off if they get it.
Over the longer run, these people will live to produce more offspring and perpetuate their “better” genes. This is a long, slow, multi-generational process. That’s how evolution works. It’s not going to happen by May 2020 or even July 2020. We (meaning our descendants) might start to see some results by May 2120 or May 2525, if Man is still alive. This is not the same process as herd immunity.
The disease won’t go away. Absent an effective vaccine (and maybe even with), we will just evolve into a population with somewhat better resistance, and fewer people (but still many) will tend to get the disease and die of it.
Aha, but it’s not at all a slow process for viruses and bacteria. And this is nothing to do with “better” genes, but genes resistant to this particular lock-picker.
By the time humanity evolves resistance to COVID-19, it will be old news. We’ll still be fighting COVIDs 20 through 90.
There’s no rule that says pandemics have to emerge every 10 or 100 years. Evolution is random. It’s highly unlikely, but 12 months from now we could be fighting COVID-19, COVID-20, and COVID-20B along with some weird new flu virus.
If evolution is the game, don’t bet on big multicellular animals to win.
Since this virus doesn’t seem to have a huge effect on the under 40 crowd, can’t see why there would be any evolutionary pressures.
Good point… although people under 40 definitely do die, it seems uncommon enough that the evolutionary pressure would be negligible.*
- It would be a form of eugenics (if not worse) if we justify a policy based on the direction of evolution. So I hope nobody is trying to have that discussion.
-
I object to your value judgement regarding genes. At most, those with natural resistance to this particular virus might leave more descendants… but it may come with a lot of extra baggage. For example, the sickle cell trait definitely confers a reproductive advantage in areas with endemic malaria… as long as you only inherit ONE allele. Plain sucks to be one of the people who get a double dose. There’s no guarantee that natural resistance to covid-19 comes without such a “gotcha”.
-
Not everyone is capable of leaving descendants no matter how advantageous their genes. For example, if tomorrow it was discovered that due to my genes I have complete and total resistance to covid-19 the human race is out of luck as I am past my reproductive years. Doesn’t matter how wonderful my genes may be, they can’t be passed on.
-
The length of time involved has already been mentioned.
In other words, I’d rather rely on a vaccine or treatment than for the human race to evolve/select resistance trait(s).
Oh for fuck sake, he wasn’t making value judgment. Tone down the righteous posturing.
It does matter. It matter a great deal because of the carnage caused in the early 20th century due to value judgements about genes. It matters because there is enough bigotry being stirred up in this pandemic.
No one is a superior being due to getting a lucky roll of the genetic dice that just happens to be useful against one particular pathogen. Our language should reflect that. Just as we should say “covid-19” instead of “that Chinese virus” we should say “resistance to covid-19” rather than good/better/superior genes or “stronger immune system” or any of the other terms that do imply a value judgement. Being inherently resistant to this disease is luck, and only luck, at this point.
:golf clap:
Did you notice how he put “better” in scare quotes? Why do you imagine he did that?
I think he meant “fitter”, which perhaps would have been a less triggery word choice, as its meaning in an evolutionary sense is less likely to be misunderstood as a value judgement.
Yeah I don’t think any impact either.
If I was going to imagine something over generations it would go more the opposite! The germ differentially kills more of the retired than the working/productive generation. Those with familial genes that preferentially killed off their no longer productive parents and grandparents before they used their savings or required spending/investments by their children would allow more resources to be spent on the grandchildren generation potentially making them more reproductively successful.
In that case having genes for greater likelihood of death soon after one becomes more of a drain on resources that could be passed on than creating more of them, would be “fitter” in that evolutionary sense.
But no.
The latest news in is that the virus might have been around for years or even decades in animals, probably bats, and mutated hundreds of times. So it is likely yo mutate again. The big question is whether the next wave will be far worse or whether it will just be a nastier version of the usual annual 'flu epidemic.
I note with interests the comments about developing a vaccine and the probable timeline. Given that previous 'flu vaccines have never been 100% effective, we should not expect too much, but anything that reduces the death toll is most welcome.
As for Tamiflu, the last time that there was a 'flu epidemic a few years ago it was found that it was not that effective and also that far too little was available.
There are about 40 different teams researching either a vaccine or a cure. Let us keep our fingers crossed, but most likely we won’t get one or other until next year. I would be happy to be proven wrong.
Evolution is “the survival of change over time”. It’s not a march toward perfection - forget that old monkey-ape-man progress chart. If you’re of breeding age and hunched in a safe nook when the avalanche roars past, you survived to pass on your DNA (if not too ugly) because lucky, not “better genes”. (And forget Niven’s Teela Brown - we don’t breed for luck.) If you’re in a hotspot and don’t noticeably catch COVID, it’s because social distancing, not superior genetics. Or you showed symptoms but were treated early and aggressively. Or you’re an asymptotic shedder.
If you die in USA infected with COVID, it may be from any underlying or exacerbated conditions, or you were left on a gurney in the hospital corridor because overwhelmed, or you’re non-white and were totally off the health system’s radar. Do those count as “unlucky”? Maybe we’d better breed for luck. Easy - just ignore anyone with health problems. They all die off, the survivors are all “lucky”, and none dare call it eugenics.
Society exists to protect its members. Hermits are on their own.
Diseases absolutely do “go away”. Sweating Sickness. The Plague of Athens. In both cases it’s now thought the pathogen which caused it is either extinct or no longer causes illness in humans.
So those bugs have evolved themselves to death, right?
Or are still extant but no longer dangerous to humans.
Or they just died out like a billion other species
Honestly, tone is hard to read on message boards. On this message board, quotes are typically used to signal narrative distance, but “quite often” we also see them used for emphasis. I personally don’t consider them a reliable way to infer intent outside of an edited publication.
It’s also not uncommon for laypeople to present evolutionary arguments that are problematic in multiple ways, to put it mildly. That’s why I personally chose to head off any eugenics argument without accusing anyone outright.
Human life does have value, but it does not have infinite value. People are often aghast at the idea that we might try to assign a value to a human life, but we do it all the time. And it is indeed distasteful, but it’s absolutely necessary - otherwise it would be impossible to make reasoned/reasonable policy decisions that involve both money and public safety. This has impacts for things like airplane safety, highway safety, medical practices, and pollution regulations - and it’s a reasonable consideration for the question of how much treasure we should spend (or how much economic activity we should forgo) to save lives.
Is it worth having everybody stay at home for six weeks if it saves 500,000 lives? Probably worth it. What if it only saves one life? Probably not worth it. Somewhere in the middle we gotta make a decision - and that decision is facilitated by assigning a dollar value to a human life.
I may not have anything of value to add to this thread, but I dropped by to thank you for this.