Pretend Covid-19 arrives somewhere in the Honorverse

ZVar wrote:Ok, here is a thought. I'm currently reading the short story Queen's Gambit from Worlds of Honor. It's the one where Queen Elizabeth is crowned.

Here is the conversation between Justin and Chou (detective investigating King Roger's death)

"Her father was ill." The implications hit Justin all at once. "King Roger was ill—very ill! Not many people knew that, but Beth told me. I guess she knew I wouldn't let the news out to the media."
"And you didn't."
"But the King recovered!"
"From a viral infection." Chou was no longer laughing. "The Star Kingdom of Manticore takes its good health for granted. Most infectious diseases were conquered centuries ago. We were never as isolated as many colonies. Mutated diseases like those that ravaged Artemis and Raiden never were a problem for us—especially since we did not let up on the strict quarantine and decontamination procedures from our expedition days."

Nice post! It also supports my memory that most diseases has been conquered, and that there surely most be preventive measures emplaced. Decontamination procedures is the proper notion.

Which makes me think of all those people Honor brought back from Hades who just wanted to kiss the grounds of freedom, who had spent years or decades in hell, and then had to be couped up and huddled together in close quarters breathing stale air and passed gas, and then had to suffer more delays going thru decontamination procedures.

Other than the fact is that Hades was initialy settled (well, a small population of at least political prisoners was put there) from Haven and some daught colonies and overrun systems, it is probable that Haven was up to dealing with anything it's military, it's own political prisoners or it's incorable POWs from conquests might have brought along to Hades.
Then there are all those Manticorian Alliance military shipped there. Probably not of unusualy disease involved.
The local fora and fauna of Hades were not exactly compatable on any described level. Nobody could eat any local food we are told about except the ersatz "potatoes" and while you could get enough material out of them to stay alive (but apparently slowly starving to death) there was at least the one critical deficiency. NOBODY is described as being given any medical treatment in the disbursed camps. It is mentioned that if a camp rebels or otherwise somebody crosses one of State Securities lines, they cut off the food and everybody dies....but not apparently of any disease. Of course it could be too far out of requirement-for-plot but SS wasn't giving anybody shots or treatments for "local" diseases on planet.

Ah well, we can't get to see all the detail

Brigade XO wrote:Other than the fact is that Hades was initialy settled (well, a small population of at least political prisoners was put there) from Haven and some daught colonies and overrun systems, it is probable that Haven was up to dealing with anything it's military, it's own political prisoners or it's incorable POWs from conquests might have brought along to Hades.
Then there are all those Manticorian Alliance military shipped there. Probably not of unusualy disease involved.
The local fora and fauna of Hades were not exactly compatable on any described level. Nobody could eat any local food we are told about except the ersatz "potatoes" and while you could get enough material out of them to stay alive (but apparently slowly starving to death) there was at least the one critical deficiency. NOBODY is described as being given any medical treatment in the disbursed camps. It is mentioned that if a camp rebels or otherwise somebody crosses one of State Securities lines, they cut off the food and everybody dies....but not apparently of any disease. Of course it could be too far out of requirement-for-plot but SS wasn't giving anybody shots or treatments for "local" diseases on planet.

If they couldn't eat the native plant and animal life, then it's unlikely the local bacteria could reproduce in them either.

Do stop this... unlikely stuff. It was unlikely that Covid-19 would jump from bats to humans. Guess what?

cthia wrote:Do stop this... unlikely stuff. It was unlikely that Covid-19 would jump from bats to humans. Guess what?

Zoonoses are rare, but are known to happen. COVID-19 was not the first and will not be the last.

On the other hand, Hades was selected because the local life was incompatible with terrestrial life. That means that some local pathogen could infect human should be even rarer.

I'll grant you that it's still possible, however remote. If that happened, the InSec detail would probably take action to remove the population from the danger zone as they noticed in the next food drop, while keeping strict quarantine. InSec didn't kill their political prisoners outright because they still ha residual value, either as hostages or as intel sources. That means they would act to preserve their charges, offering medical assistance and relocation. Even if a poor assistance.

SS, OTOH, was unlikely to do the same. Oscar Saint-Just probably would want SS to continue doing what InSec did, but the people that got sent to Hades were incapable of doing so. So for the 5 years that Hades was under SS management until Honor broke almost everyone out, they were just lucky.

cthia wrote:Do stop this... unlikely stuff. It was unlikely that Covid-19 would jump from bats to humans. Guess what?

