How can we avoid this crisis?
In 1918 the flu pandemic known as the Spanish Flu (or H1N1) was estimated at killing 20-100 million people worldwide. The human body's immune system came nowhere close to being able to combat it. People woke up in the morning perfectly healthy and by the end of the day they were dead. It was bad. H5N1 (bird flu) is version 5.0 of that virus, and in today's modern world, it would be devastating. Geographers have a term called space-time compression, which is the term that labels how the time it takes to travel from one place on the globe to another is taking less time, making the world, in a sense, smaller. Let me provide you with an example series of events of what would happen if H5N1 transferred to humans, keep in mind the Spanish flu is thought to have originated in rural Kansas. A farmer from southern Georgia is taking a trip up to see his relatives in New York City. He and his family are the only people contaminated with this new virus. He arrives at the airport and boards his plane. He develops a mild cough and he coughs into a napkin, which the flight attendant picks up. She gets contaminated. Then she hands out peanuts to all the passengers. They all get contaminated. The farmer arrives in New York but has to wait to get picked up, so he goes to buy a snack. He exchanges money with the girl at the cash register making her contaminated. All the food and people who buy food get contaminated. All the passengers of the plane do the same at different restaurants and stores. Pretty soon everyone in the airport carries the disease. Then they all board planes going to all the major cities throughout the globe repeating the process. Get my point? Quarantine would be out of the question as this would move too fast and the consequences of this virus would be catastrophic, is there any way we can help prevent this from happening? PS. For those of you wondering why this is in the philosophy section, its because I believe the people who read and write here have the best thinking skills Joe you honestly want mass death? True we could let things go and speed up natural selection like they did before modern technology. But is not the goal of modern technology to prolong, protect, and enhance life? If you want to simply take that approach and standby while the world crumbles fine. But as for me and anyone else, we are actually going to try and take action to prevent such a massacre.
Philosophy - 8 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
You can prevent it by washing your hands or using hand sanitizer.
2 :
there really isnt a way to avoid this. no matter what our "efforts", pathogens will find a way around them. thats what they are built to do. and thats why i like them.
3 :
Why avoid it? We all die, we all live. If someone dies earlier than most, I don't think it matters to them after they are dead. Only before. Things like this happened countless times throughout history. It is natural. Small Pox (killed Native Americans) Disease that killed most of the Neanderthal Plague (happened on a large scale twice) And Spanish Flu We all fall when we are learning to walk. And why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up. EDIT: As long as mass death is not cause by man, then it is acceptable.
4 :
Interesting question... Bionanotech has the potential to bolster our immune systems to the point that such a virus would have no effect on our bodies, but that's likely a few decades down the line...in the meantime, sanitization, thoughtful ways to reduce touch-to-touch interaction, and (as a last resort) quarantine could all be helpful. In the short term, self-sanitizing handles, doorknobs, architecture which reduces personal touch, and other strategies designed to stop contact-born infections are good steps to take -- particularly in major transportation hubs such as airports, as well as in money. In the medium term, we should look at our currency system. Paper money is literally filthy and crawling with bacteria. One way to move away from this is toward a "card" monetary system (e.g. personal credit cards), which avoids the use of paper money, thereby lessening the odds of currency acting as a means of transmission. Antiviral and antibacterial agents could also be woven into the fabric used to print currency. The scenario you describe is possible, could be worse, but is bad enough. Although you've placed quarantine outside the realm of potential remedial actions, I think in an epidemic situation of this hypothetical magnitude, steps should be taken to quarantine perceived colonies, even if thousands of such quarantine zones have to be declared. Smaller towns might shut off access roads, though of course places where people congregate such as cities would be much more difficult to secure.
5 :
I agree that this could be a problem and propose that we start thinking about the Earth's biological problems a bit more that physics in outer space. What I mean is biology is not given nearly as much attention as it deserves mostly because the media gives all their attention to physicists.
6 :
We can't avoid it. You are describing a future SARS or Bird Flu epidemic.
7 :
Pandemics are natures way of controlling the human population. I was really surprised to see how well the CDC kept the bird flu under control. Those people are amazing. Overpopulation is going to get controlled one way or another. The only thing that is under our control is the choice to breed for quantity like animals, or quality like humans. And, as you can clearly see, the world has no desire to change.
8 :
When the scientists developed the first non-penicillin antibiotics in the 1940's the first strains to resist the antibiotics appeared in the CLOSED samples in the lab within 45 days. No outside strain getting in, it just took 45 days for some of the lab bacteria to develop immunity. There is a theory that viruses were the first life forms on earth and that other organisms came about to give viruses a more viable diet than the pre-biotic soup they were consuming prior to that. So we are here to feed disease. It is our raison d'etre. If we successfully prevent any diseases from effecting us, then we will have damaged nature and we will be a plague on the earth. We may well be that now. I do not mean to say we should not fight disease, or that it isn't horrendous when large numbers of people die, but what I am saying is that it is a natural process and that we SHOULD never defeat all disease. It wouldn't bode well for the planet.
Title : How can we avoid this crisis
Description : How can we avoid this crisis? In 1918 the flu pandemic known as the Spanish Flu (or H1N1) was estimated at killing 20-100 million people w...