Don't learn your human evolution from virology textbooks. We did *not* evolve alongside highly transmissible respiratory viruses in densely crowded indoor spaces for millions of years. You're thinking of bats in caves.
1/
These are *very* new for us as an evolutionary lineage (mostly post-agriculture 13,000 years ago, some within the past few hundred years or even decades).
* Being in contact with domesticated livestock
* Encroaching on wildlife habitat in large numbers
2/
* Living in huge population densities
* Coming into contact with huge numbers of other people, with a ton of intermixing all the time
* Living to old age
* Spending most of our time indoors
* Travelling around the world
3/
There's a reason bats are a major source of zoonotic viruses. That can live with them, which is possible because they *do* have immune adaptations to tolerate regular infections, because they *did* evolve under those conditions.
nature.com/articles/s4158…
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