Hot Take: Pandemics are Bad

    Ebola is terrifying. Any virus with a 90% kill rate that causes you to bleed out of your eyeballs and reduces your body to a heap of bloody mush is something worth freaking out about. As time has gone on, the world has become slightly less scared. Ebola never translated to a worldwide pandemic, it was simply too deadly. Ebola killed people at a very high rate, meaning it didn't have enough time to spread to other humans before killing its host. I am currently reading "The Hot Zone," which successfully transferred my fear of dying of a slow radiation-induced death with that of a pandemic that makes my skin fall off and causes me to cry tears of blood. One cool thing about being a longtermist is that you live a life in constant fear of horrifying deaths. Viruses are not sentient. They are not really alive or dead, they are more similar to machines that manage to reproduce. Even if they were alive and sentient, I am convinced that we should destroy them all with prejudice. Life forms that require the death of others to live on (viruses, parasites) may not have any other choice, but I do think there is some sort of libertarian non-aggression principle at work here.

    

    The Covid-19 pandemic was a wake up call. The world witnessed firsthand how weak our current institutions are, and it was clear that a virus as transmissible as Covid would end up infecting a large portion of the human population no matter what protections a society puts in place (even China). If Covid killed 10% of all people instead of less than 1%, that would have been a big problem.

    Quick defense of the current human population. I hear people say things like "we need a new plague," "there are too many people, it's unsustainable," "even if a virus killed 90% of people we would bounce back, it's just a natural culling of the herd." Not only is this factually wrong (I used to believe overpopulation was a problem, its actually underpopulation that is hurting most societies at the moment), but it fails to think through the after-effects. Killing 90% of the world may be better than killing 50% (since the remaining 10% will have many more per capita food sources and infrastructure and society will probably collapse either way), but killing any significant number of the worldwide population would be horrible for humanity's prospects. It is likely the world will be fragmented into groups of tribes or feudal lords that are vastly decentralized, a world with thermonuclear warheads ripe for the taking.

    Pandemics are bad. Humanity has experienced some really nasty ones, and there are plenty that give me nightmares. Now realize that all of those are naturally occurring viruses, created randomly by a largely stupid process called evolution. Now realize it is becoming easier to to modify these viruses to be exponentially more deadly and pervasive. Then think about mass shootings and suicide bombings, and wonder what the world would be like if those individuals had access to these viruses. Now try to sleep at night.