This is literally why we have apex predators such as wolves. They help clamp down on the old and the sick so that prions (mad cow disease) does not spread to other species or humans. It cannot infect wolves.
When you kill off all the apex predators, like when Montana governor Greg Gianforte authorized the massacre of 100 wolves, you see explosions of extremely dangerous diseases and land degradation as deer damage tree roots, gardens, meadows, streams, and farms.
Not only that, but killing members of wolf packs causes their families to fall apart and everyone to scatter. That means wolves alone. Which cannot hunt pack animals which require coordination. So then they go after the easiest meal: dumbass farm animals who have zero survival instincts and whose ranchers no longer employ people to look after the herds in great enough numbers like the olden days. The cycle then perpetuates, as mad-cow contaminated soils spread and spread....
Damn.... It's almost like we should leave mother nature the fuck alone
The more we learn, the better it will be for all species. We'll figure it out eventually... or die out
Die out. Look at the weather patterns. We done fucked up.
Could be! I've spent the last 3 or so years with little to do but think, read, argue and watch youtube. I tend to watch mostly educational content, ranging from the big ones ("nile red", "veritasium", nutshell I can't spell, "world science festival") to lesser known ones ("sci-show", "fall of civilizations", "economics explained", "donna" and a bunch of others). Robert Sapolsky is amazing, btw, look him up if you don't already know who he is. But anyway, most recently I learned about the last 5 mass extinctions in a video by "paleo analysis"
Anyway...
I think many people will die in the upcoming climate crisis (and are already dying) but I don't think humanity itself will completely die out. I mean, we are not the pinnacle of evolution that some people would like to think, and we're still changing and likely will continue to do so as our environment changes. But die out completely? Prrrrrobably not. As a species we're highly adaptive (even though some idiots in power hold us back) and I think that at least enough of us will survive to continue the species.
Maybe not, but I think we have a shot that's no more unlikely than anything else that's happened so far
I think you're right. Having assets spread across different investments protects one from going bankrupt. Having our species spread across the different climates means that we may still survive but probably not most of us.
Bingo! Unless the planet suddenly explodes, we'll probably survive whatever else is thrown at us
I just hope that the species can progress instead of regress. I feel like we've had severe regression in the last 25-35 years.
I totally get what you mean. I'm hopeful, tho. Pressures force growth and adaptation. I think we're still in the complacent zone. I'm interested to see what happens next
I wouldn't call economics explained or sci-show "lesser-known", they're some of the most popular "educational" youtubers out there now... (although a lot of the times i would find it more accurate to call economics explained videos opinion pieces based on faulty claims/sources rather than educational videos)
Which would you recommend? I don't mind dry, but I have issues with accents. I like Anton Petrov's videos but I find it difficult to understand him (as an example)
Eh, beg to differ. It's our industrialist society imo.
Native Americans were shown to actually improve the ecosystems they inhabited through permaculture. We're not doing the same practices like we should nowadays.
Can't infect wolves? I'm no expert here but I don't feel like a vertebrate mammal with a brain could be completely immune to prions. Do you have any more information on that claim?
It's in the OP article. They haven't found any infections yet, and it doesn't appear to affect them. Apex predators have, prior to human intervention, always hunted the old, the young, and the sick. Mother nature appears to have found a way around apex predators all dying from disease to balance the environment.
Afaik it's because they naturally die before the disease becomes crippling. Or it becomes crippling around or after the normal lifespan of the animal. It doesn't mean they aren't affected, it means it doesn't affect them before they would normally die...
Please don't anthropomorphize "mother nature". Mother nature doesn't think, or make decisions, it is a natural progression of life and death... There is a process and a cycle to much of it, hand waving "mother nature finds a way" ignores and dismisses the reality of it, and excludes the science that helps us understand how our world actually works.
I believe canines were found to be resistant to prion diseases, as they evolved to eat all manner of sick, dying and dead animals. Likely something to do with digestion, gut barrier or blood-brain barrier. Canines are pretty unique in their ability to eat almost anything that was once alive without getting sick.
CWD is a very fast acting disease compared to most prison diseases, and should easily become visible during the lifespan of a dog or wolf.
