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?
The original Spanish Flu would absolutely fuck us up.
The reason it became mild has nothing to do with us building immunity but because a virus killing its host is bad for business (or strictly speaking, reproduction). A lack of viable hosts puts pressure on the virus’s gene pool and in the end, the variant that is most successful at spreading and reproducing will win out.
That means not killing your host and only doing mild, repairable damage to other potential hosts so that humans don’t take an infection so seriously.
We saw this exact pattern with COVID, with successive iterations being less deadly than the last.
Less deadly and more contagious!
Exactly:)
My understanding is that it’s still with us, but it’s evolved over time to be much less deadly, and that that’s the biggest reason it’s not much of a problem for us. We probably have some more immunity to the original strain because of our exposure to the evolved version, so I doubt the original would be as much of a problem as it was in 1918 (and because medicine has drastically improved), but it might not be a walk in the park.
Seems like a shitty weapon of you can’t control it and it’s going to end up impacting your own people as much as anyone else, but maybe the terrorists in the show didn’t care.
There are many factors at play.
Survivability is much higher. A lot of the deaths are attributable to secondary opportunistic infections that are now treatable with antibiotics, which did not exist at the time. We now have a plethora of treatments that did not exist at the time, for example many people were saved from death by covid by giving extra oxygen for just a few days. That would have helped h1n1 victims too.
I don’t know how much of a threat the original strain is at this point, but if anything I would be concerned about H5N1, what’s usually known as avian flu. The only thing currently holding it back from being a pandemic is that it’s not efficient at infecting humans yet. But it is extremely deadly, killing 50-60% of those who get infected.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1
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.
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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.
See my other comment here.
…we might never have had a covid pandemic.
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.
“In the outbreak of SARS-CoV-1, palm civets, raccoon dogs, ferret badgers, red foxes, domestic cats, and rice field rats were possible vectors.[7] Graham and Baric wrote that human and civet infections likely stemmed from an unknown common progenitor.[67] Patrick Berche wrote that the emergences of SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV appeared to be sequential processes involving intermediate hosts, co-infections, and recombination.[68] In contrast with the rapid identification of animal hosts for SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV, no direct animal source for SARS-CoV-2 has been found.[69] Holmes et al. wrote that the lack of intermediate host is likely because the right animal has not been tested so far.[19] Frutos et al. proposed that rather than a discrete spillover event, SARS-CoV-2 arose in accordance with a circulation model, involving repeated horizontal transfer among humans, bats, and other mammals without establishing significant reservoirs in any of them until the pandemic.”
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.
“Bats are a significant reservoir species for a diverse range of coronaviruses, and humans have been found with antibodies for them suggesting that direct infection by bats is common. The zoonotic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus to humans took place in the context of exacerbating factors that could make such spillovers more likely. Human contact with bats has increased as human population centers encroach on bat habitats. [4][33] Several social and environmental factors including climate change, natural ecosystem destruction and wildlife trade have also increased the likelihood for the emergences of zoonosis.[34][35] One study made with the support of the European Union found climate change increased the likelihood of the pandemic by influencing distribution of bat species.”
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.
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.
Here’s a Stuff You Should Know podcast about it. I remember listening to this when it first came out and then the pandemic hit like a year later. I need to revisit it…
Most of us have never encountered it and would not have resistance. In the 1977 H1N1 outbreak many older people did have resistance (due to a flu in the 40s), younger people did not. That wasn’t Spanish flu itself though.
The Spanish flu strain was particularly devastating to people with strong immune systems, many young and healthy people who would have typically developed a resistance did not recover.
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