rr645

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Hey /u/healthpolicyguy--I don't want to step on your answers, but people keep asking questions that pertain to my field!

Drug resistance is a commonly cited example of evolution, but it's more complicated than a simple tall-giraffes-eat-more-leaves model. From a biological perspective, active treatment selects for resistance by killing off the susceptible strains, but also selects for virulence as we're far more likely to aggressively treat a nastier infection (example: it's possible to have a very minor Staph infection, but it won't get treated, and therefore won't experience pressure to resist drugs).

From a public health side, antibiotic development is also a cliff we're facing. I'm going to cite my own AskReddit comment here.

Also, /u/healthpolicyguy may be extra hesitant about influenza since it does a much fancier genome remixing strategy that most infections can't do.

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I'm not at CDC. I work in a BSl2/3 lab with drug resistant bacteria and am partially responsible for storing our research strains. I answered elsewhere, but in short--no. Explosions tend not to kill bacteria or viruses effectively. Failsafes may include heat killing on power loss, but for my lab at least our failsafe is simply air sealing.

Even if those failsafes failed, a nonexploded lab would at worst be a building full of infectious disease. An exploded one would be a crater in a rapidly expanding cloud of infectious disease.

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