385
‘Zombie deer disease’ epidemic spreads in Yellowstone as scientists raise fears it may jump to humans
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
385 points (98.2% liked)
News
37726 readers
1421 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's just a matter of time before it does jump the species barrier to humans. We know from other such cases how disease spreads from butchered animals to human beings, from bats or infected cattle. Many pathogens can exist for years outside the contaminated source, and even exist in our bodies for years before deciding to become active. Many of us carry viruses than will trigger years down the road, and we don't know it yet.
So it's just really a matter of time before this happens. One thing we're good at as a species is, finding ways to make ourselves sick.
No, it's not just "a matter of time". While there are loads of pathogens that jumped to humans they were originally incompatible with, there are.myriads more that didn't and likely never will. The jump to humans is not a given.
Moreover, there's no expectation that a prion disease like CWD can ever spread from person to (non-cannibal) person
It can however totally spread from deer to person if we decide to eat it.
So basically treat it like mad cow disease and don't eat meat from dubious sources. Got it
Sounds to me like venison is out of the picture in general right now.
Too bad, venison is the best chili meat IMO.
Just submit your deer for testing and if it comes back clean you can safely eat it, easy.
Get the hunter or butcher to yank the lymph nodes and have them tested.
For the most part tho hunters don't harvest visibly sick animals ... for good reason.
Farmers don't harvest obviously sick cows, but BSE still spread in the UK.
I don't know that I would be willing to take the risk right now.
You're right. Part of that was due to some capitalist who decided that all the leftovers fom butchering cattle could be ground up and made into cattle feed ... and all the sick and dead cattle were added into that as well (so the yards wouldn't have to lose any money).
They don't do that anymore for obvious reasons, so BSE is still found occasionally but no where near the numbers we had in the 90's.
Have you ever actually seen the inside of a factory farm? Things don't get more "dubious" than that.
If there is a super-pathogen spreading amongst wild animals the chance that this pathogen mutated in a factory farm is much, much higher than it mutating in the wild.
Of course, we're talking about a prion here and not viruses or bacteria... but the point still stands.
So you are saying that the people infected with the zombie disease are all going to be cannibals? Somehow this doesn't sound like a good news.
Should be fine unless the protein in question is found in saliva -- Oh. Oh no
It's good news for anyone who likes the taste of brains.
Prions are not a disease like bacteria or viruses. They’re abnormal protein chains that slowly cause a cascade of breakdowns in your brain. This had happened before. It’s not really something you have a defense against, but it easily jumps the typical species barrier. Our best defense is containment.
That doesn't hold with prion diseases as they often lay dormant for years, and prions themselves are nigh indestructable, lasting for years or even decades in the environment
Prions are misfolded proteins - The diseases they cause are because they cause other proteins to break and misfold to match the prion, so the traditional biological machinery doesn't matter, just that a protein is close enough in shape to break and misfold in response
Any data to back up that 99%?
Given infinite time, infinite possibilities present.
Quite literally, it IS only a matter of time, unless you are really good at standing in the corner with a bag over your head saying "nuh uh. Things that I dont like and that I am afraid of will never happen," in which case it still is only a matter of time, you are just ignorant and argumentative.
By this logic because there is infinite time and infinite possibilities, we could develop a cure or a virus that kills this prion and avert this crisis. We could also not and just die. Then there is a possibility that none of this exists and this is a simulation and the developers haven't added this as a feature yet.
Earth v.AD2024.1.1 - Began "Zombie Deer Event" on North American Servers
Earth v.AD2024.1.2 - Fixed bug where "Zombie" status would not jump species
Earth v.AD2024.1.8 - Reduced "Zombie" status infliction rate as players intentionally ate tainted meat to spite developers
Yup. Precisely.
My main point is that, in general, it is better to prepare for the more problematic eventualities than to go "nuh uh, that isn't going to happen. Everything is going to be fine. Don't touch my cheese."
That is not the debated point. The point is that winning the lottery is just as much not a question of time.
I feel like you are missing the point.
People win the lottery every day.
There are far more CWD prions than lottery players, and it would only take one of those prions to mutate into a form that could infect humans.
Again, I will reiterate, putting on a blindfold, putting your fingers in your ears and going "it won't happen, lalala!" is a pretty dumb way to approach it.
We just saw the masses do it with Covid.
We had a novel disease, we just needed to behave for a couple months, the sweeping majority did, but the remainder of fuck-nuts out there went "it's not a problem, lalala!" and now we have endemic covid, sweeping segments of the population struggling with long covid, infection rates are going through the roof again, and now new even more severe consequences like epilepsy are showing up in children post infection.
2 of the rules of life. 1) Microorganisms will mutate. 2) People will be aggressively ignorant and will make sure the mutated microorganism will do as much damage as possible. Because they certainly cant miss that Blink 182 reunion tour...
It could happen, the same way a specific person could win the lottery. But it is not a question of time. It could also not happen in 100 billion years, even if the chance of that is essentially 0. But it is not exactly 0. Time only increases the chance, it does not guarantee it. That is the difference between statistical and deterministic events.
On a finite world, full of life competing everywhere all the time? It's still a matter of chance if it would happen in infinite time
Most diseases die out
Good thing there isn't infinite time. Fun fact, at any point in time, a finite amount of time will have passed
Prions are not a disease like COVID or Staph. You don’t fight Prions. You contract prions and then you slowly and inevitably die from your brain being swiss cheesed because they’re abnormal protein chains that trigger breakdowns of other proteins. We dealt with this being directly in the food chain from the Mad Cow issue of the 90’s and as a species we made it through so readily that people are talking about this like it’s never happened before. We’re going to be okay.
Issue is we now have a decent population of people who will eat the tainted meat because "The government is lying" and trick others into eating it, saying, "See? You're fine, that was 'tainted', the government is lying to you"
This could legitimately cause damage because the fringe crazy is now much more populous
I mean, if you look at what happened during the BSE outbreak in the UK, this is basically exactly what happened. There was a politician who even fed his 4 year old kid a burger on TV to show how perfectly safe the meat was.
Oh hey a completely uninformed opinion from the same person who thought men are incapable of genuinely being friends with women.
The only reason I haven't blocked tygerprints is because the responses to their insane posts are fun to read.
The only good thing about prions is that they don't mutate. CWD may extinctify deer, but it can't just jump to humans like bat-borne coronaviruses can
I hope not. You'd think humans would never want to eat a bat anyway - but apparently some have.