> The germ is hardy, capable of remaining active in water for a month, in meat and blood at room temperature for several months and for six years in cold, dark conditions. It’s resistant to temperature extremes, and can survive a day in vinegar-strength acids.
And is most commonly transmitted via blood and vomit - two things common with Ebola patients but are more easily controlled for when the illness is known.
That's close to anthrax levels of nasty. Sometimes cattle in California and Nevada come down with anthrax even though the disease hasn't been endemic for 100 years.
Not even remotely similar. HN’s reaction to OPs suggestion is downright hostile and dismissive. Veganism is all about thwarting disease by cutting out harmful dietary choices. People may disagree with that premise, but that doesn’t negate the validity of avoidance as an option to consider.
Love it or hate it, but humanity has a diverse enough source of protein to not be reliant on pork.
Which is why I followed it up with “People may disagree with that premise, but that doesn’t negate the validity of avoidance as an option to consider.”
This is also the internet and reality. What I consider the root or definition of veganism is my operational definition.
One can wear as much fur, hunt as many animals and club as many baby seals as one wants. A vegan is someone who doesn't eat animals and animal products.
It is quite similar in that it manages to be both technically correct and completely irrelevant to the problem. The Chinese lower and middle class aren't going to start going vegan any time soon. Sorry for the "no u" but in this case it was OP who was being hostile and dismissive with their glib statement.
That's begging the question. No problem caused by human behavior can be solved without changes to human behavior, but society does change. For something like this, it's mostly a matter of people who grew up before the Reaganisation of agriculture dying off, and successive generations in the CAFO era being increasingly aware of the modern reality of how animals are grown.
Could this virus help eradicate wild populations of feral hogs?
Protecting the pork industry is all well and good, I love ham as much as anybody else, but sacrificing a few years of pork production seems like it could be a good deal if it means the eradication of environmentally destructive feral hogs.
I mean, foreign feral pigs are a big problem in Oz. They aren't native to the recent ecosystem. But that whole cane toad thing didn't work out so good.
Meat agriculture at large scale always presents a pandemic risk... zillions of animals crammed next to each other peeing and pooping next to human workers is never A Good Thing™, because it's a worse Petri dish/bioreactor than a college dorm or a hospital. Also, the antibiotics given to meat ag animals also risks human antibiotic resistance if the same one is given to animals. These are the main reasons I don't eat meat. In a sane world without corporate capture, fossil fuel use and meat ag would end immediately. Vegetarianism is necessary but often feels pointless like screaming into a hurricane while waiting for Godot.
This is exactly the kind of virus we need to understand how to build a vaccine. Something like this in humans is scary. Here is to hoping that our understanding of biology is reaching a point where we have more methods of attacking these kind of things.
I don't eat pork (religious reasons) but I'm curious on why this virus is so lethal? Climate change letting African germs survive in North Eurasia? Are there any equivalents for other domesticated animals? Yes, there's Bird Flu which is similar (and worse in that it can jump species to humans), but what about cattle? Sheeps? ... Cats and dogs?
From the text:" One of their difficulties is that the large, complex DNA virus that causes African swine fever has some 170 genes and 80 proteins, many of them specialized in evading different aspects of the pig immune system. "
So it is evolution, probably facilitated by certain conditions.
A huge amount of genes is also a weakness and might be targetted with specialized measures (like a proteine/gene-blocker). But the usual tricks wont work as well.
A United Nations report suggests some food-waste containing pork was dumped from a ship visiting the port of Poti on the Georgian Black Sea and then eaten by one of the local pigs that are allowed to scavenge on garbage. Within weeks, 30,000 pigs had died and 80 percent of Georgia’s districts were thought to be infected.
Food animals don't get the option to travel around town at will. There should be no possible way for the disease to spread.
The fact that the disease does spread means that farms are failing to provide biohazard isolation.
We can see a similar problem with chickens. We actually give vaccines to chickens. The vaccines would be pointless if the chickens were properly isolated from contamination. Viruses do not spontaneously form from chickens or from non-living matter.
