Sars, aids, whats next? and how devestating will it be?

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Dr Lou Natic

Unnecessary Surgeon
Registered Senior Member
It is a fact that if you stuff lots of chickens into a small space diseases will arise and spread alot faster than if they are free ranged with lots of space.
Diseases (or viruses or whatever) seem to be a natural defense from overpopulation or the dominance of an area.
One thing we can be sure of is another big disease will come. But how big? and when?
You can imagine a totally devestating one simply by mixing sars and aids in your mind so who's to say one that bad or worse isn't just around the corner? One that takes out astronomical numbers of human beings?
There is a good chance of this happening and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Its nature, and I have a feeling nature is about to kick our ass...
 
Well, if nature handles overpopulation by diseases and plagues, which I also believe to be true, a new one should better come soon for the sake of nature because soon man will overpower diseases and they will no longer be of any use to nature...
 
I used to think the same way, BUT new ones will simply keep coming.
In 10 years man might cure aids; HOORAY! But then wham! what the hell is groids? argh!
catch my drift?
SARS was relatively soft, nature is just feeling out the situation, the next one could be unimaginably hardcore and impossible to cure or treat. It could spread faster and easier than anything medicine has ever seen, there is nothing to say this won't happen.
 
The next big diseases could be a kind of AIDS mixed to SARS. I mean a fast evolving virus that could be transmitted by contact or worse : through the air. A kind of "plague" such as the one that killed so much people in europe during XIV century.

That kind of diseases would be devastating in two times :
1 - it would kill children, old people and then adults, during the epidemic period
2 - as the population decreases, there are less new children, so even after the disease would have disapreared, it would have several effects

Have a nice future :D

(I hope that it will never happen...)
 
We don't need no new exotic diseases. One little mutation of a single AIDS virus that will make it infectious through the air will wipe out a good 80% of the population if not more...

[Edit: I'm starting to sound like I want this to happen. I don't. Really]
 
But the new exotic diseases will come whether we feel we need them or not.
We know nature's having its best shot at culling us. Thats what sars and aids are and probably the common cold and a plethera of others as well. The thing is it hasn't read the list of medicine we have, so it might "try" some and we will effortlessly get rid of them straight away. But that just means it will try again, and again until it hits the jackpot.
A big ones coming, I'm not sure when, I'm not nostradamus, but I know it will get us eventually.

(I won't comment on whether I "want this to happen" or not, I don't like seeing people suffer despite the way I act sometimes, but I will say this; I think its only fair if earth can fight back)
 
I'm a little uncomfortable with the way people in this thread are anthropomorphizing nature. It's not as if nature is making a conscious effort to wipe us out because we have become overpopulated; nature never makes a conscious effort to do anything, because nature isn’t conscious. There might be a devastating plague, or there might not. Whether it happens or not will not have anything to do with what nature 'wants.'

As for whether or not a killer plague is inevitable, with the rapid advances that are being made in molecular biology it's not inconceivable that in a hundred years we might be able to quickly and easily make a drug that can cure or prevent any disease.
 
uncomfortable? these "sky is falling" shit should be moved to free thoughts pronto. there is no room in this forum for superstition. if we have absolutely no idea what the "next" disease is, how on earth can we know what devastation it can cause? jeez! do not shit in the science forums!
 
Move it where you want.

I'm not giving nature traits it doesn't have, I'm merely wording it that way;)
Nature makes balances happen one way or another. When something defies survival of the fittest, be it domesticated animals or humans, diseases arise, to balance it out. Even if wild animals dominate an area, disease will spread through their 'clan'. It can be seen among "successful" chimpanzees and dolphins when too many of them are in one area. This isn't superstitious, I'm sure there is an indepth scientific explanation somewhere, thats not my specialty though, i'm a 'layman'. When lots of the one species are together disease will spread easier. I don't know whats so strange about that. And if the disease doesn't work for whatever reason a new one will arise, until one works.
Its fine to be skeptical but don't ignore obvious things in fear that they might change your concrete views.
 
