I was watching a television show yesterday and the premise of the episode was that a terrorist group had broken into an old abandoned USPHS lab and stole samples of the original strain to use as a biological weapon. It got me thinking, is that particular version of the flu virus still particularly dangerous? I know H1N1 strains are still dangerous and have been responsible for a few more pandemics since the Spanish flu but it seems that we should have some resistance to the strain that caused that pandemic. My reasoning is that it never went away. We didn’t beat the Spanish flu with vaccines and health measures rather it just killed pretty much everyone it could and we eventually developed a level of resistance to it that made its threat more in line with the seasonal flu. If my reasoning is correct then the terrorists releasing the virus in the subway shouldn’t be any more dangerous that someone with the flu taking the subway to work which is a common occurrence during flu season.
So, how does it actually work? Did we develop a resistance like I think or would a release of the original strain start a new pandemic?
And as more of a hot take, people need to reckon with the zoonotic origins of so many of these diseases. If it weren’t for humankind’s addictions to consuming animal flesh and their secretions - and the animal agriculture, loss of habitat for wildlife, and all the conditions these things create for the incubation of deadly diseases - we might never have had a covid pandemic. Likewise, an h5n1 pandemic may be a matter of when, not if, because the vast majority of people still refuse to let go of their gluttony for consuming animals.
If you think of all the hate there is for antivaccers, and the harms they caused in 2020 - and deservedly so - omnivores deserve every bit as much, if not more, for the roles they play in the outbreaks of these diseases.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52960876-how-to-survive-a-pandemic
That virus isn’t surviving getting cooked in an oven. Stop talking nonsense.
I’m not saying I agree with them, but I’ve heard the argument they’re trying to make before.
It’s not about eating the meat, it’s about the supply chain that results in meat on your table. That supply chain puts humans in close contact with large numbers of animals.
COVID supposedly came from a market where close contact was extremely common … basically street vendors selling a variety of animals (primarily for cooking).
If there wasn’t people going into a cave for food, there’d be people in there for another reason. Bats don’t give a huge amount of shits why you disturb them or even if it was by accident.
That ignores the issue of frequency. The chance of someone crashing their car (lifetime) is much higher than their chance that day will be tonight.
Here’s the thing though, COVID can linger for a long ass time, especially in a population. And it only needs one unwary cave explorer to disturb the bats and get bitten.
It needs one unwary cave explorer at just the right time.
They have a point, though obviously you won’t get infected by cooked meat.
Many diseases and plagues all throughout history have been the result of humans and lifestock living together. It is thought that this is the reason why Europeans brought disease to the Americas, but they did not bring much disease back.
Modern day animal farming is a breeding ground go diseases. You have countless animals all packed together, many of them chucked full of antibiotics and such. That’s not a problem for free-range animals that have a decent amount of space to move in, but the chicken factories that have chickens locked up in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, all in cages that are barely big enough to contain them, are probably the easiest way to develop new diseases without genetic manipulation.
In most cases, diseases don’t jump the animal gap, or aren’t as dangerous. However, bird flu is devastating to every bird it comes into contact with, and there’s a reason governments are forcing these lifestock farmers to kill and destroy countless chickens when an infection has been detected.
The SARS/Covid hotbeds of certain Chinese markets (packing many different kinds of animal close together) may not exist in many places elsewhere, but it doesn’t need to. We’re a few random mutations away from a bird flu pandemic, and this disease is mutating in countless birds all around the globe. If the bird flu, as is going around now, manages to infects humans, we’re going to be in for a couple of years of lockdown.
This isn’t an inherent problem with consuming animals or animal products. The more humanely we treat animals, the more hygienic we keep them, and the more space we give them, the less of a risk things become.
I expect the mega farms packing animals together will cause at least one major new disease in my lifetime, and it could be perfectly preventable if we would just treat these animals like living things. Unfortunately, that would raise the price of the bottom-of-the-barrel meats, and impose restrictions on farmers, neither of which go down well in the short term.
See my other comment here.
https://lemmy.world/comment/6902322
That is patent nonsense. Consumption is not the only way such diseases get spread. It is not even the most common. It is far more likely that patient zero was bitten by an infected bat than trying to eat it.
I made a rebuttal below, but instead of having an emotionally reactionary response, I want you to consider something else instead. Is it more important to win an argument with a stranger online, or would it be better to take a bit of effort to get more deeply informed on this subject matter for your own sake - something that may actually save your life and maybe the lives of others you care about someday? We could argue about covid origins for days - it’s something that even the experts in the field have admitted might never truly be pinned down with a full degree of certainty.
But that can of worms has already been opened. H5n1 may still be prevented, as unlikely as it is that the world will embrace plant-based and vegan ways of living, in time for that. Even so, the more you know, the more you can at least protect yourself. Because even now we are on borrowed time.
https://www.surgeactivism.org/notifbutwhenbirdflu
From a purely statistical point of view, do people get bitten by bats more frequently than they come into contact with contaminated animal flesh? Maybe you live in an area plagued by an intractable bat bite infestation, but that sounds far-fetched to me.
The origins of covid-19 aren’t entirely clear, but there’s a good chance the animal markets played a decisive role. Having a wide variety of animals confined in unsanitary conditions in one place is a very effective method of incubating diseases that can infect multiple species, including humans.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonotic_origins_of_COVID-19
However, the main problem is that you’re thinking too narrowly. If covid was caused by a bat bite, that would still be an example of something caused by animal consumption, because animal consumption is inextricably linked with animal domestication, wildlife habitat destruction, and climate change.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_COVID-19
Animal agriculture is the single largest driver of wild animal habitat loss, as well as being a significant driver of climate change. Both of these are significant factors in our increasing proximity to the bats who played a role in covid. Food is like cars. To know the environmental harm of cars you also have to take into account the damage caused by all the infrastructure needed to make the car. In the same way, the harms caused by what we eat also have to take into account everything that’s necessary to make the food we eat.
https://www.surgeactivism.org/aveganworld
Sorry you’re getting downvoted. I don’t know if I agree with you, but back in the golden ages of Reddit the rule was don’t downvote because you disagree, downvote because it’s a shit comment. I don’t think your comment was shit… I think we’ve brought way too much of modern reddit to lemmy.
It’s why I put it in a separate comment. It’s been scientifically shown that people often feel threatened and angry at the mere presence of vegans. What it comes down to is that most people want to believe that they’re at least mostly pretty good, but veganism challenges those narratives and highlights that the vast majority of people are very much doing things every day that are very wrong, and that they’re not living by their own standards.
I’ve only been vegan for two years, and have been learning very quickly that I need thick skin for it, and that it means every statement I make on the topic will get scrutinized by the highest standards of skepticism while every carnist can just chime in with all the same tired lies about veganism that have already been thoroughly debunked for years now.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/201910/why-vegans-make-some-people-so-uncomfortable-and-angry