By therandomsci / October 21, 2020
In August 2016, in a remote corner of Siberian tundra called the Yamal Peninsula in the Arctic Circle, a 12-year-old boy died and at least twenty people were hospitalized after being infected by anthrax, a rare but deadly bacterial disease. It is believed to have spread from reindeer.
75 years ago, reindeer’s were infected with anthrax and died. Their body was frozen under the soil. They melt in the heatwave in the summer of 2016. The exposer of the dead body release infection in nearby soil and water and then into the food supply which infects more than 2,000 reindeer and also a small number of human cases were registered.
Fear is that this will be repeated.
As Earth warms, more ice melt in the north and south poles. Which can lead to exposure to ancient pathogens which infect animals, dinosaurs, flora, and fauna. Frozen permafrost soil is the perfect place for bacteria to remain alive for very long periods of time, perhaps as long as a million years. That means melting ice could potentially open boxes of diseases.
Thanks to global warming North Pole glaciers are melting 3 times faster than in the rest of the world.
But there is another perspective, as human evolves our enemy also evolves with us. We find a different way to kill the pathogen but pathogens also seek different ways to survive. We have had antibiotics for over a century but bacteria evolve itself and become antibiotics resistance. If we get exposed to ancient microbes they will not be strong enough to infect any organism because our immune system has evolved. And since it infects ancient organisms most of them evolved or died so they can’t infect us without evolving.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170504-there-are-diseases-hidden-in-ice-and-they-are-waking-up
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