I wonder what this will do to the short term evolution of our species.<p>It&#x27;s terribly morbid and I really don&#x27;t think it will come to this but if many people start dying due to once easily treatable infections then it could rapidly (within a dozen generations or so) change how our immune system works.<p>A mass dieoff of a species due to a single catastrophic event is unlikely to intensely select for certain traits.<p>A flood amonsgst a non-swimming species is as likely to select for resillience or sleeping late in your tree or some other unpredicable attribute as it is for the &quot;swimming&quot; gene<p>But constant intense pressure could easily single out favorable attributes and I wonder what those will be and what the side effects or emergent traits of those genes will be.<p>Of course we are evolving via technology and society more rapidly than genetically so that could change everything.