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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3746 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 29, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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You're looking at it the wrong way. The question is not "do eliminated diseases have animal reservoirs", it's "are diseases with animal reservoirs eliminated". And there are plenty that are not. It took decades or even centuries depending on when you start counting to eliminate smallpox.

any serious virus with an animal reservoir is impossible to globally eradicate without several orders of magnitude more political will or state capacity than has ever existed

Yes, obviously. This has nothing to do with my point, which is that the only virus considered serious enough and feasible enough to fully eradicate had a fatality rate under 5%.

Are we just making tangentially related, dubiously true assertions now?

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