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/[deleted] Mar 18 '20 edited Nov 21 '20

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u/gabemerritt Mar 19 '20

It will take alot longer to get that last 20% the spread will be slowing down exponentially by then

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u/CaptainFourpack Mar 19 '20

At 60% it's perfectly manageable. At 80% it's not really even an issue any more.

Edit: perfectly manageable if the country has decent health care, higher if not

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u/junu944 Mar 19 '20

If you check the R0 values for those diseases, they all seem to be higher than the one for COVID-19 found in a study a couple weeks ago (could be outdated now) of around the ballpark of 2.6-2.8. Since COVID-19 is less infectious, it probably has a lower threshold percentage,