Thursday, December 19, 2024

Discussing an Epidemiological Aspect of the Idea of Time Travel that Concerns Me

Whenever I read/watch stories about time travel there is one thing that concerns me. Putting aside how possible or impossible it would be to travel through time the Public Health student within me worries about the epidemiological aspects of time travel. I mean, if I were to travel even to just the early 1900s I would need to ensure I'm vaccinated for illnesses from back then that we don't vaccinate for today (e.g. Smallpox being eliminated) and I'd be concerned about bringing my future germs to the past before such an illness even existed (COVID-19 popping-up a century early could be really bad). Plus, even if I could travel to the future, what kinds of new viruses or bacteria could exist my body is not ready for? I don't want to catch the latest animal flu and have it kill me easily because I didn't deal with an earlier form that was weaker and helped people build immunity, after all.

I know it sounds pedantic to worry about the epidemiological aspects of time travel when it isn't even, you know, possible. Still, if developed the technology where we could move forward and backward in time, these are the kind of technical things that have to be considered. As fun as it might be to visit our great-great-grandparents, we also don't want to accidentally kill them with our future germs and then suddenly dissipate into dust like an, "Avengers,' movie because we messed up the timeline. I guess my point is that if we do manage to make it possible to travel through time, we need to just jump a little bit into the future or past so as to avoid any massive issues from our germs...or generally messing up everything. Essentially, don't take any future tech to the past and create an anachronism (often worried about in fiction) or cough some germs onto someone from the past unprepared for them (less considered). If we can be careful about taking stuff too far back or picking up anything too far, "Forward," we should be okay...right?

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