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Comment by iagovar | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this dangerous in terms of virus and bacteria re-activation?

It would have to be a zoonotic pathogen and those tend to be rare.

Why? The thing could just have trapped human hostile pathogens in its fur, etc.

Viruses and bacteria tend to be super specialized for their hosts temperature, humidity, and cellular ranges and die soon after being abandoned into the cold uncaring world. Except for when they're in bio-films. Then, recent research suggests, they can live for much longer.

Fungal spores, however, can live forever even in deep space.

Valley fever, caused by Coccidioides immitis is a danger to Archeologists (and ATV enthusiasts) as it lives in the soil and if its spores are breathed in it can cause some symptoms.

So, there's some danger, but not much. And the people doing this work will likely know the details.

They should check for entombed alien spacecraft nearby just in case it's actually a shape-shifting Thing.

We've probably already caught everything that can be caught from dogs a long time ago.

You dont think that our immunities may have evolved along with the evolution of the dog bacteria?

Evolution doesn't just mean improvements, it also means dropping that's that dont appear to be useful anymore. If a 20k year old bacteria suddenly starts showing up and we're no longer equipped to deal with them like we used to be...

The thing is that virus and bacteria don't work magically to harm us. They have to evolve too. Its unlikely that we will awaken anything harmful to us because they simply never evolved the mechanisms to harm us.

There are some exceptions but apparently they're rare.

I think there was an episode of 99% Invisible with a qualified person explaining all this instead of some rando on the internet (me) but I can't find it =(

Hopefully someone else can elaborate

"The thing is that virus and bacteria don't work magically to harm us. They have to evolve too"

I thought it was an "everybody knows" thing that viruses and bacteria generally coevolve with hosts, so they become less virulent over time. It's when something has just become infectious that it's most likely to decimate (or worse) the population it's just arrived in.

Yeah that's also true. But it still has to evolve that infection mechanism. A virus from so long ago and from a different animal is unlikely to have the very specific mechanisms to infect us.

Penicillin should be enough to deal with 20k year old bacteria.

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