Scavengers like Hyenas and Vultures too. Vultures even have some strange adaptations to take care of their feet when feasting on scavenged carcasses. Their GI tracts are wild.
And opossums
Those things are fucking indestructible
Can't.... Infect.... Wolves?
You do know that prions aren't living things right? They don't "infect", they are a physical change to a compound (protein) that spreads to other similar compounds it touches. It's not a virus, or a bacteria.
Unless wolves lack the same proteins that deer also have? Usually this is a mammal thing, not a species thing.
I think the meaning of the word in context was clear enough.
If a mad-cow-like disease jumped the barrier to humans and began spreading through Americans, the main problem in eradicating it would be that basically no one would be able to tell the difference from the average 'Enthusiastic' Republican Voter and someone whose brain is melting due to an actual pathogen.
Lucky for us prions do not spread except via ingestion...
Realises that we wanted to eat the rich
We’re actually not sure about that. Some prions do spread by eating the meat of infected animals, but I think we can be pretty sure that’s not what’s happening in a wild deer population. Prions can also be found in the environment, including deposited on grasses and plants, where that can last a very long time.
We do not know if this disease is or will become communicable to predator animals or what the potential is for environmental spread to livestock. We do know a bit more about the BSE than some others, but there’s a bunch we know exist that we know little to nothing about, and it’s guaranteed there’s more out there that we haven’t encountered yet.
Deer can and do eat meat when available
Occasionally they do consume meat as far as I know (as several herbivores do), but if that were a serious candidate it would be among the principle lines of transmission being investigated.
Zoonotic diseases are investigated by cross-disciplinary teams with experience ranging from public health and disease experts to wildlife biologists and ecologists. I did some work on a similar topic with the National Parks Service so I know a bit about how these are approached. I have no involvement with this and I’ve never worked on prion contagion models - like I said, we just don’t know. But I do have experience in the area.
Prions have been found in soil, on grass and plants, and do not get quickly degraded by sun and rain. We do know that this disease is density dependent, so you’d need a model of deer going carnivore and cannibal in a density dependent natural model, which is not a phenomenon I’m familiar with.
So what I’m saying is that we just don’t know what the deer-deer vector is or if a predation vector exists as a secondary transmission or if one will appear.
Cool information thanks. Yeah wasn't trying to say that that's definitely how it's spread but most people don't know that they're opportunistic carnivores!
Just eat the meaty parts, avoid the brain and spinal cord and you're all good.
The problem is that the brain is the part you want to splatter all over the Italian marble floors of their mansions.
New plan live butchering so that the brain and spine is still intact and no need to worry about Mad Bougie disease.
so Sub Zero's fatality?
What a fuckin left turn from science to comedic genius
Bravo!
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
fookin' prions
Poor Christopher Johnson & co. 🥹
Proteins are quirky... In a bad way
From the little I’ve read on this it appears that the infectious cells favor a functional brain so that means all maga evangelical republicans are safe.
That's not really a good news though. ;(
Without reading, is it Chronic wasting? I just checked in on that the other day and the CDC didn't seem to think it was a big deal unless you are in a hotzone.
Honestly, natural disaster/Apocalypse has been on mine since 2021
it's always on my bingo card. i am a very hopeful person.
It's nice to finally see some optimism.
Oh its totally fine it's not like we've made the planet warmer allowing viruses to mutilate easier and for longer or like how we haven't been taking part in a centuries long destruction of the deers native habitat forcing them into populated areas right?... Right?
It's not a virus.
I mean, doesn't that reinforce their point, since many other pathogens are even more touchy on heat?
It's actually worse than a virus.
Once an environment is infected, the pathogen is extremely hard to eradicate. It can persist for years in dirt or on surfaces, and scientists report it is resistant to disinfectants, formaldehyde, radiation and incineration at 600C (1,100F).
The pathogen in question is a prion (a mutant contagious protein molecule)
Biologist here. That’s not where I’d put the association. I’m going to simplify things a bit because this is going to be a long post, but hopefully this will help.
I think you’re thinking about the effects of heat on proteins. We can destabilize macromolecules by heating them, sometimes causing permanent damage. That takes a lot of heat, though. The planet would be long dead before we had to worry about the environmental temperature denaturing proteins.
