this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
213 points (98.6% liked)
Hacker News
1949 readers
274 users here now
Posts from the RSS Feed of HackerNews.
The feed sometimes contains ads and posts that have been removed by the mod team at HN.
founded 10 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
7th grade science test question: What would evolve faster, a virus that can create millions of new copies every day, or a chicken.
Apparently RFK jr thinks the chickens will evolve immunity faster than the virus can evolve to jump to humans.
If the pressure is right, the virus should evolve to be less lethal. If the virus kills its host before infecting a new host, then that evolution is not advantageous. This is why low contact was a good tactic for COVID. Only the strains that were less lethal would continue and out complete the ones that kill people.
Unfortunately I doubt that he would mandate a good management of this. In a environment like barn chickens live in, the virus can transmit so regularly that the lethality is not a pressure for it.
Or doesn't realize that evolutionary pressure tends to kill the shit oudda anything that ain't up to snuff...bye bye poultry industry. Likely doesn't care tho. Seems like a steak every night kinda guy.
Imagine if it were a Prion problem instead. Think he'd be like FEED THE COWS MORE COW! THEY'LL TOUGH IT OUT!
I think it's less that they evolve and more that we just select the already resistant chickens.
Yeah, but it could take several generations of chickens until “resistant” evolves into being immune enough to not lose half the flock every time. And in the mean time since human farmers will have to be tending to the chickens in some way, there always a risk of the virus jumping to humans.
If the options are
Culling should be the last resort. I get that everything rfk jr touches turns to roadkill, but this is less on the crazy spectrum than some of his other antics.