First of two questions from former student “D” via the mailbag:

We learned about CWD [Chronic Wasting Disease] in deer, a nasty prion disease that is both incurable and 100% fatal. It was confirmed to have entered Florida in 2024. How do you think society will cope with increasing human/animal conflict / zoonotic disease as a result of deforestation/ climate change/ human population density[?] Covid was zoonotic, scary to think about if it had even a ~10% mortality rate.

This is a tough one. I am neither expert nor well-versed in deer society, but I’ll do my best to answer anyways. If prion disease destroys their brains, and is incurable, then I see no possible way– hold on, it’s my editors.

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I’ll start over. Though I am not an expert or even well-read in human epidemiology or any other relevant science, I’m probably more optimistic than most. Why?

First, if I’m wrong, the survivors will be too preoccupied to do anything about it.

Second, even though anthropogenic problems can increase in number and scope, so too can the capacity for preventing, mitigating, and fighting those problems. The percentage (and maybe even number) of humans who die from natural disasters trended downwards over the last century-and-a-half. Knowledge and technology generally keep improving; hopefully wisdom will, too.

Third, to create real problems for you humans, these diseases have to fall into a hopefully-narrow range of fatality and transmissibility. If it’s not that fatal and/or not that transmissible, don’t panic. If it’s too fatal, the carriers die faster than transmission can occur, and again, don’t panic.

However, I’m not sure if there’s an upper limit on effective transmissibility (i.e., if a disease can be “too transmissible” to be effective), so… maybe panic. And if it turns out that CWD or any other disease is just the right combination of fatal and transmissible, then refer back to my first point.

I’ll add another caveat. If the next really big breakout occurs while COVID is still within recent memory– call it 20 years– go ahead and bank on extreme levels of distrust between nations, states, parties, etc. And bet on authoritarian responses to that distrust to cause bigger problems than the breakout itself.

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The second question:

Also what’s your take on India/Pakistan having a hot war?

I’ve taken long enough to respond that I completely forgot India and Pakistan took some potshots at each other again. Guess there’ve been too many other developments since then. Anyhow, two countries that literally have daily dance battles on a militarized border are highly unlikely to have a real war anytime soon. I’m not worried about it.