Biologist related joke:
How do you unscramble an egg?
Feed it to a chicken.
So, when the microscope was invented, people were startled to discover what were obviously living organisms in a drop of pond water. Discovery led to discovery, and we ended up learning about bacteria and the germ theory of disease. Some bacteria are really good (in that without them you would die), and some are really bad (like if you get infected you could die), but most are neutral. I do not believe there’s any direct connection between the global temperature and the rate of mutation in bacteria. That’s not to say there’s not a connection between climate change and disease rates. I’ll talk about that later.
So later on we discovered viruses. Viruses are much smaller than bacteria. While a bacterium is a cell with a whole physiology going on, a virus consists of a bit of genetic material bound in an envelope of proteins. The envelope will gain access to a cell and inject its genetic material, which the cell’s normal processes will start to work on, producing more viruses. Many people don’t consider viruses “alive.” I do, because I’m approaching it from a different direction. Again, the rate of mutation there isn’t really directly affected by a rise in global temperature, but there is a disease rate relationship.
We only discovered prions more recently. They’re even more simple than viruses. They’re really just a protein. We don’t understand them very well yet. The danger comes from the fact that prions can force other proteins to become copies of themselves. They can cause things like mad cow disease. They’re incredibly hardy and don’t mutate faster because of climate change. They’re very scary diseases with no known treatment and in some cases unknown transmission paths.
This one is a prion.
I think we can find correlations between disease in animals and climate change. Climate change forces animals into new environments where they can encounter diseases they’ve never faced before and to which they’re susceptible.
Even more important is the common root cause of industrialization and human expansion and environmental destruction. Again, forcing more animals together magnifies the impact of communicable diseases, and things like the use of antibiotics to make factory farming as profitable as possible has the inevitable consequences of making diseases that are harder to treat.
Thanks for the ELI5.
Apart from ingestion, are there any other known methods of transmission as far as prions are concerned?
One of the problems is that we don’t know. It might be environmental contamination (eg deposits on grass or in soil). Ebola patient 0 was thought to be a toddler-aged child who ate a piece of fruit that had been contaminated by dung from an infected bat (Ebola, like many of our diseases, is zoonotic). It’s also thought to potentially come from preparing meat from an infected animal. If it’s in the environment, it may also come from some social behavior, like grooming or wound cleaning. Could it be transmitted by parasites that jump from host to host drinking blood? No idea. I’m just spitballing based on how some other diseases become density dependent.
Prions are absolutely fascinating. I really hope they make a lot of progress.
Not this pathogen. Prions are not living organisms, not even as much as viruses, and are extremely resistant to both heat and cold. It's the same stuff that caused the mad cow disease in Britain.
I believe it's made the jump into a certain species of monkey in a lab environment last I knew, but the jump to humans hasn't been seen and isn't a given. This is a clickbait title. If you're hunting game, make sure to get it tested with samples taken at a wildlife check station before consuming and you're likely safe here.
scientists raise fears it may jump to humans
Who says it hasn't? I mean, have you looked at our politics lately?
POLITICS! Amiright folks?!
I see we are lining up for a great 2024
Prions sounds like a very tiny, evil shrimp
Found the Australian
Toss another prion on the barbie!
We don't have shrimp.
And prawns are a totally different species.
And unfortunately I'm American
Here in Utah we have brine prions....er, shrimp. Commercially sold as Sea Monkeys. We have no need of these "brains" you speak of.
Elders of Prion sounds like a bad 90s industrial.metal band
Oh deer
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
┬──┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)
Yeah here we go! We all wanted a zombie outbreak and all we got was corona lockdowns. This is more like it! Bring it on!
/s
Prions are freaky.
Agreed. Kinda wonder if this is going to be what takes us out as a species one day.
A truck with all the proper paperwork arrives at the border and drops a trailer in the middle of a lot. The doors open and an automated lab just continues to selectively breed up prions in its thousands of samples of human brain cells. Eventually something wanders in, maybe a hungry animal, maybe a curious person. The prion soup enters into the ecosystem.
Can't say this is entirely what I expected from 2024, but I will say it is completely on-brand.
