[ExI] We're not ready

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] We're not ready

 

On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 6:57 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

There have been persistent rumors that the coronavirus may have been created in a lab as a bio-weapon.

 

>…Without any evidence for this position, Occam's Razor suggests it's just another natural virus, originally in animals and transferred to humans via less than sanitary culinary practices…  Adrian

 

Ja.  At some point it isn’t clear that Occam’s Razor will indicate an evolved virus however.  Biotechnology is moving over this planet like a wave.  It doesn’t require a lot of expensive equipment.  It is easy enough to foresee that high school students will be fooling with CRISPR technologies and creating who knows what.

 

Something that has been on my mind for a long time: we have a lot of rhetoric about how humans are destroying the planet and so forth.  We know that nukes can wipe out a city.  If biotech gives any person the ability to infect millions, a bio-tech enabled crazy loner, convinced that humanity is a cancer on Gaia perhaps, sooner or later she will do it.  Oy.

 

When these numbers came out, it surprised me in a way.  The mortality rates for COVID-19 don’t look all that different from previous emergent viruses:

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/

 

spike

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