Threat of outbreak from microbes trapped in permafrost for millennia raised by increased Siberian shipping activity

Threat of outbreak from microbes trapped in permafrost for millennia raised by increased Siberian shipping activity

Humanity is facing a bizarre new pandemic threat, scientists have warned. Ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost could one day be released by Earth’s warming climate and unleash a major disease outbreak, they say.

Strains of these Methuselah microbes – or zombie viruses as they are also known – have already been isolated by researchers who have raised fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered – not by an illness new to science but by a disease from the distant past.

As a result, scientists have begun planning an Arctic monitoring network that would pinpoint early cases of a disease caused by ancient micro-organisms. Additionally, it would provide quarantine and expert medical treatment for infected people in a bid to contain an outbreak, and prevent infected people from leaving the region.

  • grte@lemmy.caEnglish
    50·
    10 months ago

    Not every virus is human compatible. I wonder what the actual chances one of these ancient viruses thaws out, encounters a human before the elements degrade it, and then manages to actually infect said human is.

    • NegativeInf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      311·
      10 months ago

      Doesn’t have to encounter a human first. Just any animal that happens to have contact with humans and share sufficient biological structures. Honestly, I’m afraid of something like deer, elk, or otherwise becoming a reservoir for a new old pathogen like this and passing it on. We already have data showing deer in America acting as a reservoir for COVID.

    • The_v@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      10 months ago

      Many viruses have many different hosts.

      The original vaccine was created for smallpox after observing that dairymaids who contracted cowpox (infected their herd) did not get smallpox.

      Another good example is influenza. It attacks birds, swine, cows, horses, bats plus many others. Some strains are species specific, other can jump host easily.

      Covid showed itself to have a wide host range.

      All it would take is a snow goose picking up the disease in the artic and transmitting it to a pig, and we’d be in trouble.

    • Wahots@pawb.socialEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      I’m just waiting for an ancient poxvirus to infect an Alaskan or Russian miner and have him bring it back to his antivaxxer wife before they go to Disney World with ancient smallpox-ridden kids. Like the Floodship crashing into Earth in Halo 3. We’d have to glass the entire area.