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Comment by ribrars | Hacker News Reader

This is real scary. One genetic flaw exploited by say a virus could wipe out the entire dairy industry.

Wait till you find out that all the world's cash crops are essentially genetic clones of each other. We're literally one superbug away from global famine.

I doubt its that dire. There are a lot of things currently that can destroy crops but they are mostly prevented from spreading by border controls on things like fruit not being able to cross over.

You're correct. Rice and corn are almost tied as staple crops. Wheat, potatoes and bananas trail those two relatively closely. There may be little genetic diversity inside any particular staple food, but there are nevertheless several unrelated staple foods that feed the world.

If blight were to wipe out one or two, things would get bad but I'm confident we'd pull through as a species.

Yes, biodiversity in major crops is a serious problem.

Global famine? Give me a break.

That would require the failure of multiple crop species extending across thousands of miles. It's never happened in human history on that scale.

Why would it now? Yes, losing all the Cavendish bananas would be really bad. But why would a superbug that takes out all the bananas have any effect on the corn, wheat, etc growing down the road?

The biodiversity issue is intraspecies not interspecies.

> But why would a superbug that takes out all the bananas have any effect on the corn, wheat, etc growing down the road?

Simply, copies.

If a superbug is able to destroy all the world's bananas, it would grow in population 1 million fold to do so. A bacteria or virus with a million times as many members will evolve a million times as quickly.

Given such, a species jump wouldn't be hard to do. And after the first couple, the superbug would likely start to tailer itself to genes that many plant species share, making the next jumps even easier.

I suppose I should be sitting up in terror for the superbug that comes after us from ants, then? After all ants outmass humans worldwide by a decent margin...

Thing is, I'm pretty sure that ants and humans are only a few times further apart than potatoes and corn are. (Monocots and Dicots split ~140-150 Myr ago [0], Arthropoda and Chordata about ~1000 Myr ago [1]) (I initially thought the Monocots/Dicots split was further back... looks like a closer comparison would be to marsupials, diverging ~170 Myr ago)

0: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15114421

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10097391

What does the number of ants vs humans have to do with the population of a species ballooning 1 million times its original size?

FWIW, if this were likely, it probably would have already happened. That's the paradox of superbugs.

Said the man after his doctor diagnosed him with a severe risk of heart attack.

It did already happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana

Grapes too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight

Ah, so you think this virus will wipe out ALL plants everywhere simply because there are lots of copies of the banana killing virus?

There are already lots of viruses at scale that don't become superbugs and randomly jump the species barrier.

There haven't been a lot of species that are all genetic clones of each other until recently, either. Such a condition makes the arrival of a superbug much more likely.

A species entirely made up of genetic clones is what this whole thread is about. I'm surprised you missed this.

You seem to be acting under the assumption that virii are actively malicious things instead of mere self-propagating feedback loops. Propagation is what causes it to grow - killing its host is a dead end for growth.

This isn't Pandemic - there is no neural or neural analog on viruses - hell we couldn't even do that with networked nanomachines.

It would be far more plauisble for all housecats in the world to coordinate and plan the conquest of humanity as they at least have the ability to think and communicate.

This is hard to respond to, because I don't know what you think I think. I don't think viruses have some sort of “neural or neural analog” or coordinate in some way, so I suspect you don't understand what I'm saying.

I just think, on average, an individual virus particle will mutate at a certain rate. If there are a million times the population, a virus as a whole will then mutate 1 million times faster. So, if a certain virus would given a certain mutation, would jump to another species, and that had a certain chance to do so, then that same virus with 1 million times its normal population would have 1 million times the chance to do so.

That's about as spelled out and basic I'm able to make it.

Bananas are a good example they are all clones, 95% of banana exports come from a single cultivated variety, the Cavendish.

Especially because before 1950 the Gros Michel was about as popular as the Cavendish now. And then it got wiped out by a fungus so instead of diversifying, all banana plantations collectively switched to Cavendish. Now there is a new fungus the Cavendish is susceptible too, so perhaps in a few years we'll all be eating something else. Hopefully more than a single alternative variety is found this time...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_banana: "After years of attempting to keep it out of the Americas, in mid-2019, Panama disease Tropical Race 4 (TR4), was discovered on banana farms in the coastal Caribbean region. With no fungicide effective against TR4, the Cavendish may meet the same fate as the Gros Michel."

The veterinary science in the corporate meat/dairy business is better at disease management than the CDC. Vaccines are developed in a matter of weeks. Quarantining animals and employees is completely enforced. Culling is possible. I wouldn’t be scared. A lot of smart people are going to make sure you have real ice cream. Do you worry that some disease is going to kill off all the elite marathon runners? Not much genetic diversity there either. Genetic diversity just isn’t that important for survival with modern medicine.

Pretty much. The one tool that is available to farmers is the fact that they can just kill huge amounts of animals to wipe out an illness quickly.

That tool is available at policy-level to other species too; they just don't like to talk about it.

So... How do account for the swine problem in Asia?

Disease can still have tremendous global impact.

About 2/3rds of China’s pork production is not modern. Too many humans involved and they roll out vaccines in 6 months rather than 3 weeks. For now it is just slow and uncoordinated problem solving.

Right. Everything you said about food supply resiliency only applies to modern production in the US. To be fair: that's the topic of the article. But it is inapplicable to 2/3rds of the world's population -- where disease & monoculture are huge threats to global food supply.

China’s agtech is modernizing, and the Americas and Europe is already modern. We divert enough calories for 1 billion people into biofuels. The only realistic thing that will cause a famine is a breakdown in global trade/markets. I think you are being overly dramatic about the disease threat. I am not quite sure why you think genetic diversity within a species is so important. What is important is to have species diversity and trade to avoid potato famines.

That's what trade is for. Trump just sold lots of pork to China. Admittedly not all places are as integrated into the world economy as China though, so not everyone can afford food, but aid programs are usually well funded and effective. Right now, the only places where people are starving are ones where aid programs don't have access e.g. because of war.

And terrible enforcement and political incentives due to decades of underinvesting in veterinary and agricultural supervision.

> Why did African swine fever spread so fast in China?

> Systemic problems in China may have accelerated the spread of African swine fever, a dangerous pig virus that has no cure or vaccine. According to an investigative piece by Chinese business portal Caixin last month, divergent interests of central and local officials, money worries and "political tasks" created incentives to hide disease reports. Lacking reliable information, farmers panicked and liquidated herds when they heard rumors of disease in their neighborhood. Big regional price differences due to localized pig liquidations and quarantines created strong incentives to truck pigs and pathogens around the country. Traders flouting bans easily evaded authorities--and were often abetted by corrupt veterinary officials who sold fraudulent health certificates and ear tags.

http://dimsums.blogspot.com/2019/08/why-did-african-swine-fe...

Raising cows was still a pretty modern thing in the UK in the ‘80s and ‘90s but nevertheless they got hit hard by the Mad Cow Disease.

That was a prion disease. They were actively being stupid to try to save a quid and are still being punished in the markets for it.

It is like putting crocodiles in hotel rooms up an elevator or a foot high stack of stairs - too steep for them to climb on their own. If crocodiles eat people then it is clearly the fault of the people who put crocodiles in the hotel rooms in the first place because they couldn't get there on their own as they are aquatic ground clingers.

It's a lot easier when you can cull and try experimental vaccines. So "better" is an interesting word choice, there.

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