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Are we hamstringing evolution by hiding from viruses???

ArtemisBarca said:
So much of human evolution is powered by us trying to keep up with the viruses we encounter..

So much that it is theorized that the reason for the length of any creatures life span is how long it can live and still change enough to keep up with how fast viruses evolve..

How much does modern medicine hamstring that???


A certain percentage of the evolution of our immune systems require viruses to kill off the percentage of the population that is not immune to it, so only the immune systems that can handle the virus are passed on ..

So wouldn’t there be a price to pay for avoiding them rather than letting our immune systems learn to cope with them???


It seems to me that our immune systems would not keep up?

For sure I could have a fundamental misunderstanding of how all of that works, but if not....


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I am not sure how you reached your conclusion.

Vaccinations that use "weaker" forms of viruses helps up develop immunity.
 
ArtemisBarca said:
So much of human evolution is powered by us trying to keep up with the viruses we encounter..

So much that it is theorized that the reason for the length of any creatures life span is how long it can live and still change enough to keep up with how fast viruses evolve..

How much does modern medicine hamstring that???


A certain percentage of the evolution of our immune systems require viruses to kill off the percentage of the population that is not immune to it, so only the immune systems that can handle the virus are passed on ..

So wouldn’t there be a price to pay for avoiding them rather than letting our immune systems learn to cope with them???


It seems to me that our immune systems would not keep up?

For sure I could have a fundamental misunderstanding of how all of that works, but if not....


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Is this a virus that has evolved?
 
j brown's body said:
Is this a virus that has evolved?
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My guess is Covid hasn't evolved (so far) because the same groups of people are still most at risk to Covid.
(1) the elderly.
(2) those of any age with immune deficiencies.
(3) those of any age with respiratory problems.
 
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ArtemisBarca said:
Yes... Just like when the plague killed off every almost every European who was not immune.. Science doesn’t care about right and wrong.
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No, there is no reliable evidence of immunity, it was a lack of exposure. Some villages were wiped out, others never touched. Major cities took a heavy hit but not all were exposed to the plague carrying flea. The plague made several passes through Europe- Yersinia pestis has been found in Neolithic graves- and speculation is it was a major factor in the decline. Bubonic Plague transmissible by fleas was found in Bronze age remains. Symptoms of the plague were recorded in the Roman Empire at the time of Trajan. Plague of Justinian was bubonic. Then came the plague you think of. Fact is the Plague repeatedly visited Europe from the 1300's to the 1600's. the 19th century had plague outbreaks as well.

Today the plague still attacks but we have a better methods for rodent/flea control. We have antibiotics, we have a vaccine. We do not have immunity in any scale large enough to say we evolved one- even after centuries of exposure much of which there was no effective treatment or preventative so your immunity evolution plenty of time to 'work'... :peace
 
code1211 said:
I wonder if your thoughts on this help to explain why the cities are hit so hard while the rural areas are not.
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I think it is a contributing factor. But the real reason the cities have been hit so hard is vitamin D deficiency. This vitamin is essential to building a strong immune system. It is what blocks the "cytokine storm" which kills people with Covid. It is produced by sun exposure. Not much in food. The darker your skin the more sun exposed time it takes to produce it. 42% of Americans are low in vitamin D. For blacks that is almost 80%, and over half of Hispanics. here are some facts to back this up;

When vitamin d is checked for, 6 of 8 Covid deaths were low vitamin D.
black people are around 11% of the population but 62% of Covid deaths.
old people in nursing homes get very little sunlight.

Having adequate levels of vitamin D (and C) can really help protect you because they are so important to the immune system.
 
Science/medicine is part of our evolution.

Now if you completely leave that entire giant part out then the OP makes a little sense.
 
code1211 said:
The Virus seems to kill those that are old much more easily than those that are young.

It could be that our species already evolved to fight this Novel Virus, but the immune response just goes away as we age.

The 15% of the population aged 60 and up suffers 90% of the fatalities from this virus. Same rate as every other COD that cause fatalities to that age group in non-virus times.

