Charlie StrossFeb 2

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Green_Footballs/115998586927326681

You know, if you're a white supremacist and your goal is to deniably exterminate the untermenschen in camps by negligently letting plagues rip through them instead of gassing them, it shows a REMARKABLE lack of foresight to put an anti-vaxx nutcase in charge of your master race's public health policy, doesn't it?

These guys are evil but they're not terribly smart.

@Green_Footballs

Show threadWeekend Editor

@cstross @Green_Footballs

If they think letting disease rip through the population will "evolve" us, by selecting for good genes... well, that takes a while to happen.

Here's a walk-through of a paper on the evidence for an ancient viral pandemic in Asia. Yes, it changed the genome... slightly (42 genes with evidence of some selective mutation).

But... that pandemic apparently ran for about 20,000 years.

https://www.someweekendreading.blog/really-long-covid/

Reeeeeeally long COVID!

How long can COVID-19 go on? If you answered less than $O(10^4)$ years until everyone with susceptible genes is dead… well, think again.

Feb 2 at 2:22pmWeb
Show threadJohn MaxwellFeb 2

@weekend_editor The idiots who favor "letting evolution take its course" fail to appreciate both how bloody and how random evolution is.

Of course, they don't understand much of how evolution actually works in general, so I suppose that's consistent.

Show threadWeekend EditorFeb 2

@jmax

As I used to like to tell collleagues, "If you're mostly not dying, then you're mostly not evolving."

Show threadDan SugalskiFeb 2
@weekend_editor @cstross @Green_Footballs If they think letting disease rip through the population to "evolve" us... I assume they've forgotten smallpox, measles, tetanus, and a host of other diseases which have been killing us for millennia but we still haven't developed any meaningful resistance to.
Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 2
@wordshaper @weekend_editor @Green_Footballs Yes. They don't understand any of evolution, or microbiology, or epidemiology. At. All. (An understanding of any one of these fields would undermine the belief system underpinning their sense of identity: an understanding of two or all of them would force them into apostasy.)
Show threadSophie SchmiegFeb 2
@wordshaper @weekend_editor @Green_Footballs @cstross starting by the fact that being resistant to a specific disease does not necessarily produce any other positive side effects, and in fact is more likely to negatively impact fitness when the disease is not a threat. See for example sickle cell anemia and malaria.
Show threaddr2chaseFeb 2
@sophieschmieg @wordshaper @weekend_editor @Green_Footballs @cstross Yeah, if the status quo is malaria, then the sickle cell gene improves fitness. But that improved fitness is not as good as what is obtained by being rid of malaria AND the sickle cell gene.
Show threaddr2chaseFeb 2

@sophieschmieg @wordshaper @weekend_editor @Green_Footballs @cstross

This conversation and an adjacent reply thread reminded me of a Randy Newman song, "Great Nations of Europe" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdg3nOA5ps8 ). If you don't know it (or if, like in my case, it has faded from your memory), it's worth a listen.

The Great Nations Of Europe

YouTube
Show threadKathmanduFeb 2

@wordshaper @weekend_editor @cstross @Green_Footballs

Remember in the first year of Covid, how many white southerners started saying they weren't going to mask, and they were confident they wouldn't catch it anyway, because they had "good genes". They said that smugly.

When they say "evolve", they mean "kill off the untermenschen".

Show threadPoligofsky 🇨🇦 .. 🚫🤖Feb 2

@weekend_editor

Do they want “to evolve”? Or do they think that disease is simply a natural, god-given filter, naturally culling undesirables? Do they not believe they are already at the pinnacle, and innately immune? Or that disease is a test of blood purity, when it is not always clear to human eyes?

@cstross @Green_Footballs

Show threadWeekend EditorFeb 2

@8r3n7 @cstross @Green_Footballs

I think you may have a good point.

The worst of them probably do regard themselves as the pinnacle, and evolutionary "selection" events simply remove their inferiors.

But I have no particular evidence of their belief or not, that's just how it feels from listening to them.