Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Cells, Microbes & Viruses => Topic started by: Petrochemicals on 04/07/2020 22:51:14
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If a human virus with a natural wild animal reservoir can dissapear into the natural world, is it possible to eradicate it ?
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If all the humans die, has the "human virus" been eradicated?
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It may be possible, if you can vaccinate the wild host, as well as the human population.
There are suggestions that some gene variants make the wild host resistant to the pathogen; a gene drive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive) could spread this resistance gene throughout the wild population.
Apparently, the very high metabolism of bats, and their biological similarity as mammals means that they carry lots of novel viruses which could spill over into humans.
The way we are going, we will probably drive many wild species to extinction, thus killing any pathogens they carry.
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We can take inspiration in what happens in veterinary medicine.
For instance, rabies has been eradicated in some countries (UK, almost in France).
On the other hand, in the US, rabies eradication does not seem feasible because the wild life is so abundant.
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The question is ambiguous.
If a virus is endemic but trivial among humans, it will be very difficult and probably pointless to eradicate it, though it might extinguish another species entirely. Think squirrelpox - grey squirrels have evolved immunity from long exposure in their native America but it is fatal to European red squirrels. I can't immediately think of a human virus that kills other species but swine vesicular disease is carried on human food waste.
If a virus is endemic in and tolerated by a wild species, it will be very difficult and probably pointless to eradicate it, but common sense and swift action can prevent it becoming epidemic or pandemic among humans. Ebola is a good example, COVID a bad one.