Now that our life expectancy has increased by about 40 years, we might be aging our way right of the evolved protections.
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You're wrong, turns out it's killing people of all ages.
You just aren't current on the research.
And as usual you are ignoring the clinical toll.

But don't worry, in six months or a year you will be reminded by the barrage of all day "Coronavirus Debt Relief" advertisements that will be flooding the airwaves.

TO ALL who keep carping about the virus "only killing old people", your comments are noted and they will not age well at all. By the way, I guess "ALL LIVES MATTER" is a thing of the past and never really was true anyway, right?
 
GDViking said:
This one s true but deadly diseases are different.

Are you willing to become immune to a rattlesnake bite by getting repeatedly bit?

I have been bit, and I avoid with a passion ever letting it happen again...
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Concerning the rattlesnake reference...

That depends, do I live in a world where I can expect to be repeatedly bitten by rattlesnakes????


Because we live in a world where we can repeatedly expect to encounter more viruses than ever before because of global travel..



All the motifs comparing our macro environment to the micro-environment of viruses are wrong..



The world of viruses we swim in daily has not changed.. it is still relatively the same one we would be swimming in on the African savanna.


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danielpalos said:
I am not sure how you reached your conclusion.

Vaccinations that use "weaker" forms of viruses helps up develop immunity.
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A) I’m not sure that introducing the virus and creating anti-bodies gets passed on to your offspring..

It might only be those who die and do not get to reproduce that effect evolution..



B) but For sure, I wasn’t really thinking about the vaccination angle, but that is only half the equation anyway..


We are still leaving the substandard immune systems in circulation...


I read an article that stated that almost everyone from Europe who survived the plague had a specific gene..

To this day almost everyone of European ancestry alive has it because anyone who did not died in the plague..


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Checkerboard Strangler said:
You're wrong, turns out it's killing people of all ages.
You just aren't current on the research.
And as usual you are ignoring the clinical toll.

But don't worry, in six months or a year you will be reminded by the barrage of all day "Coronavirus Debt Relief" advertisements that will be flooding the airwaves.

TO ALL who keep carping about the virus "only killing old people", your comments are noted and they will not age well at all. By the way, I guess "ALL LIVES MATTER" is a thing of the past and never really was true anyway, right?
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Evolution is random mutations that are more useful and so they get passed on..

That means for an evolutionary trait to effect the whole species that every member of that species will need to be a descendent of patient zero..

How long ago was there a species wide patient zero??

I’m not even sure the anti-bodies we accrue over our lives are passed down to our offspring..

For women it cannot because they are born with all their egg cells. No chance for the immune system to copy itself in the eggs after every infection.


So I think the only think that might effect evolution is those who do not survive to pass on their immune systems.


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Are we hamstringing evolution by hiding from viruses???
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yes. i'm going to lick at least eight ****ing doorknobs today.
 
notquiteright said:
No, there is no reliable evidence of immunity, it was a lack of exposure. Some villages were wiped out, others never touched. Major cities took a heavy hit but not all were exposed to the plague carrying flea. The plague made several passes through Europe- Yersinia pestis has been found in Neolithic graves- and speculation is it was a major factor in the decline. Bubonic Plague transmissible by fleas was found in Bronze age remains. Symptoms of the plague were recorded in the Roman Empire at the time of Trajan. Plague of Justinian was bubonic. Then came the plague you think of. Fact is the Plague repeatedly visited Europe from the 1300's to the 1600's. the 19th century had plague outbreaks as well.

Today the plague still attacks but we have a better methods for rodent/flea control. We have antibiotics, we have a vaccine. We do not have immunity in any scale large enough to say we evolved one- even after centuries of exposure much of which there was no effective treatment or preventative so your immunity evolution plenty of time to 'work'... :peace
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A) for sure some people would have dodged the bullet... not many since it killed off like 40% of the population but obviously you would have exceptions.. ..

B) It has been years , but I remember articles claiming that basically every defendant from Europeans who survived the plague all have some specific gene that it is assumed helped them survive..

I’ll try and find it..


