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Comment by o0-0o | Hacker News Reader

People have always travelled and shared their germs. Some of them probably worse than what we have now. I think it’s perfectly natural for 100s of people to get together and travel. Sailors are a good example of how this relates to the past. Going to Mars will be the future. We cannot isolate as tribes.

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Just because it’s always been done or natural doesn’t make it a good idea. Plagues were pretty terrifying events throughout history until we became aware of how they spread. The advantage we have over our animal counterparts is our ability to learn from our mistakes and upgrade our culture to decrease the chance of causing unnatural deaths in our populations. You are right we definitely shouldn’t isolate as tribes. This should be on the individual level when being exposed to anyone you aren’t around daily. This doesn’t constitute a tribe. If someone carelessly takes part in the spread of a pathogen without attempting to prevent it from using their body to get to other human hosts who are perhaps more vulnerable, they are ethically responsible for the death of every individual that is infected and does not recover as a result of that carelessness.

I'm not saying that because we did it in the past, we should continue doing it. Knowledge is power, and we have concrete evidence that herd immunity works. We need germs to work as a species at the moment, so let's find a way forward that doesn't restrict air travel or blame the butterfly for the monsoon, right?

There is a line between exposing yourself to a little bit of something that you're like to catch anyway, and sticking the world into a blender and expecting every organism to come out stronger. Life is always at risk from pests and diseases that evolved in other ecosystems. Always will be, unless we destroy the boundaries between ecosystems and create a single worldwide ecosystem (which would be fucked).

I diagree that we have to find a way forward that doesn't restrict air travel. Worldwide air travel for the masses is a very recent fad. It's a terrible co2 emitter and was bound to trigger an event like this.

Travel in a book?

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