Plague was a kids play when compared to viruses that now exist. Heck if a pandemic kills more it will truly lessen the burden, but if it was possible to not make the old a burden would you not do it?. The birth rate itself won't bring us to end, or atleast I hope not, it will be weakening us slowly.
Bold of you to think that I'll live that long. Also, was that really well-researched? Education is a very big thing for dropping birth rates (for better and for worse), and a lot of countries have a lack of proper education, primarily third world countries and poorer regions of first world/developing countries. I don't see no population dropping there anytime soon.
Life will go on, atleast until earth deems it. But Humanity will see doom if it's too conceited. Birth rate alone won't be a problem, it's about having enough numbers to advance and prosper. If lesser are born there will be more priority on each working individual and that makes it bigger a loss when dangers struck them. Extinction will happen due to the problems arising from this. And to be more open, this isn't the only problem, wars, global warming, natural disasters are seeing a rise and more possibility, and this low birth rates make it more dangerous to lose our young ones.
But is it just about you though? What about your kids or theirs? What about locally ?, Your own country experiencing a rise in old ones and low working people?.
Millions of all kinds of people. A lot of countries have millions of people in them even after you cut the number in half. Going from 70 million to 30 million isn't putting you at risk of extinction. You'd have to have something that actually prevents us from living properly before you start talking about a slow extinction. Like if the disease sterilized people instead of killing them. They don't need to have more symptoms. The people with them would just die or be bed ridden relatively quickly and thus after a month of isolation everyone with the disease would be dead or hospitalized.
The issue is that some ethnic groups will go extinct or some countries. No one is saying that the entire human race will go extinct.
The bubonic plague killed 70-200 million people, worldwide. Europe lost 30-60% of its entire population. It took 1500 years for the world to recover, population wise. The plague of Justinian killed 20 million people. And the Spanish flu killed 20-50 million people. The world today may be WAY more interconnected. And the casualties would be astronomical if something akin to what struck us back then would strike now. But that isn't to say that we won't be able to fight it. Sure, if a multitude of disasters struck at once, then maybe we would be screwed. But that would be unlikely. And calling them a childs play when so many died is so ignorant. They were threats that continued to haunt the world for centuries. Killing millions upon millions. And even to this day, they continue to haunt us. Edit: "Just because we have billions in numbers, we aren't safe from slow extinction." "But Humanity will see doom if it's too conceited." "If lesser are born there will be more priority on each working individual and that makes it bigger a loss when dangers struck them. Extinction will happen due to the problems arising from this." If the discussion is of ethnic groups dying off, then yeah, i could see that. It has happened before.
Child's play as in not complicated diseases. Playing the "death should be respected" won't clear of its ease in control. They haunt us or not, the point is in the future. I'll say it again... Low birth rate in itself won't end us, it will make calamities ahead more effective in disabling our balance, if it isn't handled well the next calamity could end us. Ethnic groups dying out is again a point of narrowing our DNA strains, it won't bode well.
You are saying it so easily, dropping in tens of millions won't keep the country stable, even if there's a surplus in resources the lack of workforce will cripple the economy from inside. It will have to work again to reach its previous peak and promote more childs. It will leave the country more vulnerable to more attacks in its recovery. Like I said, it's just one point that will lead to said circumstances, it won't be THE one. Again you are assuming it's death will come quickly and it's infection rate within control. Isolation won't separate us from our needs, that means a basic contact with necessary places and people will still be there, one single infected is enough to effect a whole community. Your grocery store worker might be one. A month of isolation means a month of country being on hold and running on fumes, if it has planned then all is fine, but which country really plans these and follow them? It isn't going to be easy to remove once a pandemic starts. And it isn't just one country, every country has to go into extended isolation of same standard, with no leaks. If even one is left out, when the countries open and travels begin, a second wave will be knocking the door. And the already spended countries won't be able to do the same as before. Isolation is flawed, and it's showing now more than ever.
Which is why I said this is a purely economic problem and not an extinction event. The economy doesn't need to reach its previous peak to promote kids. Cheap housing will allow people to start families a lot easier and thus promote more kids. If death isn't coming quickly then it's not likely to be the sort of thing that can wipe out society in the first place. They'll probably figure out something that can push it back even further like they did with AIDS medication. The infection rate doesn't need to be in control if people die from it quickly or become visibly sick quickly. Basic contact while you're social distancing and wearing a mask is fine. It doesn't need to be complete isolation. We know how not to get sick from things. It's only a matter of people doing the least amount possible to not get sick. If bodies are piling up in the street with wild dogs eating them like during historical pandemics you can be sure that people will be doing more than the bare minimum. You act like a disease spreads faster than information. It doesn't. If a country is still having problems with a disease then it won't be hard to not allow travel from there. You're trying to apply a unique virus to a concept in general. That's what doesn't work. Half the reason corona is so dangerous is that it's generally not all that deadly and is thus inherently unable to wipe us out. Thus people are willing to risk it because they probably won't die if they catch it. The black plague killed like 50-70% of people who got it and the other forms were certain death if you got them. It's lower with modern treatment but if a disease like that popped up then you wouldn't need government to create a lockdown. People would do it themselves.