It'd be an improvement for some people.
One estimate in 2017 suggested humans could be eating up to 15,000 CWD-infected animals a year in the
Yeah, no, eating animals is surely never a bad idea. They compare it to the BSE cases that caused years and years of consequences.
The biggest problem with BSE was the idjit who decided that grinding up the offal from butchered cattle (even the sick and dead ones) should then be mixed into cattle feed.
It was a self-propagating hot mess that affected multiple nations, including Canada.
Industrially applied cannibalism is a terrible idea for multiple reasons.
Yup. Just capitalism trying to save money on disposal fees while simultaneously making money selling infected shit as feed.
I know this has been going on for years. Still needs more research
Once an environment is infected, the pathogen is extremely hard to eradicate. It can persist for years in dirt or on surfaces, and scientists report it is resistant to disinfectants, formaldehyde, radiation and incineration at 600C (1,100F).
right, prions officially suck.. also no known cure or vaccine..
It's incredibly unlikely that there will ever be a vaccine or cure. Prions aren't a disease like others, put in layman terms they are anti-life.
It's like all the healthy proteins in your body are balancing on a tight rope 10 stories into the air. Prions are what happens when the proteins fall off: the proteins fall to a ground state where they are incredibly stable. Moving them back up would be as difficult as sending lightning back up to the sky, or unbaking a cake. That's why you need to burn them at 600C, they are so stable that they don't even want to react with oxygen. They are like nature's own forever-chemical.
Trying to use analogies to describe prions is hard. What it actually is is a certain type of misfolded protein. That happens all the time–that would be like the humans falling off the tightrope. It doesn't usually affect other proteins, and it usually just makes that individual protein nonfunctional. But prion diseases are proteins that are misfolded in exactly the right way that they cause other proteins to misfold in exactly the same way, which causes other proteins to misfold the same way... It's like kids playing zombie tag, except the kids are supposed to be doing taxes or something so they aren't running away from the chasers, and for some reason as soon as they get tagged they play along and now your taxes never get done and also you die
clearly the answer is friendly prions engineered by AI to defend us
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.
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.
Moreover, there's no expectation that a prion disease like CWD can ever spread from person to (non-cannibal) person
It can however totally spread from deer to person if we decide to eat it.
So basically treat it like mad cow disease and don't eat meat from dubious sources. Got it
Sounds to me like venison is out of the picture in general right now.
Too bad, venison is the best chili meat IMO.
Just submit your deer for testing and if it comes back clean you can safely eat it, easy.
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.
Farmers don't harvest obviously sick cows, but BSE still spread in the UK.
I don't know that I would be willing to take the risk right now.
You're right. Part of that was due to some capitalist who decided that all the leftovers fom butchering cattle could be ground up and made into cattle feed ... and all the sick and dead cattle were added into that as well (so the yards wouldn't have to lose any money).
They don't do that anymore for obvious reasons, so BSE is still found occasionally but no where near the numbers we had in the 90's.
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.
Well im with you on how gross factory kill floors are but I'm still recklessly confident that one thing i won't find in there is a deer.
If there is a super-pathogen spreading amongst wild animals the chance that this pathogen mutated in a factory farm is much, much higher than it mutating in the wild.
Of course, we're talking about a prion here and not viruses or bacteria... but the point still stands.
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.
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.
Says the one invoking infinity to support a juvenile argument, not unlike "saying 'nunh unh'". How apropos.
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.
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
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."
That is not the debated point. The point is that winning the lottery is just as much not a question of time.
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...
It could happen, the same way a specific person could win the lottery. But it is not a question of time. It could also not happen in 100 billion years, even if the chance of that is essentially 0. But it is not exactly 0. Time only increases the chance, it does not guarantee it. That is the difference between statistical and deterministic events.
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
Good thing there isn't infinite time. Fun fact, at any point in time, a finite amount of time will have passed
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.
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
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.
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
Just make sure not to trust any gifts of meat from these numbnuts
Oh hey a completely uninformed opinion from the same person who thought men are incapable of genuinely being friends with women.
The only reason I haven't blocked tygerprints is because the responses to their insane posts are fun to read.
