Covid-19 may be only the beginning. There could be worse pandemics over the horizon, perhaps a train of them, like tornados in echelon wreaking havoc across the Great Plains. Could one of them wipe out homo sapiens?
Obviously the odds of this must be low, because we’ve been around for a couple million years and our species is still here. Virologists point out that “pathogens are extremely specific to a given species,“ so there’s a very limited number of viruses in the animal world that can affect humans, which helps keep those odds low. A virus also would have to spread “very easily,” probably meaning through the air, to become an extinction-level event.
A science teacher believes “humans are going to be really hard to wipe out” for various reasons, including:
- We have a massive population.
- We are geographically widespread.
- We are capable of eating nearly anything.
- We are reasonably diverse as a species.
- There are geographically and genetically isolated pockets of our population.
- Diseases require a vector to spread.
“Let’s say the perfect disease arose tomorrow: It kills two weeks after you get it, shows no symptoms until the last minute, is really easy to transmit, and we have very little immunity to it,” he says. It might kill 99.9% of us, but it’s highly likely there still would be survivors, whose reproduction would begin rebuilding the human population.
Of course, there’s small comfort if you’re one of the 99.9%. But a great frustration to Mother Earth, who no doubt would like to be rid of us.
Now an asteroid, that’s a different story, it takes only one of those. Just ask the next dinosaur you meet in a bar.
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The problem is that no single pathogen is likely to be able to wipe out all human beings. Some human beings will have a natural immunity to a disease. Some diseases like ebola with the potential to wipe out humanity are so virulent they rapidly eliminate the local population limiting its spread. There will also be some individuals by choice or happenstance that are totally removed from other human beings, on a remote mountain top, on the space station, in Antarctica, as long as there is a male and a female in one or more remote locations the species can continue.
Also a successful disease does not want to wipe out the hosts it needs to exist. Thus there is a tendency to be less virulent and deadly, so yes a successful disease is one that is like athletes foot, makes the host a little miserable, but not much of a threat.
Even an asteroid may not eliminate the human race, still getting a community set up on Mars as a failsafe is likely to happen. If nothing else we will figure out a way to coerce a sufficient number of humans to colonize Mars. The drawback maybe in a Mars colony may never be self sufficient. Or doomed by being like Easter Island with no further visits from human beings from Earth.
Diseases think? That’s what you’re saying.