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A comment on A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibiotics comes to an end. Parent comment

Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by vacri on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @08:31PM (#12083256)
Having antibiotic failure as the method for arresting the massive human population (7B people) would require carnage that makes World War II (~70M deaths) pale in comparison, even if you correct for the lower global population of the day.
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Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by dredmorbius on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @10:38PM (#12083599)
Disease has typically killed more than wars. The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 killed 50-100 million people, several percent of the total world population. By comparison, total military and civilian dealths in WWI were about 16 million.
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Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by vacri on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @11:51PM (#12083787)
Oh, I agree - I just used WWII as it's a more commonly-understood datapoint. The Spanish Flu epidemic only took a couple of years as well, as opposed to the half-decade of WWII.
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Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by trhway on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @11:03PM (#12083657)
why carnage? just some sterilizing effect of some bacterial infection would do it.
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Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by vacri on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @11:50PM (#12083783)
People dying of infection is not pretty, especially at scale.
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Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by trhway on Wednesday July 13, 2016 @12:39AM (#12083910)
"sterilizing" means destroying the ability to produce next generation. No dying involved. It may be some very light infection, just with a sterilizing side-effect for example.
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