3 years ago
This is two tiny questions: did WHO declare swine flu a level 6 pandemic? Also, do you think the discovery of Ida will change society & how?
There was a meeting on Monday or Tuesday to determine whether or not swine flu alert levels were raised.
As for Ida, that is the Missing Link that connects us definitively to primates. What do they mean by missing link? What will happen to religion?
As for Ida, that is the Missing Link that connects us definitively to primates. What do they mean by missing link? What will happen to religion?
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M$1 Answer
Although the swine flu epidemic meets the WHO criteria for a Level 6 pandemic (sustained spread in two or more parts of the world--currently North America, Europe, Australia, and South America), they have been reluctant to make the official declaration because the swine flu is no deadlier than regular seasonal influenza. The WHO's latest swine-flu report on June 5:
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/3rd_meeting_ihr/en/index.html
states that Level 6 criteria will be changed to include the severity of the disease as well as its distribution. Unless swine flu becomes much more severe, following the course of the 1918 flu pandemic (a mild off-season wave, followed by the deadliest pandemic in world history), WHO will probably not declare a Level 6 pandemic.
The Ida controversy is just another example of overreaction by the scientifically naive media. Ida is a well-preserved fossil, but it doesn't change anything scientists already knew about human evolution. Ida is about 50 million years old, but ancestral humans diverged from the rest of the primates only about 6 million years ago (based on fossil and DNA evidence). Some scientists believe that Ida represents an early and direct ancestor of all apes, including humans; but others believe the fossil is from a different branch of the primate tree.
As for Ida's effect on religion, I guess there might be one if the religion in question believed in a unique interpretation of mammalian evolution near the Paleocene-Eocene boundary. Otherwise, it seems pretty irrelevant. Religions that already deny evolution consider all fossil interpretations to be suspect anyway, and Ida will probably be no exception.
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/3rd_meeting_ihr/en/index.html
states that Level 6 criteria will be changed to include the severity of the disease as well as its distribution. Unless swine flu becomes much more severe, following the course of the 1918 flu pandemic (a mild off-season wave, followed by the deadliest pandemic in world history), WHO will probably not declare a Level 6 pandemic.
The Ida controversy is just another example of overreaction by the scientifically naive media. Ida is a well-preserved fossil, but it doesn't change anything scientists already knew about human evolution. Ida is about 50 million years old, but ancestral humans diverged from the rest of the primates only about 6 million years ago (based on fossil and DNA evidence). Some scientists believe that Ida represents an early and direct ancestor of all apes, including humans; but others believe the fossil is from a different branch of the primate tree.
As for Ida's effect on religion, I guess there might be one if the religion in question believed in a unique interpretation of mammalian evolution near the Paleocene-Eocene boundary. Otherwise, it seems pretty irrelevant. Religions that already deny evolution consider all fossil interpretations to be suspect anyway, and Ida will probably be no exception.
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