gene pool

This fits in with Kennedy's long-standing history of eugenics-tinged notions that disease is a good thing, falsely claiming that it strengthens the gene pool, and insinuating that it makes survivors stronger.

Millet plays with the title and with the idea of atavism, in which an ancient trait asserts itself by skipping forward a few generations to suddenly appear in the gene pool.

As journalist Naomi Klein documented in her book "Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World," the pandemic gave rise to large numbers of people arguing that infectious disease is good because it supposedly culls the weak from the gene pool.

Additionally, ancient adaptation signals can be masked by genetic drift -- random fluctuations in the frequency that genes appear -- and population mixing, which causes certain adaptive traits to disappear from the gene pool.

Imagine the gene pool of a species as a deck of cards.