433
‘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
433 points (98.4% liked)
News
23284 readers
3490 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 right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
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.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
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 or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. 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.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
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 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't think enough people are eating venison regularly for a this prion to be a serious threat even if it manages to transmit to humans
Have you seen zombie movies? It only takes ONE unassuming hunter... and then it immediately mutates into blah blah magic nonsense ensues...
and then it is airborne, and bloodborne
...
You are correct of course. =P
Reminds me of train to busan because of the opening lol
Shoot an infected deer in the head or have it otherwise die violently on the ground. Prions can last in the soil for years and years. Misfolded proteins are basically invulnerable, even in shit like autoclaves. If cows eat grass that has prions on them, that shit could potentially jump. And a lot of people ranch their cattle on public lands where infected deer are, and where wolves are unavailable due to politicians, who would otherwise prevent infected deer from spreading.
The best thing that we can do is have wolves clamp down on the few infected deer immediately rather than generate large pools of infection that then start cross-contaminating domestic livestock. Prions and ebola are the two things that really keep me up at night.
Interesting, I didn't know prions lasted so long on bare soil. I don't imagine it's a simple thing for a prion to jump from animal to animal though. Certainly not any less complex than jumping to humans? Right?
Yeah, about that… ever heard of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease?
Yeah actually, my dad might have it as he ate plenty of beef in England at the time (not that that in any way makes me an authority on the subject) but there are plenty of prions out there and plenty of them don't do what Creutzfeldt-Jakobs did. It's not as if a misfolded protein exactly adapts or evolves to other biologies in order to procreate. It's just a fucked up protein. Biology is complex and there are many many differences in brain structure from animal to animal. A single misfolded protein could affect one brain incredibly differently than it affects another or even not at all. Prions are scary but they aren't trying to do anything because they aren't alive and have no drive to reproduce, they also don't mutate rapidly like viruses because they aren't made of DNA.
However I will admit. Prions are fucking terrifying
I'm not well-versed enough on prions to make an incredibly informed opinion. Apex predators somehow have managed to survive it for eons, though. Prions are extremely odd, and I'm sure one day we will figure out how to reverse their effect. There are some theories that prions could have formed the basis for life if life was seeded by asteroids, as they are incredibly resilient to heat, radiation, chemicals, etc.
From the CDC's website, it looks like CWD might not affect canids and might not affect humans, as we are just too different from the cloven-hoofed forest puppies. But much like consuming fish parasites that don't affect humans, it seems they don't recommend eating sick animals just on the off chance that you are patient zero for a new, fun, lethal protein :)
Deer arent eating venison regularly enough to explain the rate of its spread among deer.
Its moving through them someplace else. Which means if it jumps to us, its moving through us someplace else too. And we dont actually know for sure how its moving through them.
It probably depends on where you are, different parts of the country and different social circles have more or less hunters and different hunting cultures.
I know that around me in the circles I run in I pretty much everyone I know either hunts or has a friend (or multiple friends) who does and can/will hook them up with venison now and then.
If you have a couple hunters in a family, they fill all of their tags, are generous about sharing their venison with family and friends, if they're unlucky enough that those deer have CWD, then that could potentially be dozens of people exposed.
The mill I work at schedules their yearly maintenance around hunting season. First week both mills are down. Second week half and half.
Easy 80% of staff are gone hunting.
I say this as someone who regularly eats venison and lives in a place where it's relatively common as well but it still isn't nearly as threatening as something like mad cow. Pretty much everyone eats beef.
It's a lot easier to tell people don't eat venison you hunted and contain it than it is halt the entire beef industry and tag everyone who may have eaten it yk?
I'm not saying it wouldn't be bad, only that we've been through much worse as far as prions go and one like this would be relatively speaking, less of a threat