This is literally why we have apex predators such as wolves. They help clamp down on the old and the sick so that prions (mad cow disease) does not spread to other species or humans. It cannot infect wolves.
When you kill off all the apex predators, like when Montana governor Greg Gianforte authorized the massacre of 100 wolves, you see explosions of extremely dangerous diseases and land degradation as deer damage tree roots, gardens, meadows, streams, and farms.
Not only that, but killing members of wolf packs causes their families to fall apart and everyone to scatter. That means wolves alone. Which cannot hunt pack animals which require coordination. So then they go after the easiest meal: dumbass farm animals who have zero survival instincts and whose ranchers no longer employ people to look after the herds in great enough numbers like the olden days. The cycle then perpetuates, as mad-cow contaminated soils spread and spread....
Damn.... It's almost like we should leave mother nature the fuck alone
The more we learn, the better it will be for all species. We'll figure it out eventually... or die out
Die out. Look at the weather patterns. We done fucked up.
Could be! I've spent the last 3 or so years with little to do but think, read, argue and watch youtube. I tend to watch mostly educational content, ranging from the big ones ("nile red", "veritasium", nutshell I can't spell, "world science festival") to lesser known ones ("sci-show", "fall of civilizations", "economics explained", "donna" and a bunch of others). Robert Sapolsky is amazing, btw, look him up if you don't already know who he is. But anyway, most recently I learned about the last 5 mass extinctions in a video by "paleo analysis"
Anyway...
I think many people will die in the upcoming climate crisis (and are already dying) but I don't think humanity itself will completely die out. I mean, we are not the pinnacle of evolution that some people would like to think, and we're still changing and likely will continue to do so as our environment changes. But die out completely? Prrrrrobably not. As a species we're highly adaptive (even though some idiots in power hold us back) and I think that at least enough of us will survive to continue the species.
Maybe not, but I think we have a shot that's no more unlikely than anything else that's happened so far
I think you're right. Having assets spread across different investments protects one from going bankrupt. Having our species spread across the different climates means that we may still survive but probably not most of us.
Bingo! Unless the planet suddenly explodes, we'll probably survive whatever else is thrown at us
I just hope that the species can progress instead of regress. I feel like we've had severe regression in the last 25-35 years.
I totally get what you mean. I'm hopeful, tho. Pressures force growth and adaptation. I think we're still in the complacent zone. I'm interested to see what happens next
I wouldn't call economics explained or sci-show "lesser-known", they're some of the most popular "educational" youtubers out there now... (although a lot of the times i would find it more accurate to call economics explained videos opinion pieces based on faulty claims/sources rather than educational videos)
Which would you recommend? I don't mind dry, but I have issues with accents. I like Anton Petrov's videos but I find it difficult to understand him (as an example)
Eh, beg to differ. It's our industrialist society imo.
Native Americans were shown to actually improve the ecosystems they inhabited through permaculture. We're not doing the same practices like we should nowadays.
Can't infect wolves? I'm no expert here but I don't feel like a vertebrate mammal with a brain could be completely immune to prions. Do you have any more information on that claim?
It's in the OP article. They haven't found any infections yet, and it doesn't appear to affect them. Apex predators have, prior to human intervention, always hunted the old, the young, and the sick. Mother nature appears to have found a way around apex predators all dying from disease to balance the environment.
Afaik it's because they naturally die before the disease becomes crippling. Or it becomes crippling around or after the normal lifespan of the animal. It doesn't mean they aren't affected, it means it doesn't affect them before they would normally die...
Please don't anthropomorphize "mother nature". Mother nature doesn't think, or make decisions, it is a natural progression of life and death... There is a process and a cycle to much of it, hand waving "mother nature finds a way" ignores and dismisses the reality of it, and excludes the science that helps us understand how our world actually works.
I believe canines were found to be resistant to prion diseases, as they evolved to eat all manner of sick, dying and dead animals. Likely something to do with digestion, gut barrier or blood-brain barrier. Canines are pretty unique in their ability to eat almost anything that was once alive without getting sick.
CWD is a very fast acting disease compared to most prison diseases, and should easily become visible during the lifespan of a dog or wolf.