Boo yaaa!! Found it.


Black Death Left a Mark on Human Genome | Science | AAAS


So basically a big chunk of the descendants of Europeans are now resistant to the plague... that will never happen again.


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ArtemisBarca said:
Evolution is random mutations that are more useful and so they get passed on..

That means for an evolutionary trait to effect the whole species that every member of that species will need to be a descendent of patient zero..

How long ago was there a species wide patient zero??

I’m not even sure the anti-bodies we accrue over our lives are passed down to our offspring..

For women it cannot because they are born with all their egg cells. No chance for the immune system to copy itself in the eggs after every infection.


So I think the only think that might effect evolution is those who do not survive to pass on their immune systems.


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A ZYGOTE (fertized human egg cell) accepts RNA/DNA from the sperm cells, did you not know that?
It is the basis for sexual reproduction, and the basis for genetics itself.
 
uptower said:
But Karen on Facebook told me vaccinations make kids dumb and 5G antennas give frogs gay cancer.
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No one on here has gone the “ it ain’t natural” route..

The modern world requires a totally different skill set to be successful relative to caveman days..


Our immune systems though are still swimming in exactly the same pond... air conditioning doesn’t have anything to do with our immune systems..


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Are we hamstringing evolution by hiding from viruses???
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Yes. That is most of the idea. Thus we might be able to make a vaccine by the time it has evolved a thousand strains which we can't stop.

It won't work as the third world is not able to lock down and will just deal with a few extra deaths.
 
99percenter said:
So when the whites killed the native americans with small pox, was it just evolution?
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You completely missed his point and tried to project onto it a political meaning he made no mention of. What he is talking about has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with over-relying on anti-biotics as we have thinking it could stop us from getting sick. Anti-biotics do not prevent viruses but can imbalance immunity systems destroying otherwise needed fauna in out stomachs. We have them in all the meat and fish we eat. Plus there are all kinds of additives and genetically modified foods that have radically altered our immune systems not to mention pollution and exposure to chemicals in our environment.

In our changeover of what we eat we have created artificial foods with toxic ingredients as a basic staple of our diet. Add to that our market places not just the repulsive wet ones in China serve as incubators for virues.

Add to that overly crowded and condensed populations not to mention polluted waters we piss and **** in and dump chemicls in its a challenge and we haven't even talked about our addictions to refined salt and sugar.

For a human body to evolve it must be exposed to certain viruses and bacterias to develop its own natural anti-biodies. We can help that a bit with vaccines that try kick start the building of anti-bodies but they can not fully substitute for our bodies needing to develop anti-body characteristics through our dna to our offspring and that is what the thread starter was getting at. With due respect he was not justifying racism, spreading diseases to kill off vulnerable people.

He was talking about basic immunology and science. Nothing he said is not known by our medical community who have been warning about viruses, over reliance on anti-biotics, poor dietary and hygiene practices not to mention lifestyle issues that contribute to earlier onset of heart disease, diabetes, morbid obesity, etc.

By the way when humans isolated from other humans come into contact with them, they can be exposed to diseases and die. It may or may not be intentionally done and yes that is part of the rules of nature which can be cruel. Disease is a built in population control mechanism and evolving to adapt to them is of course part of the evolutionary process.

If that offends you its probably because you automatically see that as a political issue.

It can be but it is also more complex than just evil racists imposing themselves on people.
 
ArtemisBarca said:
A) for sure some people would have dodged the bullet... not many since it killed off like 40% of the population but obviously you would have exceptions.. .. Boo yaaa!! Found it. So basically a big chunk of the descendants of Europeans are now resistant to the plague... that will never happen again.
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Ummm no. Like I said the plague swept through regions repeatedly and no immune response grew from that. Now the plague is non existent in Europe due to a combination of scientific measures- pest control, antibiotics, and vaccines.

The question is was this genetic mutation caused by the plague or a random mutation- which have been documented in small genetic pools like the Romanian Gypsies- certain pockets of Russian Jews for instance. To test the plague response theory you'd have to purposely infect a test group with the plague and measure the resistance.

