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It's not a new idea, but the implications if it goes wrong are severe. Imagine it mutates (it happens, especially if it's super infectious and thus being expose

by dusted 5y ago

It's not a new idea, but the implications if it goes wrong are severe. Imagine it mutates (it happens, especially if it's super infectious and thus being exposed to MANY environments and gets to live millions of years per day (time * infected humans)). Imagine it works differently in a small percentage of people, it's a lot harder to control when it's distributing itself.. With vaccines, at least, administration can be stopped or paused, if cause for concern arose.

carlosbaraza 5y ago
Interesting points. I guess the fact that it couldn't be stopped is really the deal breaker, unless there was a kill switch in the design of the virus (maybe some kind of antidote you could take?). Regarding mutability, I am not an expert at all. However, some viruses mutate more than others, so I imagine there could be some way to control the mutability and maybe even prevent it from happening with self repair mechanisms? Do you know what is this idea usually named? I tried searching for it, but I couldn't find much. In any case, it feels like it is a field humans should research (and probably already are), because the risk for biological weapons is quite high; and currently our western society is not even prepared to unite and get a vaccine, so I'm not sure how we would react to a riskier pandemic.
- dusted 5y ago
  Assuming it went out of control, it's not unreasonable to assume that the antidote can become ineffective, and even if it was effetive, it'd have the same problems as current vaccines (distribution chain, antivaxxers, testing and getting it approved for use in humans), but with even more difficult ethical implications. I'm not sure if there is a widely used term is used for this (countervirus comes to mind, but that seems used for something else), since it is an unacceptable practice so far.
desktopninja 5y ago
And then it becomes weaponized. Then it becomes targeted biological warfare. We humans love to find creative ways to kill ourselves.

by dusted 5y ago

carlosbaraza 5y ago

Interesting points. I guess the fact that it couldn't be stopped is really the deal breaker, unless there was a kill switch in the design of the virus (maybe some kind of antidote you could take?). Regarding mutability, I am not an expert at all. However, some viruses mutate more than others, so I imagine there could be some way to control the mutability and maybe even prevent it from happening with self repair mechanisms? Do you know what is this idea usually named? I tried searching for it, but I couldn't find much. In any case, it feels like it is a field humans should research (and probably already are), because the risk for biological weapons is quite high; and currently our western society is not even prepared to unite and get a vaccine, so I'm not sure how we would react to a riskier pandemic.

dusted 5y ago
Assuming it went out of control, it's not unreasonable to assume that the antidote can become ineffective, and even if it was effetive, it'd have the same problems as current vaccines (distribution chain, antivaxxers, testing and getting it approved for use in humans), but with even more difficult ethical implications. I'm not sure if there is a widely used term is used for this (countervirus comes to mind, but that seems used for something else), since it is an unacceptable practice so far.

desktopninja 5y ago

And then it becomes weaponized. Then it becomes targeted biological warfare. We humans love to find creative ways to kill ourselves.