No — if it was that easy, the odds are high that something else would have already done so. The two things which tend to factor into this are that there's a lot of natural variation so it means that the population will change to favor a high percentage of people who are somewhat resistant to it[1] after a few generations of recovery.
There's also an inverse relationship between deadliness and spread: if something kills at a high rate, the odds are high that it'll burn out when the outside world goes into quarantine as long as it doesn't spread to 100% of the breeding population before they start dying. Anything deadly enough to wipe out a species is going to have a LOT less resistance to lockdowns — COVID-19 is deadly but far below the rates of other diseases and that puts it in a grey area where there are a fair number of people who've had it and can say “no big deal”. Smallpox or polio were enough worse that people jumped on treatment campaigns because almost everyone with lived experience knew they didn't want it.
1. A great example appears to be Sickle Cell Anemia, where the gene responsible is thought to confer some resistance to malaria — normally this would be a disadvantage but in areas where malaria is endemic the risk of SCA is more than balanced by the risk of malaria.
acdha|4 years ago
There's also an inverse relationship between deadliness and spread: if something kills at a high rate, the odds are high that it'll burn out when the outside world goes into quarantine as long as it doesn't spread to 100% of the breeding population before they start dying. Anything deadly enough to wipe out a species is going to have a LOT less resistance to lockdowns — COVID-19 is deadly but far below the rates of other diseases and that puts it in a grey area where there are a fair number of people who've had it and can say “no big deal”. Smallpox or polio were enough worse that people jumped on treatment campaigns because almost everyone with lived experience knew they didn't want it.
1. A great example appears to be Sickle Cell Anemia, where the gene responsible is thought to confer some resistance to malaria — normally this would be a disadvantage but in areas where malaria is endemic the risk of SCA is more than balanced by the risk of malaria.
rafaelvasco|4 years ago
FpUser|4 years ago
Nope
unknown|4 years ago
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