Scavengers like Hyenas and Vultures too. Vultures even have some strange adaptations to take care of their feet when feasting on scavenged carcasses. Their GI tracts are wild.
And opossums
Those things are fucking indestructible
Can't.... Infect.... Wolves?
You do know that prions aren't living things right? They don't "infect", they are a physical change to a compound (protein) that spreads to other similar compounds it touches. It's not a virus, or a bacteria.
Unless wolves lack the same proteins that deer also have? Usually this is a mammal thing, not a species thing.
I think the meaning of the word in context was clear enough.
Yeah! Fuck deer!
If a mad-cow-like disease jumped the barrier to humans and began spreading through Americans, the main problem in eradicating it would be that basically no one would be able to tell the difference from the average 'Enthusiastic' Republican Voter and someone whose brain is melting due to an actual pathogen.
Lucky for us prions do not spread except via ingestion...
Realises that we wanted to eat the rich
We’re actually not sure about that. Some prions do spread by eating the meat of infected animals, but I think we can be pretty sure that’s not what’s happening in a wild deer population. Prions can also be found in the environment, including deposited on grasses and plants, where that can last a very long time.
We do not know if this disease is or will become communicable to predator animals or what the potential is for environmental spread to livestock. We do know a bit more about the BSE than some others, but there’s a bunch we know exist that we know little to nothing about, and it’s guaranteed there’s more out there that we haven’t encountered yet.
Deer can and do eat meat when available
Occasionally they do consume meat as far as I know (as several herbivores do), but if that were a serious candidate it would be among the principle lines of transmission being investigated.
Zoonotic diseases are investigated by cross-disciplinary teams with experience ranging from public health and disease experts to wildlife biologists and ecologists. I did some work on a similar topic with the National Parks Service so I know a bit about how these are approached. I have no involvement with this and I’ve never worked on prion contagion models - like I said, we just don’t know. But I do have experience in the area.
Prions have been found in soil, on grass and plants, and do not get quickly degraded by sun and rain. We do know that this disease is density dependent, so you’d need a model of deer going carnivore and cannibal in a density dependent natural model, which is not a phenomenon I’m familiar with.
So what I’m saying is that we just don’t know what the deer-deer vector is or if a predation vector exists as a secondary transmission or if one will appear.
Cool information thanks. Yeah wasn't trying to say that that's definitely how it's spread but most people don't know that they're opportunistic carnivores!
Just eat the meaty parts, avoid the brain and spinal cord and you're all good.
The problem is that the brain is the part you want to splatter all over the Italian marble floors of their mansions.
New plan live butchering so that the brain and spine is still intact and no need to worry about Mad Bougie disease.
so Sub Zero's fatality?
What a fuckin left turn from science to comedic genius Bravo!
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
fookin' prions
Poor Christopher Johnson & co. 🥹
Proteins are quirky... In a bad way
From the little I’ve read on this it appears that the infectious cells favor a functional brain so that means all maga evangelical republicans are safe.
That's not really a good news though. ;(
Without reading, is it Chronic wasting? I just checked in on that the other day and the CDC didn't seem to think it was a big deal unless you are in a hotzone.
who had zombie invasion on their 2024 bingo card?
Honestly, natural disaster/Apocalypse has been on mine since 2021
it's always on my bingo card. i am a very hopeful person.
It's nice to finally see some optimism.
Oh its totally fine it's not like we've made the planet warmer allowing viruses to mutilate easier and for longer or like how we haven't been taking part in a centuries long destruction of the deers native habitat forcing them into populated areas right?... Right?
It's not a virus.
I mean, doesn't that reinforce their point, since many other pathogens are even more touchy on heat?
It's actually worse than a virus.
The pathogen in question is a prion (a mutant contagious protein molecule)
Biologist here. That’s not where I’d put the association. I’m going to simplify things a bit because this is going to be a long post, but hopefully this will help.
I think you’re thinking about the effects of heat on proteins. We can destabilize macromolecules by heating them, sometimes causing permanent damage. That takes a lot of heat, though. The planet would be long dead before we had to worry about the environmental temperature denaturing proteins.
Biologist related joke: How do you unscramble an egg?
Feed it to a chicken.
