It's a little odd to consider the idea that fighting off modern viruses today, might actually be impeding human evolution in some way we can't foresee.
Having more individuals around by itself would also lead to mutations which the environment may select for in the future. By itself there is no such thing as a beneficial mutation (gene import) unless the environment proves it to be.
The argument is _not_ that we should change our strategy of doing the best we can with the information we have. Just that we should have some humility about what we can and can't actually predict, or say with certainty.
The only point I'm hoping people will take, is that we shouldn't be so quick to make categorical statements about the future; like we know exactly how things will play out. I don't know for sure. You don't know for sure. The experts don't know for sure.
You’re taking an impossible to prove hypothetical that would require omniscient level reasoning and predictive powers to prove or disprove - it’s not a productive line of reasoning and you’re falling into the exact same trap you’re accusing others of doing. The WWII example is also highly flawed because that one was experts making strategically reasonable calls. Worrying about some hypothetical virus that in the distant future is critical is not strategically reasonable - it’s science fantasy.
I'm not assuming anything. I'm following the science as reported in the article above. That in FACT a virus lead to an important part of human development. And was in FACT beneficial. Those are true facts, if you trust the science.
> If the virus hadn’t come along, humanity as it stands today may not exist but whatever animal was infected could potentially have kept reproducing / another virus would accomplish what happened anyway. Those are far more likely scenarios.
You literally immediately launched into assuming a counterfactual (that didn't happen, you just made it up).
> You’re taking an impossible to prove hypothetical that would require omniscient level reasoning
Yes, and I made it clear that's what I was doing. And I explicitly said it was an imaginary situation that would never happen. I was using it for illustrative purposes for people who are flexible enough in their thinking. I'm sorry that isn't you.
It's all academic of course, we'll never make such a decision, and never know what could have been. It's just another reminder that we don't really know the future or the best course of action in these situations -- we're just taking our best guess (even the experts).
Even in that scenario, it is very simple, we protected the people today and use vaccines to induce the necessary mutation. The moral choice in my book is to always err on the side of the living than "potential of the living".
For instance, the British military planners allowed soldiers to die on the battlefield, who they could have saved, in order to protect the secret that they had cracked German encryption during WWII. That was a place where the needs of the many, were deemed more valuable than the lives of the few.
I'm not judging one way or the other, but it has happened in human history more than once. And in the imaginary scenario where leaders had perfect knowledge of the future, it would likely happen again.
This is not a very good comparison, in my opinion. Military is rarely about the "needs of the many" far more than it is about the "powers that be". Once you understand the dynamic at a play, it is rather clear that the soldiers died for what soldiers almost always die for; the regimes that pushes them to war.