So people kind of knew asbestos was harmful wayyy before it mostly stopped being used in 1979 (USA). But, it was still used constantly in many industries and ended up everywhere. What do you think is an example of something we find out is DRASTICALLY harmful 10-50 years from now? My guess would be screen time.
Hottest take and speculative: Covid.
And it kind of depends on how you think about the scale of impacts. Aspestos is horribly damaging for a few people directly exposed. The rate of exposure to covid is orders of magnitude higher.
I think we’ve really only begun to see the long term impacts, and we know already of many of the long term issues related to decline in cognitive abilities, heart issues, all kinds of other stuff. But we right now, only know the small “near tail” behavior of those issues. It will take decades to find the “long tail” behavior of the disease.
So if asbestos exposure is 100x as damaging as covid exposure, say… but 10,000x as many are exposed to covid… its overall impact is 100x that of asbestos.
Very interesting what long term effects many aspects of that situation will be.
Yeah. I mean, I think we’ll see a global drop in total average intelligence equivalent to wide-scale exposure to an environmental toxin like lead.
Asbestos is bad.
But how do you quantify the impacts of a global average decline in IQ of 1-2%?
From having covid or the vaccine?
I wouldn’t speculate trying to split out anything regarding covid. I would treat it as a singular event.