In all seriousness, people need to order or go to a bookstore (!)
the original “On the Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin.
Yes, there is some variance with the science of today, but it should be read as one might read The Bible as literature rather than as factual text.
Right now we are enduring an acute crisis in the Human Species and natural selection is in fact at work as it always is and has been. In this case by we have had a sequential series of circumstances beginning with susceptibility to disease followed by social intelligence deficit followed by survival trait deficits which are and have been always a product of willful ignorance and gullibility. Never before in my lifetime have these negative societal pressures caused such a significant culling of the herd as this virus has. The Difference between this virus and the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 is that there are people who have decided to live and there people who have decided to die. Of course the latter group will not admit to that, but it is the bare truth. And the most important aspect of this whole business is not the mortality rate so much as the permanent alteration in the individual in terms of clotting mechanisms, lung function, and neurological deficits which may arise from this virus. We do not yet know the extent of this series of issues, but suffice it to say that future studies will demonstrate the negative impact upon survival.
Morbidity and mortality in medicine is a whole study and discipline unto itself, and it involves Statistical and mathematical scaffolding which is rarely discussed in public venue. I believe that we are going to feel the effects of this for a very long time and when herd immunity is discussed, it would be wise to discuss the inevitable thinning of the herd as well as the presumed “advantages”. The science of evolution cares not one whit for the individual organism and it is absurd to believe that we are not subject to these laws of nature.
As an aside, when I was in dental school we had a question about whether we would sterilize our dental burs after they had been used in a handpiece to drill a tooth. The joke was that an organism which can survive when spinning at half a million revolutions per minute and pressed against the hardest biologic substance in nature, dental enamel, probably has more of a right to live than You do. Of course, this was pre-AIDS, and interestingly the only diseases that we worried about transmitting were hepatitis and syphilis. We did not wear gloves and we did not wear masks and those who did were considered less than effective and unnecessarily careful. Of course once AIDS became an issue, gloves were mandatory and now of course masks are as well. This evolution in our infection control was a result of the evolution in viruses and bacteria. There are forces at work over which we have little or no control and need to acknowledge this immediately before we have a real societal catastrophe .
= new reply since forum marked as read
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A clever DUer came up with that. Sorry I can't remember who.
