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A comment on What Should We Do If Extraterrestrials Show Up?. Parent comment

Re:What Should We Do If Extraterrestrials Show Up? by kiba on Sunday April 18, 2021 @09:04PM (#26858180)
Then we die from their space smallpox.

Unlikely we will die from their version of smallpox, because they aren't likely to share human DNA.

Remember, we are literally surrounded by viruses. We eat them all the time. The vast majority are completely harmless anyway. They have their specific targets.

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Re:What Should We Do If Extraterrestrials Show Up? by cgriswald on Sunday April 18, 2021 @09:50PM (#26858431)
I don’t share your confidence. We’d be exposed to multitudes of new viruses any one of which could potentially find a host in us. We’d have no specific defenses and they may have novel (to Earth life) means of infecting hosts.
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