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There is a strong argument that they should remain uncontacted, because they are not exposed to our pathogens. Death rates of 90% are typical. This was the stor

There is a strong argument that they should remain uncontacted, because they are not exposed to our pathogens. Death rates of 90% are typical. This was the story on islands all over the Pacific. It still happens to Amazon tribes today. It is a general pattern. Whenever the larger evolutionary pool encounters the smaller one, the larger pool's viruses spread like wildfire through the smaller population, wrecking it. And it's not just viruses. Whenever predators from Eurasia/Africa, the "Old World", the largest landmass, arrive on an island, it is an extinction event. How much destruction has the housecat wrought? Now, perhaps this is, fundamentally, an unstable dynamic, literally in the dynamical-systems sense, and the situation cannot be maintained. Ultimately they will come into contact with these diseases; the only question is how and when. (To strike a philosophical note, however, your death is also inevitable, yet you seek to delay it.) So perhaps some protocol, as you suggest, of extremely careful, "clean room" contact, with vaccines, or something like that, might be possible and desirable. How to win sufficient trust, I don't know. But the disease aspect is important.

someperson 2y ago
It would be great to drop a few a Starlink terminals and some solar panels to contact these people and explain the disease risks
BurningFrog 2y ago
Why can this not be addressed with vaccines? Our newborns don't have these immunities either, right? Or am I misunderstanding the human immune system?
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Newborns inherit antibodies from their mothers iirc. Besides how hard it is to get everyone on board with vaccines even when they have been raised in a culture that's seen wild success from them for generations
- cameron_b 2y ago
  Mothers are indeed capable of transmitting antibodies through milk, but a significant portion of it does come through exposure and vaccines. As kids start school or daycare they reshuffle all the germs they live with, as they meet new friends, go to camp, start a new school, shuffle again. Often it just feels like a runny nose or a mild fever, a little bit here, a little bit there. The problem is that the body doesn’t not exterminate a virus from its ecology. It may be kept at bay, and from critical mass, but might be extant on the skin ( hands especially ) or in the lungs for instance, just not at infection levels. Experiencing that petri dish as an adult can be overwhelming. For the same reason that kids have a staggered plan of shots that lasts for a dozen years, you’d have to trickle in the resistance more or less that way that you came about it, or you’re not really “not overloading their immune system”
- Qem 2y ago
  > Why can this not be addressed with vaccines? It takes a lot of time to trust strange people enough to let them pierce your body to inject random substances. After about a century of vaccination among the "civilized", with proven results, there's still a lot of people that are not OK with it.
- User23 2y ago
  There are genetic factors, probably epigenetic ones, and environmental too.
AlotOfReading 2y ago
Death rates of 90% are not typical. I'm not even aware of them in reliable literature, only their reporting in certain popular sources that aren't supported by good evidence. The medical procedures for "contact" are pretty straightforward. You screen and temporarily quarantine the contact team for diseases. You ensure only those people are meeting with the indigenous group, and that the contact team isn't being exposed themselves. You have physicians and other medical staff available in the contact team to provide medical care. The goal isn't to prevent all disease transmission. That's not possible because "uncontacted" tribes are already interacting with the outside world. The Nomole people in TFA trade with their Piro cousins for example, and interact with loggers, miners mineral surveyors, among others. The goal is to minimize the transmissions you can control and provide the political/cultural/medical resources necessary to deal with whatever situation is initiating the contact process.

someperson 2y ago

It would be great to drop a few a Starlink terminals and some solar panels to contact these people and explain the disease risks

BurningFrog 2y ago

Why can this not be addressed with vaccines? Our newborns don't have these immunities either, right? Or am I misunderstanding the human immune system?

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Newborns inherit antibodies from their mothers iirc. Besides how hard it is to get everyone on board with vaccines even when they have been raised in a culture that's seen wild success from them for generations
cameron_b 2y ago
Mothers are indeed capable of transmitting antibodies through milk, but a significant portion of it does come through exposure and vaccines. As kids start school or daycare they reshuffle all the germs they live with, as they meet new friends, go to camp, start a new school, shuffle again. Often it just feels like a runny nose or a mild fever, a little bit here, a little bit there. The problem is that the body doesn’t not exterminate a virus from its ecology. It may be kept at bay, and from critical mass, but might be extant on the skin ( hands especially ) or in the lungs for instance, just not at infection levels. Experiencing that petri dish as an adult can be overwhelming. For the same reason that kids have a staggered plan of shots that lasts for a dozen years, you’d have to trickle in the resistance more or less that way that you came about it, or you’re not really “not overloading their immune system”
Qem 2y ago
> Why can this not be addressed with vaccines? It takes a lot of time to trust strange people enough to let them pierce your body to inject random substances. After about a century of vaccination among the "civilized", with proven results, there's still a lot of people that are not OK with it.
User23 2y ago
There are genetic factors, probably epigenetic ones, and environmental too.

AlotOfReading 2y ago

Death rates of 90% are not typical. I'm not even aware of them in reliable literature, only their reporting in certain popular sources that aren't supported by good evidence. The medical procedures for "contact" are pretty straightforward. You screen and temporarily quarantine the contact team for diseases. You ensure only those people are meeting with the indigenous group, and that the contact team isn't being exposed themselves. You have physicians and other medical staff available in the contact team to provide medical care. The goal isn't to prevent all disease transmission. That's not possible because "uncontacted" tribes are already interacting with the outside world. The Nomole people in TFA trade with their Piro cousins for example, and interact with loggers, miners mineral surveyors, among others. The goal is to minimize the transmissions you can control and provide the political/cultural/medical resources necessary to deal with whatever situation is initiating the contact process.