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Comment by sriku | Hacker News Reader

When it comes to our bio-ecosystem, I'm repelled by this kind of a question as, in general, I don't believe we understand ecosystems with complex interacting parts well at all .. and are therefore not well placed to make such sweeping changes to it .. at least not consciously.

The seminal book on this (for me) has been Dietrich Dörner's "The Logic of Failure".

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We've wiped viruses off the face of the planet before, and I don't think it's causing us much harm. Eradicating smallpox has apparently saved 5 million lives a year!

The question you'd have to ask is whether some low level amount of coronaviruses is important to human survival. It seems like it's not. We have certainly seen the opposite effect -- people get pretty sick when you kill off all their gut bacteria (it lets unhelpful bacteria reproduce, and the bacteria actually perform digestive functions). Unfortunately, we didn't really realize that until we developed the technology to kill bacteria indiscriminately, so I see the worry. But I doubt anyone will be harmed by having too few coronavirus infections, so I'm probably not worried this time.

Smallpox is:

- Spread by contact

- Off-the-scale virulent

- Trivial to turn into a vaccine

- Not present in animal reservoirs

I think this particular thread is debating the ethics and unintended consequences of eradicating all coronaviruses, not how possible it would be to actually do.

The original question starts with the word “Can”, and the answer is [going to be] no.

Do you have a reference for no? They seem to have had luck making vaccines so far.

Do you have a reference for a vaccine that confers near-total near-lifetime immunity? That would be a prerequisite.

The investigation is “can we”, not “have we”.

Just to clarify, I wasn’t looking to put anyone on defense there - so, apologies.

Off the top of my head, “How to Survive a Pandemic” by Michael Greger suggests pandemics may be an emergent, new-normal. Many of the factors which led to this pandemic are not going to be mitigated without broad, deep, and costly changes to how agriculture function. The medications used in raising and killing cattle, chicken, pigs, and etc combined with the scale of those activities act as a breeding ground for viruses which are statistically likely to become pandemics.

Not a scientist or medical person, but I believe its accepted that there is linkage of fever and cancer inhibition (because non-cancerous cells tend to cope better with environmental stresses than cancerous ones). It's not at all my field, but a very cursory search shows statements like this

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4006373/

'Lower risk for cancer has also been associated with a history of febrile viral diseases.'

Right. Some cancers can be better targeted with chemo by first stressing the body with a fast. The non cancerous cells identify the fast as a time to set up guards for harshness, but the cancerous cells do not. So the cancerous cells get hit full blast by the chemo while the healthy cells are prepared from the reaction to the fast. I would posit though that fasts are probably a better way to generally help fighting cancers than a life of yearly coronavirus infections.

But this brings up the question of whether we could create a similar response on purpose and in a controlled fashion, rather than letting a bunch of viruses do what they do in the wild?

Even syphilis was once treated by giving the patient malaria - with 20 per cent mortality rate, though. (Still better than suffering from lues in the pre-antibiotic world.)

I am all for a controlled fashion.

> We've wiped viruses off the face of the planet

I believe it is correct to say we eradicated the disease but we don't know if the virus died

Smallpox still exists in the form of monkeypox in the wild and as rabbitpox in labs

FDA approved a new drug to treat smallpox (only tested on monkeys and rabbits infected with monkeypox and rabbitpox) in 2018 because smallpox resurgence does remain a realistic threat and having a stock pile of at least two different vaccines that attack the virus in different ways is the only way to prevent it from becoming drug resistant

> We've wiped viruses off the face of the planet before

Only recently. Widespread vaccine use is a fairly recent phenomenon.

> Eradicating smallpox has apparently saved 5 million lives a year!

It certainly saved lives but we really don't know how much. Every estimate is off of cherrypicked data.

> But I doubt anyone will be harmed by having too few coronavirus infections, so I'm probably not worried this time.

You just said we fucked up with bacteria and then you brush off viruses.

There was a time when the scientific consensus was to snuff out every small fire to prevent wildfires. Now we realize how horribly naive that was. By preventing small localized fires, we allowed kindle wood to mass which fueled gigantic wildfires. That fires are natural and helps forests clear and rejuvenate itself.

The same thing with parents and kids avoiding food/sickness. It lead to food allergies ( some of which can be deadly ) and poor adult immune system. Now we know a bit of sickness helps strengthen the immune system and introduction to a wide variety of foods helps prevent food allergies.

The history of humanity/science/etc is we were wrong. But as long as we learn and move forward, that's what is important.

I remember one of bill burrs rants in his podcast after he watches the Ted talk about eradicating mosquitoes, he compares the arrogance of that person to a dude who proclaims he's going to rewire his homes electric connections and ends up short-circuiting everything. Perfect comparison.

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