Unfortunately I feel this greedy solution is not good enough. It would produced biased results as it would rate highly the genes who manifest early power even if they come at a cost later into life. A crude example to explain my point - A child closer to a chimpanzee in dna would invariably win which is not ideal.
What do you mean by complicated disease? And I didn't say death should be respected, but instead critized your minimizing of the scale of the pandemic, simply because it occured so long ago. Equating "childs play" to a pandemic that killed of millions upon millions, doesn't make you intellectually superior to them, just ignorant of the contemporary times. Much of the safety precautions we use today when containing pandemics originated from then. The reason you can call Yesinia Pestis a childs play to contain is because it took centuries of learning, centuries of death, for us to finally reach the point where someone can do so. You belittle the struggle taken by centuries of people to better the lives of others.
.... You are getting side tracked to what I was talking about. There was nothing about intellectual about my point. It's the situation, there were neither less capable or less intellectual men then. Complicated diseases, not being able to find vaccines or cure easily, mutating and hard to detect. All I can say is that you are getting offended for something that you took totally out of context. saying it's child's play won't downplay their struggle, but it was meant to show how diseases are now more dangerous than ever, and becoming more...
The downfall by the fall in millions will see economical drop, AND that will see the country weaken, and not capable of handling more attacks of any KIND. It isn't about single event, it's never about single event. A disease doesn't need to spread faster than information, it just needs to be faster than the vaccine or be adaptive(mutating). Isolation has limitations you know? I've said it before... It isn't go to all remedy. It helps us slow down the spread and plan a counter. And people isolating themselves extremely is a circumstance that needs to be avoided, it's a drastic measure, and shows its falling apart.. what happens next depends on our survivability... Going again to point one, the country is crippled and is in a weak state
If the "more attacks" are not something on the level of a meteor strike or super volcano explosion then they won't be extinction level events either. And we don't actually need vaccines to stop a disease. Quarantine is perfectly capable of stopping a disease by preventing it from spreading. We're perfectly capable of shutting down travel before it reaches our country if we want to. That's why people were so pissed at the WHO for putting out information that it couldn't be spread person to person which lead to it to spreading around the world. We don't need to lockdown everyone if they're properly quarantined before affecting the wider population.
Why should it be ?, We could slowly decline, countries falling in anarchy.. Not being able to maintain networks and the global satellites going dormant, humanity entering the dark ages... it can fall more then on... It just isn't about one event. Even in the article it talks how this is will take hundreds of years. Extinction isn't just by yellow stone or Armageddon 2.0 An asteroid if its big enough can wipe us out the very next moment, we don't have any way to counter it fully... We don't have to be in weaken state for it to work. then why are they researching for one eh? Even after its infection through contact was made known, many new countries failed to "Quarantine" their first carriers. If it's being stopped before it spreads to the public then the talk about isolation and pandemic becomes null. Again you are speaking if it's being controlled in all effected countries at or before even one stops the emergency state...
Because there's a limit to how much we'd decline from a slow decline. There would need to be some outside circumstance applying constant pressure to maintain a continual decline. Otherwise we'd just bounce back. Hundreds of years of the birth rate not changing. Not even a real prediction. Just him saying if people continue having less kids than can replace them we'd go extinct. Even then we'd likely survive it. You say that as if we're not researching vaccines for practically everything. The overall goal is to eradicate human diseases completely off the face of the Earth not just survive them. In addition you're once again trying to apply Covid to all diseases despite Covid being mild or asymptomatic in 80% of infections. That's why a lot of people slipped through the net in the first place. It can be a pandemic and not spread to every country. It can spread across Asia and not into Europe or the Americas. Thus it's spread to the public in Asia but can be stopped by quarantine in places it hasn't.
One, you did not say dangerous. Merely that they were a childs play. If that does not indicate that you view them far inferior to what we have today, i dont know what is. It also indicates that you don't know why pandemic potential diseases are so feared today. It isn't just because of their lethality, but of how easily they travel. Two, im not offended, and i did not take it out of context. You just didnt include it. Additionally, the reason these diseases are more dangerous today is because the world is far more connected than it was then. So long as a disease can be transmitted through human contact, and it hits quick enough, then with the systems we have in place today, the casualties would be high. But that wouldn't be because they are more complex or dangerous, its simply because in this globalised world, a disease has it way easier to spread out.
You can read it again... Plaque was a kids play when COMPARED to viruses that now exist. This is me telling how plaque that happened cause of a bacteria and unhygienic life was easy to control ( keeping distance from the poor regions, burning the dead, cleaning up the rodents) compared to now when sars, covid are much harder to deal with (Both in controlling spread, finding a cure or vaccine). Exactly!... The ease of spread.. I never said it just depends on lethality, bro please check the convo again... The point you are arguing about is my line " child's play" so stick with that. It wouldn't matter if all it took was a penicillin dose you know?... A complex strain with mutations makes it spike last longer... It just isn't about one single factor..