Nature makes balances happen one way or another.

this is wishful thinking. nature is just a catchall term for individual stuff. nature just is. it directs nothing
 
One little piece of me thinks it would be best for the world as a whole if SARS willed 90% of humans on this planet from every walk of life. I think it could have the potential to be the next black plague, epecially if it is rna based and can quickly mutate.
 
well brother clockwood, i think humans would be well served if you too, were included in the 90% that sars "wills" away.
 
When something defies survival of the fittest, be it domesticated animals or humans, diseases arise, to balance it out.
Click to expand...
That's not necessarily true. Those diseases are already around, but are more noticeable in dense populations.

I think it could have the potential to be the next black plague, epecially if it is rna based and can quickly mutate.
Click to expand...
I don't think there will ever be something as devastating as the black plague again. Maybe in terms of numbers, but not in proportion to the population.
 
DrLou- I don't go in for all this stuff about what nature 'intends'. However your point about population density is a good one. Nature automatically creates checks and balances and dense populations become very vulnerable to disease and infection. Unfortunately I suspect that as time goes on we will find ourselves devoting even more and more resources to fighting these rather than just do the obvious, and will suffer badly for it. Any gardener knows the problem of disease and monoculture. (Growing mushrooms intensively is a good example - the fight against disease becomes constant).

The global flu epidemic at the end of WWI is an object lesson.
 
Spookz.... chill with the anal retentiveness..... its just a typo....

And though it would suck for me and many others the population drop most likly would be a boon for the species as a whole
 
Originally posted by Idle Mind
That's not necessarily true. Those diseases are already around, but are more noticeable in dense populations.
Click to expand...
actually, given that transmission rates will be higher in more densly populated areas, the survival of more new mutated version of a virus is likely. So it could be said that in a more heavily populated area, 'new' diseases will be created more quickly.

to be more scientific, the rate of mutation will remain the same, but the possible opurtunities of a mutated version of a virus to infect a new host and survive past the first generation will be greatly increased in a densly populated area.




There are some very interesting studies going on right now which are comparing the long-term evolution of pathogens- seeing how their level of congagiousness effefts the level of their effects on a victim. the idea is that easy to catch deseases evolve to be less harmfull to their hosts (ie, you want to keep you host alive, cause when Bob dies, Bob's internal parasites die too). Hard to transmit deseases tend to be more nasty, even with a long time to evolve (think aids). So if we mutated aids to be caught easily, would it evolve to be less harmful to it's host? (nearly 100% of Cheeta's world wide have Feline HIV, and they are all fine. nearly no symptoms at all)
 
river-wind: I see what you are getting at, and I agree completely, but your statement doesn't contradict mine. Your post was simply more detailed. However, I admit I shouldn't have been so concise as my post was a little light on substance. Thanks for the fix-up.
 
Before thinking about future diseases, it seems that SARS is not over... at all ! When I wrote my first post here, it was still a small disease but now it's more and more dangerous.
Thanks, I'm not living in Hong Kong...
I hope that it will be over soon :)
 
Whoa....
Turns out sars originated from asians eating animals they shouldn't be(porcupines, racoons etc, wild animals)

it all makes too much sense...
 
Originally posted by river-wind
There are some very interesting studies going on right now which are comparing the long-term evolution of pathogens- seeing how their level of congagiousness effefts the level of their effects on a victim. the idea is that easy to catch deseases evolve to be less harmfull to their hosts (ie, you want to keep you host alive, cause when Bob dies, Bob's internal parasites die too). Hard to transmit deseases tend to be more nasty, even with a long time to evolve (think aids). So if we mutated aids to be caught easily, would it evolve to be less harmful to it's host? (nearly 100% of Cheeta's world wide have Feline HIV, and they are all fine. nearly no symptoms at all)
Click to expand...
Surely this is back to front. Co-evolution of the disease and its victims ensures that there is this correllation between being easy to catch and being less harmful, since things that are easy to catch would soon run out of things that are easy to kill. They're not linked properties of the disease itself.

(Funny how we say we catch them, rather than that they catch us).
 
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