Note that the article does not advance the claim that "all common colds were once deadly epidemics."

I don't think eradicating viruses is a good thing. For one, the human placenta is the result of a virus doing its thing many years ago [1].

My personal opinion is that we should strive to create antidotes when the body fails to fix itself, instead of removing the threat altogether. Evolution needs viruses, in the same way the universe needs entropy.

1. https://whyy.org/segments/the-placenta-went-viral-and-protom...

> Evolution needs viruses, in the same way the universe needs entropy.

The question is do we need the blind god of evolution.

not just the placenta, we're full of these botched germ-line viruses.

endogenous retroviruses in mammals are amazing. primates owe to one or more ERVs the effectiveness of the p53 gene activation (p52 is a tumor suppressor gene).

That's a nice theory and it seems very likely to be true: that viruses have driven evolution, perhaps much faster than without them.

But the cost for individuals is tremendous, 99.9999999% cases the infection would not be beneficial.

Perhaps in a short while we can do much better ourselves, it certainly seems we humans want to transcend evolution and death.

fascinating idea, we should trascend.. the alternative is death

> I don't think eradicating viruses is a good thing.

Yep, if nothing else, we need them to "train" our immune systems.

Treating the coronavirus as a flu would be a best option... vaccinate the most exposed and vulnerable groups, and let others get it.

We do train our immune systems. Just no longer only with random brawls but also with specialized trainings: vaccines.

Is this something we should wish for? It’s my understanding that for SARS-CoV-2 a lot of people seem to have t-cell immunity because they’ve been infected with other families of coronavirus. Correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t vaccinating against all of the coronavirusus prevent this from happening? Thus, eradication of all viruses would result in a new virus being much more deadly in a population when no one has had a “previous” less deadly “version”

There's very little functional difference between being immune to a virus because of previous infection and being immune to a virus because of vaccination. The latter basically co-opts the body's response to the former to generate a lasting adaptive defense.

For influenza, immunity due to a previous infection is apparently broader than immunity due to vaccination: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870374/.

That is old definition, now in accordance to the new definition immunity can only be achieved through vaccination. https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1341306917076021248

Guess they never thought world leaders of world leading nations would need to be told: “don’t intentionally spread a deadly pandemic”.

Well a deadly pandemic wouldn’t need immunity, they’d all die.

Regarding parent; I believe it was known that the measles vaccine wouldn’t protect for life but for a fair amount of time where having to go through the disease would’ve given life lasting immunity.

That's herd immunity.

Individual immunity is different.

A random Q&A page is not "a new definition" as an universal standard. Also, quoting from that page today https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease...

> 'Herd immunity', also known as 'population immunity', is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection. WHO supports achieving 'herd immunity' through vaccination, not by allowing a disease to spread through any segment of the population, as this would result in unnecessary cases and deaths.

The new def has a problem though:'protected from ... passing it on'. In my country we are told even after gotten the vaccine we should continue with the measures, because one can still pass it on (meaning it is supposed that the corona vaccine doesnt prevent infection, but prevents all severe cases)

Each different vaccine may or may not give sterilizing immunity (whether or not you can pass it on without symptoms).

It has to be proven for each one and this hasn't been done yet. The nasal vaccines, which aren't approved yet, seem more likely to do this.

How easy would it be it the future to get a different vaccine course if the one you ended up with was not sterilizing? I assume you would have to pay with your own money, but would you also have to go to a different country and "forget" your immunization record somewhere after you arrive?

Sentence is a bit ambigous. Are the nasa vaccines likely to give sterilizing immunity or the opposite?

They're more likely to work, because they go in the places (your nose) that need to be sterilized. But it's only theoretical.

> They're more likely to work, because they go in the places (your nose) that need to be sterilized.

That doesn't make much sense; vaccines aren't topical treatments for current infections but systemic preparation against future infections.

There's special antibodies for the nose and other membranes. The immune system is incredibly complicated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunoglobulin_A