Permafrost Pathogens or Not

Much of the world has been up it's dithers about zombie pathogens arising from the melting permafrost since a spate of articles theorizing the dangers were published in the Atlantic, the BBC, and a couple of other news outlets. These assumptions were based off of giant viruses melting from a lake frozen for 33,000 years and an anthrax outbreak in Siberia. That's worrying but I have a differing opinion.

Here's my policy. I would argue that there are some flaws with the assumptions, and many of the so called experts are too narrowly focused on the wrong threats. Neanderthal viruses we could probably survive; the issue would be something called genetic drift that would allow genes expressly selected for the disease world of 40-50,000 years ago to simply go away by chance. So some populations would be more vulnerable, while others would be more safe, and certain individuals within populations would be more vulnerable than others. We just wouldn't know. As I have mentioned on my personal blog on a scientific poster I created, there is a good chance that the reason that coronavirus has so adversely affected people from South Asia (specifically Bangladeshi) instead of people from East Asia is due to the prevalence of coronavirus in East Asia compared to the Indian Subcontinent. What Alaska and by extension, other Arctic nations, need to do is to gather more information on the threat by sampling more, developing ways of safely allowing other parts of the unemployed economy to participate, and to try and contribute to the biological revolution in it's own unique way.

White Paper for Biological Prospecting in Alaska

Bibliography

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