Possible, but you have to remember that in those days when populations were very low and dispersed, disease was probably not so common or such a great driver of history as it became after the agricultural revolution. Also, that modern humans and Neanderthals lived side by side for quite a long time.

Modern humans and Neanderthals also interbred, so that we still carry Neanderthal genes, so in a sense you could say that they are not extinct at all, it is just that their share of the gene count has declined. That could have happened for many reasons, such as sexual selection, women, (it would mainly be women ) thought that men with more modern genes and less Neanderthal were more hansom and desirable, so that the Neanderthal share of the gene pool lessened over time.

Nope then just out fucked them

I have been pondering about all this increased sanitation and the good bacteria it is killing and the determined bad bacteria that are morphing so they can get at us.

Maybe it’s a virus from interplanetary visitors with Wuhan taking the blame.

As you say like Europeans in SA or War of the World in reverse.

I’ve been wondering just the same! And how could we know, viral DNA doesn’t last long.. Yes, it’s had me thinking (the kind of uninterrupted thoughts one can have when single) - all those mysterious ‘dead end’ branches of the Hominid Tree. Isolated, extremely inbred, consuming raw meats, with too few genetic variations to survive a random Coronavirus… This may definitely have happened before!

What’s also been haunting me ..is how much humanities spent on methods of killing our own … while the real danger was only a wild meal away -- need a fuckin diversion - if litterally ~