Menu
Home
Post new thread
What's new
Latest activity
Authors
Community
Post new thread
Create wiki page
Community supporters
All threads
Latest threads
Hot threads
New posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Resources
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Chat/Discord
Podcast
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Post new thread
Create wiki page
Community supporters
All threads
Latest threads
Hot threads
New posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
NOW LIVE! --
Here There Be Dragons: 5 Unique Dragons For Your 5E Game!
on Kickstarter! A softcover book with 5 detailed dragons for your D&D 5E game, and a selection of dragon-themed player options.
log in
or
register
to remove this ad
Home
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Geek Talk & Media
D&D and the rising pandemic
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 8197057" data-attributes="member: 7026617"><p>That's the gig here. Mutation, essentially, rolls the dice for new traits, and then selection picks the versions of an organism that does best, reproductively speaking out of them. Virii and other microorganisms have rapid life cycles, so you get to see the process in realtime in a way that a lot of other organisms do that too slowly to do.</p><p></p><p>All other things being equal, host mortality increases are counterselected for. That's true even of things like AIDS; a host that lived out its whole life as a virus generating factory would be more beneficial to reproduction of the organism than one that doesn't. But once the survival time is long enough relative to the virus life-cycle, that selection pressure is minor, whereas other elements may be stronger.</p><p></p><p>That's why really quick-kill diseases are rare; they can take down the host before it even gets a chance to spread the disease, and the counter-selection there is stronger the shorter the time frame is. The longer it takes, the more other reproductively benign traits start to weigh in more than that.</p><p></p><p>But this still tells you why "super deadly and super quick diseases" aren't really common; its a poor reproduction strategy, and that quickly selects away from it, and the selection away from deadly diseases never really <em>stops</em>. Its just the effect on slower-killing diseases can be kind of weak.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Thomas Shey, post: 8197057, member: 7026617"] That's the gig here. Mutation, essentially, rolls the dice for new traits, and then selection picks the versions of an organism that does best, reproductively speaking out of them. Virii and other microorganisms have rapid life cycles, so you get to see the process in realtime in a way that a lot of other organisms do that too slowly to do. All other things being equal, host mortality increases are counterselected for. That's true even of things like AIDS; a host that lived out its whole life as a virus generating factory would be more beneficial to reproduction of the organism than one that doesn't. But once the survival time is long enough relative to the virus life-cycle, that selection pressure is minor, whereas other elements may be stronger. That's why really quick-kill diseases are rare; they can take down the host before it even gets a chance to spread the disease, and the counter-selection there is stronger the shorter the time frame is. The longer it takes, the more other reproductively benign traits start to weigh in more than that. But this still tells you why "super deadly and super quick diseases" aren't really common; its a poor reproduction strategy, and that quickly selects away from it, and the selection away from deadly diseases never really [I]stops[/I]. Its just the effect on slower-killing diseases can be kind of weak. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Home
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Geek Talk & Media
D&D and the rising pandemic
Top