So, when the microscope was invented, people were startled to discover what were obviously living organisms in a drop of pond water. Discovery led to discovery, and we ended up learning about bacteria and the germ theory of disease. Some bacteria are really good (in that without them you would die), and some are really bad (like if you get infected you could die), but most are neutral. I do not believe there’s any direct connection between the global temperature and the rate of mutation in bacteria. That’s not to say there’s not a connection between climate change and disease rates. I’ll talk about that later.
So later on we discovered viruses. Viruses are much smaller than bacteria. While a bacterium is a cell with a whole physiology going on, a virus consists of a bit of genetic material bound in an envelope of proteins. The envelope will gain access to a cell and inject its genetic material, which the cell’s normal processes will start to work on, producing more viruses. Many people don’t consider viruses “alive.” I do, because I’m approaching it from a different direction. Again, the rate of mutation there isn’t really directly affected by a rise in global temperature, but there is a disease rate relationship.
We only discovered prions more recently. They’re even more simple than viruses. They’re really just a protein. We don’t understand them very well yet. The danger comes from the fact that prions can force other proteins to become copies of themselves. They can cause things like mad cow disease. They’re incredibly hardy and don’t mutate faster because of climate change. They’re very scary diseases with no known treatment and in some cases unknown transmission paths.
This one is a prion.
I think we can find correlations between disease in animals and climate change. Climate change forces animals into new environments where they can encounter diseases they’ve never faced before and to which they’re susceptible.
Even more important is the common root cause of industrialization and human expansion and environmental destruction. Again, forcing more animals together magnifies the impact of communicable diseases, and things like the use of antibiotics to make factory farming as profitable as possible has the inevitable consequences of making diseases that are harder to treat.
Thanks for the ELI5.
Apart from ingestion, are there any other known methods of transmission as far as prions are concerned?
One of the problems is that we don’t know. It might be environmental contamination (eg deposits on grass or in soil). Ebola patient 0 was thought to be a toddler-aged child who ate a piece of fruit that had been contaminated by dung from an infected bat (Ebola, like many of our diseases, is zoonotic). It’s also thought to potentially come from preparing meat from an infected animal. If it’s in the environment, it may also come from some social behavior, like grooming or wound cleaning. Could it be transmitted by parasites that jump from host to host drinking blood? No idea. I’m just spitballing based on how some other diseases become density dependent.
Prions are absolutely fascinating. I really hope they make a lot of progress.
Not this pathogen. Prions are not living organisms, not even as much as viruses, and are extremely resistant to both heat and cold. It's the same stuff that caused the mad cow disease in Britain.
Add it to “What else can fuck millennials?” pile.
A particularly concerning illness for me.
Just stop facing the deer and you'll be okay.
Let's face it dear : name checks up !
I believe it's made the jump into a certain species of monkey in a lab environment last I knew, but the jump to humans hasn't been seen and isn't a given. This is a clickbait title. If you're hunting game, make sure to get it tested with samples taken at a wildlife check station before consuming and you're likely safe here.
Who says it hasn't? I mean, have you looked at our politics lately?
POLITICS! Amiright folks?!
I see we are lining up for a great 2024
Prions sounds like a very tiny, evil shrimp
Found the Australian
Toss another prion on the barbie!
We don't have shrimp.
And prawns are a totally different species.
And unfortunately I'm American
Here in Utah we have brine prions....er, shrimp. Commercially sold as Sea Monkeys. We have no need of these "brains" you speak of.
Elders of Prion sounds like a bad 90s industrial.metal band
Oh deer
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
┬──┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)
Yeah here we go! We all wanted a zombie outbreak and all we got was corona lockdowns. This is more like it! Bring it on!
/s
Prions are freaky.
Agreed. Kinda wonder if this is going to be what takes us out as a species one day.
A truck with all the proper paperwork arrives at the border and drops a trailer in the middle of a lot. The doors open and an automated lab just continues to selectively breed up prions in its thousands of samples of human brain cells. Eventually something wanders in, maybe a hungry animal, maybe a curious person. The prion soup enters into the ecosystem.
Can't say this is entirely what I expected from 2024, but I will say it is completely on-brand.
It'd be an improvement for some people.
