The 1918 Flu pandemic’s Second Wave killed massive amounts of young, healthy adults. 99% of deaths occurred in people under 65, and half of all deaths were in young adults 20 to 40 years old. Source: Wikipedia.
Oops! Thank you. I was aware of that, but got mixed up while writing and didn’t separate my ideas. I meant “like 1918” as in a flu mutation that made it behave much more dangerously. I was thinking the next mutation might be more likely to target the old and sick instead of repeating the cytokine storm thing with the young, but either could easily happen (this one might cause a cytokine storm that attacks the old, in many cases, or at least I’ve read that is a possibility?). I also figured that in modern times it would be easy to intervene with the young because they weren’t in trenches in a world war with a less developed medical system. But COVID-19 is so contagious that it doesn’t seem way easier to control.
Those are good and worrying points about natural selection. I’m not at all confident we’re handling this intelligently. Maybe there’s not much that can be done to help, but making it worse is not good.
Oops! Thank you. I was aware of that, but got mixed up while writing and didn’t separate my ideas. I meant “like 1918” as in a flu mutation that made it behave much more dangerously. I was thinking the next mutation might be more likely to target the old and sick instead of repeating the cytokine storm thing with the young, but either could easily happen (this one might cause a cytokine storm that attacks the old, in many cases, or at least I’ve read that is a possibility?). I also figured that in modern times it would be easy to intervene with the young because they weren’t in trenches in a world war with a less developed medical system. But COVID-19 is so contagious that it doesn’t seem way easier to control.
Those are good and worrying points about natural selection. I’m not at all confident we’re handling this intelligently. Maybe there’s not much that can be done to help, but making it worse is not good.