So a friend of mine just called me and told me that she lost her father to the virus. Just twelve days before Christmas.

@Doomflower evolution at work....

@ozgirl512 no because evolution only "cares" about breeding populations.

@Doomflower you have me thinking now... I'm not sure you're totally right about that, neither am I'm sure you're wrong.
Evolution has two complementary aims, improving and propagation... This could be seen as culling the herd or pure circumstance

@ozgirl512 it could be and I know my statement was a gross oversimplification. Evolution is a blind process that doesn't care about anything really.

What I mean is the individuals targeted by this disease are people who are too old to breed and people who are sick/weak and less likely to breed. The people least likely to die seem to be the healthy, young adults who make up the breeding population. There's no over all effect on our gene pool and thus no evolutionary pressure to change.

We know evolution still works on us because of things like wisdom teeth. Infected wisdom teeth can lead to a game over for an adult of breeding age.

@Doomflower what you say is true, another aspect, I'm thinking also of other things and I'm also thinking we shouldn't be discussing it on this post ...

@ozgirl512 good point

@Doomflower @ozgirl512 I think both of you have made some very good points.