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There are 3 possible scenarios related to viruses and humanity on Earth. 1) Normalcy: People live their lives as they have for thousands of years, and some percentage of people die from any number of viruses, but never enough to permanently trigger one of the other scenarios. 2) Extraterran: Humanity can no longer survive one or more of the viruses on Earth. Those of us who continue to live here must do so as if it were a foreign planet filled pathogens that will surely kill us, because they do. 3) Extinction: Humanity is ended by one or more viruses. Of these 3 possible scenarios, the 1st one seems more likely than the others, and is what we should aim for before being forced into the 2nd one to avoid the 3rd. Right now we are living somewhere between the 1st and 2nd, and my intuition tells me that all our efforts related to coronaviruses, regardless of the strain, won't be able to save those whom are genetically unlucky enough to be predisposed to die from them forever. They will mutate, and eventually infect everyone, not unlike the common cold, and humanity will move on having lost somewhere between 1% and 10% of it's population, just as it would have had no curtailing measures been taken or vaccines developed at all; no different than it has been through the vast majority of our time on earth. While a higher population and the ease of global travel does mean that the virus side of the immunological arms race is boosted, all that does is raise the bar for ours. Either we'll pass, or we wont. Finally, while the deaths that have happened, and the future deaths that are likely to happen, on our path back to normalcy are certainly tragic: they have been, and will be, part and parcel of existing as organic beings living on a wild world. We cannot expect to only exist in nature when it is convenient for us. As long as we remain natural beings, we must accept that some of us will be eaten. |