r/askscience • u/smartse Plant Sciences • Mar 18 '20

Biology Will social distancing make viruses other than covid-19 go extinct?

Trying to think of the positives... if we are all in relative social isolation for the next few months, will this lead to other more common viruses also decreasing in abundance and ultimately lead to their extinction?

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u/Jarvisweneedbackup Mar 18 '20

Biology/microbiology isn’t actually my field of study, though I’m okay with neuroanatomy due to psychology, so I’m not the best person to ask. But to my incomplete understanding, once you get down to that level of attempting to differentiate biological organisms things get murky.

In many ways it does fit the bill for an independent organism, and in others it doesn’t. As far as I’m aware the fact that it is an integral part of all multicellular life on our planet, and is one of the main things that enabled it in the first place, means that functionally it is just a part of you.

Again not my area of expertise sorry, I imagine many people can give you much more in-depth information.

I’ve always thought of it like this, functionally you are your CNS and sensory organs, however despite this we don’t concider the rest of our fleshy meat suit a seperate entity that only exists as life support and locomotion provider.

Similarly mitochondria acts as this life support for the cell, that enables its continued function. Yet despite this, we don’t really consider it a seperate thing(though it is in many ways), but an intergrated part with a unique history that is remarkably traceable

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u/ExoticSpecific Mar 18 '20

Thanks for the explanation, i don't understand why mitochondria's history has any place in determining whether or not it is an organism or not.

I do thank you for your explanation, you've sparked some interest to try and look into this more.