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I suppose it depends on how their biology came to be. Diseases evolved here based on the the general structure of the species that existed around them. It could be that they are so different that nothing we have here interacts with them.
I would also assume that if they're intelligent enough to create the means to get here that they would also be intelligent enough to have considered this problem and would have some sort of containment mechanism for themselves.
That's assuming their biology is in any way compatible with ours.
They'd probably need something equivalent to an EVA suit just to survive in our environment either way.
If aliens did visit earth we would probably see them more like the Vorlons in babylon 5, in they would never be able to leave their suits.
Most viruses and bacteria have to adapt and specialize to their host. An alien life form will most likely be immune and vice versa.
If they were peaceful and capable of "beaming down", I think they'd likely first try to make contact via radio waves or drones first.
Then we could (hopefully) share information, and identify potential issues.
If they were capable of getting here and "beaming down", I would assume they would be capable of getting plenty of biological samples and investigating potential threats without us even noticing long before they arrived.
Imagine cavemen meeting modern tech, and then put that to a power of N+1, where N is what you think is reasonable. That's how we would perceive a species capable of interstellar travel.
Yeah. Either aliens can't even get here because it's too far, or they have technology so advanced they can get here easily, which means the tech is so advanced they could be watching TV with us and we'd never know.
or if they developed shapeshifting aiblities to adapt easily to earths environment, kinda like resident alien, where alan tudyks alien took a little time to adapt to earth.
Aren't they like plasma beings or a higher dimension or something
diseases evolve to affect humans, and other animals on earth. it wouldnt affec the same way if a alien evolved ona different planet. probably thinking something like world of war movies, where the aliens became sick form human diseases and they all died.
an alien that advanced, would eaisly be able to determine containment procedures ahead of time.
Wouldn't it be tragic if aliens came to make contact and start a friendship with us...only to be laid low by COVID, which for us is like a bad flu, but for them ended up being more like ebola?
Oof.
Humanity has many kinds of dangers for unwary aliens
I think it's a safe bet that an alien race that has figured out FTL and how to identity inhabited planets has also figured out germ theory even if they somehow had a biology similar enough to us to be at risk in the first place.
We were pretty careful with the apollo astronauts when they returned to earth on the off chance some dangerous space virus survived on the moon. https://spacecenter.org/apollo-mission-quarantine-procedures/
Hope you don't mind. But everyone who is reading this read the spacecenter.org the guy or gal linked its a good read. Thank you sir or mam
If aliens are beaming down, it's pretty certain they can deal with pathogens.
This is how we defeated the Martians.
Water and a solid wooden bat helped too.
No.
At least with Earth life, viruses only target one species. Their genetic code is too short for anything else.
Doesn’t matter if they target us or not. Just like cross species host transmission here on earth a spaceborne virus could conceivably jump to us if they found our bodies hospitable for reproduction.
Covid 19 was thought to be cross species transmission. Same with ebola, marburg, influenza, small pox, anthrax and a bunch of other super deadly viruses.
If your body doesn’t have the machinery to fight off the infection it could spell death for you.
Influenza: I cannot be racist, I'm species blind!
Doesn't covid-19 impact tons of species, including deer and pets?
This is a good one. Crossing over to a totally different DNA or even a different form of DNA would be virtually impossible.