In order to claim plague caused the genetic mutation you must trace the gypsy lineage back to where it came from and see where and when the mutation first appeared.

History doesn't show immunity, it shows science protecting us from a deadly bacteria, all claims of a small group with a genetic mutation aside as they didn't bred with a majority of Europeans.... :peace
 
ArtemisBarca said:
A) how do you know I have a fundamental misunderstanding??

Obviously from your post you do not know what part I am fundamentally misunderstanding...

“Nah uh” is not a counterpoint..

B) I have zero problem with modern medicine..

C) humans managed to evolve just fine without modern medicine, so your “space to evolve” point is ridiculous.

Harsh conditions fuel evolution not AC and healthy living.


D) you sure you don’t fundamentally misunderstand all of this lol??


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Yes. More than before actually.
 
cabse5 said:
My guess is Covid hasn't evolved (so far) because the same groups of people are still most at risk to Covid.
(1) the elderly.
(2) those of any age with immune deficiencies.
(3) those of any age with respiratory problems.
Click to expand...

It has mutated and there are 4 major strains of it. What I do not know is if a vaccine developed for one will work on the others
 
ArtemisBarca said:
So much of human evolution is powered by us trying to keep up with the viruses we encounter..

So much that it is theorized that the reason for the length of any creatures life span is how long it can live and still change enough to keep up with how fast viruses evolve..

How much does modern medicine hamstring that???


A certain percentage of the evolution of our immune systems require viruses to kill off the percentage of the population that is not immune to it, so only the immune systems that can handle the virus are passed on ..

So wouldn’t there be a price to pay for avoiding them rather than letting our immune systems learn to cope with them???


It seems to me that our immune systems would not keep up?

For sure I could have a fundamental misunderstanding of how all of that works, but if not....


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Click to expand...

Were you suggesting that we learn to avoid viruses as opposed to learning how to keep up with them?

If so, how could we avoid viruses without first learning how to inoculate against them?
 
99percenter said:
So when the whites killed the native americans with small pox, was it just evolution?
Click to expand...

Is survival of the fittest evolution? The early indigenous peoples struggled to survive European diseases.
That is part of evolution.
 
Bodhisattva said:
Yes. You do have a fundamental misunderstanding of how it works...



Modern medicine is what allows us the healthiest time in human history and our longer life spans.

It is exactly that which is allowing humans the time and space to evolve.
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Good point, Bodi,
Modern medicine is allowing us to live to around 80 years old because we learn to avoid certain illnesses that are curable or manageable. Genetics, of course, plays an important role also. I play handball against a guy who is 82 years old, and he moves like he is 60. A combination of modern medicine, clean living, and genetics.
 
ArtemisBarca said:
So much of human evolution is powered by us trying to keep up with the viruses we encounter..

So much that it is theorized that the reason for the length of any creatures life span is how long it can live and still change enough to keep up with how fast viruses evolve..

How much does modern medicine hamstring that???


A certain percentage of the evolution of our immune systems require viruses to kill off the percentage of the population that is not immune to it, so only the immune systems that can handle the virus are passed on ..

So wouldn’t there be a price to pay for avoiding them rather than letting our immune systems learn to cope with them???


It seems to me that our immune systems would not keep up?

For sure I could have a fundamental misunderstanding of how all of that works, but if not....


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Click to expand...

Perhaps you would do well to consider saying this out loud to people who have died from or during the COVID-19 outbreak.

“I’m sorry, but I think your loved one’s death was necessary for human evolution.”


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Fiddytree said:
Perhaps you would do well to consider saying this out loud to people who have died from or during the COVID-19 outbreak.

“I’m sorry, but I think your loved one’s death was necessary for human evolution.”


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Well, I wouldn't sat that to someone who died from Covid-19. That would be insensitive.
And I would never think or say that someone's death was necessary for human evolution.
But I do wonder if it was necessary for Neanderthals to be squeezed out of existence so that homo sapiens could dominate the species. Was the disappearance of Neanderthals necessary for homo sapiens to multiply and prosper?
 
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