• tygerprints@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    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.

    • Norgur@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • Match!!@pawb.social
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        11 months ago

        Moreover, there’s no expectation that a prion disease like CWD can ever spread from person to (non-cannibal) person

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Sounds to me like venison is out of the picture in general right now.

            Too bad, venison is the best chili meat IMO.

            • Slowy@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Just submit your deer for testing and if it comes back clean you can safely eat it, easy.

            • girlfreddy@lemmy.ca
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              11 months ago

              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.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            and don’t eat meat from dubious sources.

            Have you ever actually seen the inside of a factory farm? Things don’t get more “dubious” than that.

        • Cosmicomical@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          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.

        • Icalasari@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          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

      • Remmock@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        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.

      • Melkath@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        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.

        • littleblue✨@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Says the one invoking infinity to support a juvenile argument, not unlike “saying ‘nunh unh’”. How apropos.

        • Brawndo@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          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.

          • Icalasari@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            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

          • Melkath@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            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.”

            • Eheran@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              That is not the debated point. The point is that winning the lottery is just as much not a question of time.

              • Melkath@kbin.social
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                11 months ago

                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…

        • theneverfox@pawb.social
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          11 months ago

          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

    • Remmock@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • Icalasari@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        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

        • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          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.

        • DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          The nice part about prion diseases is that the only thing those people will achieve is killing themselves off, unless you decide to start eating their corpses

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      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