Yeah, no, eating animals is surely never a bad idea. They compare it to the BSE cases that caused years and years of consequences.
The biggest problem with BSE was the idjit who decided that grinding up the offal from butchered cattle (even the sick and dead ones) should then be mixed into cattle feed.
It was a self-propagating hot mess that affected multiple nations, including Canada.
Industrially applied cannibalism is a terrible idea for multiple reasons.
Yup. Just capitalism trying to save money on disposal fees while simultaneously making money selling infected shit as feed.
I know this has been going on for years. Still needs more research
right, prions officially suck.. also no known cure or vaccine..
It's incredibly unlikely that there will ever be a vaccine or cure. Prions aren't a disease like others, put in layman terms they are anti-life.
It's like all the healthy proteins in your body are balancing on a tight rope 10 stories into the air. Prions are what happens when the proteins fall off: the proteins fall to a ground state where they are incredibly stable. Moving them back up would be as difficult as sending lightning back up to the sky, or unbaking a cake. That's why you need to burn them at 600C, they are so stable that they don't even want to react with oxygen. They are like nature's own forever-chemical.
Trying to use analogies to describe prions is hard. What it actually is is a certain type of misfolded protein. That happens all the time–that would be like the humans falling off the tightrope. It doesn't usually affect other proteins, and it usually just makes that individual protein nonfunctional. But prion diseases are proteins that are misfolded in exactly the right way that they cause other proteins to misfold in exactly the same way, which causes other proteins to misfold the same way... It's like kids playing zombie tag, except the kids are supposed to be doing taxes or something so they aren't running away from the chasers, and for some reason as soon as they get tagged they play along and now your taxes never get done and also you die
clearly the answer is friendly prions engineered by AI to defend us
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.
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.
Moreover, there's no expectation that a prion disease like CWD can ever spread from person to (non-cannibal) person
It can however totally spread from deer to person if we decide to eat it.
So basically treat it like mad cow disease and don't eat meat from dubious sources. Got it
Sounds to me like venison is out of the picture in general right now.
Too bad, venison is the best chili meat IMO.
Just submit your deer for testing and if it comes back clean you can safely eat it, easy.
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.
Farmers don't harvest obviously sick cows, but BSE still spread in the UK.
I don't know that I would be willing to take the risk right now.
You're right. Part of that was due to some capitalist who decided that all the leftovers fom butchering cattle could be ground up and made into cattle feed ... and all the sick and dead cattle were added into that as well (so the yards wouldn't have to lose any money).
They don't do that anymore for obvious reasons, so BSE is still found occasionally but no where near the numbers we had in the 90's.
Have you ever actually seen the inside of a factory farm? Things don't get more "dubious" than that.
Well im with you on how gross factory kill floors are but I'm still recklessly confident that one thing i won't find in there is a deer.
If there is a super-pathogen spreading amongst wild animals the chance that this pathogen mutated in a factory farm is much, much higher than it mutating in the wild.
Of course, we're talking about a prion here and not viruses or bacteria... but the point still stands.
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.
Should be fine unless the protein in question is found in saliva -- Oh. Oh no
It's good news for anyone who likes the taste of brains.
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.
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.
Says the one invoking infinity to support a juvenile argument, not unlike "saying 'nunh unh'". How apropos.
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.
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
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."
That is not the debated point. The point is that winning the lottery is just as much not a question of time.
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...
It could happen, the same way a specific person could win the lottery. But it is not a question of time. It could also not happen in 100 billion years, even if the chance of that is essentially 0. But it is not exactly 0. Time only increases the chance, it does not guarantee it. That is the difference between statistical and deterministic events.
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
Good thing there isn't infinite time. Fun fact, at any point in time, a finite amount of time will have passed
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.
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
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.
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
Just make sure not to trust any gifts of meat from these numbnuts
Oh hey a completely uninformed opinion from the same person who thought men are incapable of genuinely being friends with women.
The only reason I haven't blocked tygerprints is because the responses to their insane posts are fun to read.
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
I hope not. You'd think humans would never want to eat a bat anyway - but apparently some have.
Since its a prion in a species that we don't farm, we just need to not eat venison.
Edit: Not that that helps the deer, of course.