4 ms·
A 48,500-year-old virus has been revived from Siberian permafrost
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoIt would be easy to castigate scientists for resurrecting ancient virus strains. But viruses are mutating constantly. These may be nothing very different.
- treeman79 4y agomay Or it could be one that stopped being effective eons ago. But we’ve since lost defense against. Or it doesn’t much matter which is most likely.
- xcambar 4y agoThese stories resonate a lot in the public as being an evil consequence of human activity, and no one can counter that. But it comes with horror stories and myths of "old and ancient viruses and bacteria", the next pandemics etc. I wonder how much primal fear and how much reason is the recipe for these allegations. Out of principle, I'd rather let these viruses in the permafrost and never have to deal with them but since we're here... What does science say about the risk? Is it " unknown with a wide spectrum of scenario" or something else?