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Comment by hannob | Hacker News Reader

I mean, we eliminated smallpox viruses, and the impact was that humans no longer die from smallpox. We have almost eliminated polio, which has the impact that nobody needs an iron lung any more. We have massively reduced the incidence of a whole range of other pathogens. Are you concerned about that, too?

I'd be much more concerned about the changes humans do to our ecosystems that we know cause harm, but aren't stopping (like filling the atmosphere with CO2 and other greenhouse gases) than about changes that would, almost certainly, reduce harm and have only extremely unlikely and hypothetical risks.

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Well, one notable difference between your examples of eliminated pathogens is that there is a food chain built on top of mosquitos. There are plenty of animals that eat both mosquito larvae (ex: tadpoles, some fish) and adults (ex: bats, dragonflies). I don't believe there is a similar food chain built on top of viruses.

I agree that many of the risks are hypothetical, but I disagree that we can simply dismiss them. Taking a decent amount of time to understand cause and effect on ecosystems seems like a perfectly prudent thing to me.

Im curious about the food chain part, what happens to individual viruses over time, do they ‘die’ or degrade somehow?

Viruses are bundle of DNA with an attitude. Lacking any active metabolism, they just denature with time.

While they don't age like living organisms, their outer protein coating wears away due to temperature and UV light, so like you said they sort of "degrade".

We wouldn't have to destroy all mosquitos, though. Only a few species that are carriers of human pathogens. Once they are gone, other, benign mosquitos will occupy their spot, and will be eaten by the same animals as before.

Such a vague blanket statement sounds like an article of faith and not an actual informed opinion about the specific species of mosquitos, the animals that eat them, and the fungibility of their food sources. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

The mosquito species in question is native to northern Africa, and is an invasive species pretty much everywhere else in the world, having only arrived 300-400 years ago.

"Invasive" is a made-up human concept that has pretty much no bearing on local dependence after a couple hundred years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49967028

> Are you concerned about that, too?

Kind of, because every time you stomp out one of Mother Nature's ways to keep the human population in check, you contribute to letting the population exceed carrying capacity, which leads to things like:

> changes humans do to our ecosystems that we know cause harm, but aren't stopping

A virus isn't an insect. This comparison is pointless.

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