‘Zombie deer disease’ epidemic spreads in Yellowstone as scientists raise fears it may jump to humans

Five@slrpnk.net to World News@beehaw.org – 78 points –
‘Zombie deer disease’ epidemic spreads in Yellowstone as scientists raise fears it may jump to humans
theguardian.com
22

You are viewing a single comment

The deer disease is the same family as BSE which does jump to humans, so it's fairly likely.

But it's only transmissible via consumption like mad cow disease, is that correct? If so, at the very least it shouldn't become an epidemic, just very bad for the environment and deer jerky enthusiasts.

Edit: Nope, nvmd, I'm dumb. They said it's really contagious and these prions can persist a long fucking time on surfaces. I'm gonna just never go outside again, thanks, I ain't fucking with no prion disease.

It's tricky. So I was listening to a BSE radio doc recently which had an episode about the deer. They actually don't know if BSE was transmitted through eating the beef, in fact there's cases of vegetarians getting it. It's still being studied. They're very worried about people eating infected deer, which is quite likely being as they're easy to kill, but also having anything to do with them because they just don't know how it moves from animal to animal, deers rarely eat each other so it's not super likely that's the only way.