Disease can be spread by more ways than simple food-animal-to-food-animal contact. For example, bovine TB kills cows but doesn't kill badgers, so a badger can spread it between herds. You can't stop that by isolating the cows.
There was a very controversial cull of badgers here in an attempt to stop it but even that didn't work.
You stop that by isolating the cows from badgers and any other wildlife. Workers and their clothing and tools get cleaned when entering and leaving the facility.
The only thing hard about disease management is the competitive race to the bottom. Skimping on disease management means you don't have to train the workers, don't have to spend money on bleach, and don't have to repair holes in the walls. Maybe you don't even bother with walls.
One attack vector of the disease is transmission through tick bites. Ticks then bite boars. Swine fever also takes enough time to begin acting that a herd can become infected without there being any signs till it is too late to mitigate. Swine fever can also be transmitted by feed but it isn’t clear to me how that works. Sometimes pigs are fed to pigs but I don’t see how that would lead to a supply feed infection.
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[ 12.4 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] thread> The germ is hardy, capable of remaining active in water for a month, in meat and blood at room temperature for several months and for six years in cold, dark conditions. It’s resistant to temperature extremes, and can survive a day in vinegar-strength acids.
Ebola's only active for several days at room temperature. https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html
The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks.
https://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/ebola-virus-disease
Love it or hate it, but humanity has a diverse enough source of protein to not be reliant on pork.
That may be a side effect of veganism, but I hardly think that's the central thesis of that dietary and lifestyle choice.
This is also the internet and reality. What I consider the root or definition of veganism is my operational definition.
I agree that avoidance in an effort to thwart disease may be a valid option.
This has nothing to do with veganism.
Veganism is all about rejecting the commodity status of animals and generally abstaining form activities that commodify animals.
What I consider the root or definition of veganism is my operational definition.
That doesn't mean you aren't wrong.
I strongly disagree. Someone who does not eat animals because they dislike the taste, while not subscribing to "the vegan philosophy", is still vegan.
Though I’d make a distinction between ‘vegan’ and ‘veganism’.
and why? Because people are a disease in the truest sense to those animals.
https://www.history.com/news/beans-and-greens-the-history-of...
https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/interviews-debates/200106...
Protecting the pork industry is all well and good, I love ham as much as anybody else, but sacrificing a few years of pork production seems like it could be a good deal if it means the eradication of environmentally destructive feral hogs.
But we have to be practical about introducing invasive, hardy species into an ecosystem.
Reread my post. I was talking about introducing a virus to kill off feral hogs.
What if it jumps species?
What if our livestock doesn't recover?
If you read the article, it describes how hardy this virus is. That's not the kind of virus we want spreading and evolving.
Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2743879
The Cobra Effect is precisely what I was alluding to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
In my home state we have tons of invasive species due to similar strategies over the years. It's a serious problem.
I've been chased by wild hogs a couple times. It's scary. However the answer is obviously not a massively robust virus which kills any pig it touches.
So it is evolution, probably facilitated by certain conditions.
A huge amount of genes is also a weakness and might be targetted with specialized measures (like a proteine/gene-blocker). But the usual tricks wont work as well.
A United Nations report suggests some food-waste containing pork was dumped from a ship visiting the port of Poti on the Georgian Black Sea and then eaten by one of the local pigs that are allowed to scavenge on garbage. Within weeks, 30,000 pigs had died and 80 percent of Georgia’s districts were thought to be infected.
The fact that the disease does spread means that farms are failing to provide biohazard isolation.
We can see a similar problem with chickens. We actually give vaccines to chickens. The vaccines would be pointless if the chickens were properly isolated from contamination. Viruses do not spontaneously form from chickens or from non-living matter.
There was a very controversial cull of badgers here in an attempt to stop it but even that didn't work.
Disease management is hard.
The only thing hard about disease management is the competitive race to the bottom. Skimping on disease management means you don't have to train the workers, don't have to spend money on bleach, and don't have to repair holes in the walls. Maybe you don't even bother with walls.
Beyond raising cattle in a hermetically-sealed shed that is effectively impossible,and definitely beyond the bounds of any sort of economic reasoning.
Well, they kind of do (albeit at a very low rate). Where else did the first ones come from?