Bring on the Bots

This article appeared in Live Science and begins:

The recent suggestion that British ministers may have to consider culling or vaccinating animals to prevent the coronavirus from picking up another dangerous mutation and jumping back to humans may sound like sudden panic, but it's just part of a long debate among scientists.

Evidence that cats could be infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, emerged as early as April 2020 from Wuhan, China. Evidence that they could also transmit the infection to other cats under particular conditions appeared in the same month. Since then, infections have been confirmed in mink in Denmark and the Netherlands, in big cats in zoos, in dogs, ferrets and a range of other species.

Clearly, it won't be long before vaccines are mandatory for all pets and culls will be declared if things get out of hand. Your chipped and vaccinated pet may need to be handed over to be disposed "humanely" if tests come back positive for whatever the virus or virus variant of the day is. The expense and intermittent trauma of having pets put down due to phoney tests will drive people to invest in robotic pets that will be far more suitable for the smart cities that humanity will be crowded into.

Animals are full of pathogens and having them living with humans in smart homes is just not very smart. Humans are no different in terms of harbouring dangerous pathogens but provided they wear masks, get vaccinated regularly and keep their distance from others then that's the best that can be hoped for at present. In time, the masks, lockdowns, social distancing, travel restrictions, job losses, lack of sunshine, police and army surveillance will undermine immune systems, leading to sickness and death. Suicide rates will soar. 

The vaccines, administered regularly as new variants of the virus emerge, will kill and sicken millions but be blamed on the effects of more virulent strains of the pathogen. Male and female fertility will plummet and global populations will crash. Sexbots will proliferate because sex between males and females requires unacceptably close contact and thus a grand opportunity for pathogens to spread. Welcome to the future.

POSTSCRIPT:

Here is a link to an interesting article I read that is an edited extract from "God, Human, Animal, Machine" by Meghan O’Gieblyn, published by Doubleday on 24 August. It's titled:

A dog’s inner life: what a robot pet taught me about consciousness