When H5N1 avian influenza started spreading among dairy cattle across the U.S. this year, regulators warned against consuming unpasteurized milk. What happened? Raw milk sales went up.
Distributors of this unsafe-for-human-consumption product deny H5N1—which has the potential to sicken millions of people—is a danger. Dairy farmers decline to allow disease detectives onto their properties.
I just bought 10 80-packs of toilet paper. $426.50. I should be fine now.
this wouldn’t be an issue if we simply stopped exploiting animals
The problem is that we exploit the land animals are on. People build suburbs in areas where these diseases are endemic. E.g., they clear cut a forest near caves and build a massive suburb, and people move in for the cheap housing. The bats that lived in the forests and caves are pushed to the eves of houses. Ebola virus is naturally endemic in those bats, and when a bat shits, it lands on a picnic table. Some mom sets up a picnic on the table and brushes off what she thought was a stick before serving sandwiches and touching her itchy face.
She handles wet grapes that are for the entire fourth grade class picnic, and everyone ingests them. The next day, multiple children get sick, but one family flew to Yellowstone that evening, and another flew to Japan for spring break, spreading the disease internationally before humans are even aware such a disease has even started.
Three weeks later, the health authorities see a mysterious disease in local hospitals, but have no tests for it, and the local health authority doesn’t issue a shutdown notice for schools because it’s become politicicized and they will lose their job if they make a bad call. A few people dying will get them a repremand at most. That’s how pandemics start.
Gotta say, this was entirely predictable. So much so… was it a plan to kill off conservative voters. Hmmmmm
One possible scenario for spillover into the population: a raw-milk drinker or a farmworker gets infected with this strain of H5N1 that’s moving among cattle and also gets co-infected with a human-adapted strain of influenza. In such a situation viruses can swap genes in a process called reassortment. A major fear about H5N1 has always been that it might do this. H5N1 has shown it can easily move from one species to another, acquiring new genetic material in the process.
Airborne diseases don’t acknowledge party registration, voting habits, or political identification. If H5N1 does reassort with influenza it’s going to be killing humans.
“It not that people are stupid or ignorant or that they don’t know what the science is,” he said. “They’re motivated to reject it on the basis of partisanship, their political ideology, their religion, their cultural values.”
I wonder why he doesn’t figure “The government has provided misinformation recently on health topics” into his list of reasons people don’t trust government health information.
I’m pretty sure rejecting facts based on partisanship, political ideology, religion, of cultural values can easily qualify you for being stupid.
On the other hand, the us has done idiotic things to tarnish it’s reputation in the past.
what misinformation
This is what I would like to know as well.
OP is an anti-vaxxer and COVID denier so, adjust your bullshit meter accordingly.
I’m sorry what? How am I anti-vax and a covid denier? Did you just make that up for no reason,
Regardless of intention, the US government put its stamp of approval on a lot of misinformation during the pandemic. Whether that was an attempt to deceive or just incompetence, it doesn’t inspire trust at all.
This is just blatant dog-whistling. What misinformation, bruh. Share your crazy conspiracy theories so I can dismiss them out of hand.
“American” contrariness, scientificametican? Really? You sure you can’t narrow it down more than everyone who’s an American?
Not even a little bit?
Well, then fuck you. Because we both know exactly who you’re talking about.
Yeah, Americans. As much as i disagree with Republicans on things, they’re still Americans.
Our educational system, our economic and our social systems have failed them and led them to unscientific contrary positions.
We need to find ways to bridge that gap and stop things like this without it being a political issue.
They’re not wrong.