Of course it's unlikely, otherewise we would be seeing lots of diseases doing it. Of course it is possible that that is what used to happen until some time hundreds of thousands or more years in the past where the human genome both diverged further from what it had been or humanity's immune systems adapted such that most of the now purely animal disease contagions can't get a foothold....unless something goes wrong in a human and it can.

Then there is that awful discussion about the possiblity that someone - like the Alignment- specifically did a redesign and alteration of a "naturally occurring" virus and tailored it to affect humans. The Alignment has been experimenting in real-time over centuries with human gentetics to the point where they have not only created the various genetic slave lines but the Star Lines and who knows how many subsets. Is it not possible that they would tailor a virus to not effect the Star Lines and various subsets of there other lines. More likely they would work at adding something to said lines to give them "natural" immunity or at least an immune system tweek that would deal with a bio-weapon of their manufacture as little more than a "common cold". Of couse that would be yet another hight of hubris on the Alignment's part since even virus have a way of "finding a way".
At the moment, the nanite assassin program appears to require the nanites to be specificaly tailored to individuals and have a self-destruct component. That is, at least, prudent.

There are several diseses that can pass from animals like Tularemia from rabbits, so an Hanta virus. Ebola seems to be one of the ones that will pass to humans and then spread to other humans. It also seems that prior to more modern times (lets say prior to the late 19th and early 20th century) if there had been cases of Ebola where it is found in animals, the humans that were infected died before the disease spread very far because of a combination of the relative lack of human mobility, how fast it debilitated the human hosts and the speed at which it killed it's human hosts too quickly so that from one perspective it burned through the "local" humans and more or less self-limited the spread.
That burning out through killing the hosts too fast would also would have prevented the very real danger of the disese from starting to accrue multiple mutations such that multiple strains develop that kill just as effectively but more slowly with a longer asymptomatic infection period and------that variants were different enough that having survived the original or a particular variaiant DOES NOT provide any immunity/antibodies to other varients.

Brigade XO wrote:

cthia wrote:Do stop this... unlikely stuff. It was unlikely that Covid-19 would jump from bats to humans. Guess what?

Of course it's unlikely, otherewise we would be seeing lots of diseases doing it. Of course it is possible that that is what used to happen until some time hundreds of thousands or more years in the past where the human genome both diverged further from what it had been or humanity's immune systems adapted such that most of the now purely animal disease contagions can't get a foothold....unless something goes wrong in a human and it can.

Then there is that awful discussion about the possiblity that someone - like the Alignment- specifically did a redesign and alteration of a "naturally occurring" virus and tailored it to affect humans. The Alignment has been experimenting in real-time over centuries with human gentetics to the point where they have not only created the various genetic slave lines but the Star Lines and who knows how many subsets. Is it not possible that they would tailor a virus to not effect the Star Lines and various subsets of there other lines. More likely they would work at adding something to said lines to give them "natural" immunity or at least an immune system tweek that would deal with a bio-weapon of their manufacture as little more than a "common cold". Of couse that would be yet another hight of hubris on the Alignment's part since even virus have a way of "finding a way".
At the moment, the nanite assassin program appears to require the nanites to be specificaly tailored to individuals and have a self-destruct component. That is, at least, prudent.

There are several diseses that can pass from animals like Tularemia from rabbits, so an Hanta virus. Ebola seems to be one of the ones that will pass to humans and then spread to other humans. It also seems that prior to more modern times (lets say prior to the late 19th and early 20th century) if there had been cases of Ebola where it is found in animals, the humans that were infected died before the disease spread very far because of a combination of the relative lack of human mobility, how fast it debilitated the human hosts and the speed at which it killed it's human hosts too quickly so that from one perspective it burned through the "local" humans and more or less self-limited the spread.
That burning out through killing the hosts too fast would also would have prevented the very real danger of the disese from starting to accrue multiple mutations such that multiple strains develop that kill just as effectively but more slowly with a longer asymptomatic infection period and------that variants were different enough that having survived the original or a particular variaiant DOES NOT provide any immunity/antibodies to other varients.

Nice post Brigade XO!

If I might add just a bit. The introduction of new bacteria and viruses can help "upset" their little ecosphere, according to my sister. Sometimes for the better of mankind. But usually not. This fact is why I said Treecats could one day, become affected by human illnesses, having been introduced to the new organisms being carried by humans generation after generation.

At that point, or at any point, there only need to be The Perfect Storm.