SOME INTERESTING TRUTHS ABOUT ZOONOSES

I will get into the truth about zoonoses later.  Here is a nice graphic about pandemic deaths.  Considering the current world population (7.6 billion compared to 0.4 billion in 1300) and how travel-connected humanity is today, the 3.2 million COVID-19 deaths pale in comparison to what has happened in the past.

The CDC yesterday announced that masks need not anymore be worn in most settings (including bars and restaurants) by those who have been inoculated.  They now encourage travel.  Yet, there remain controls in nursing homes, hospitals, plus public transport and airports.  

State governors have the final say, so you would think Hawaii with about the lowest incidence of cases because we are protected by the Pacific Ocean would now open up everything?  Well, we have a particularly cautious governor who happens to also be an engineer.  Wouldn't be surprised if masks will still be generally encouraged for all.

Just about when the CDC took action, the New York Yankees reported that a player and 7 staff, all who were vaccinated, tested positive for COVID-19.  Two weeks ago they applied the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is supposedly 72% effective.  Seven of those eight are asymptomatic, and the one who got sick only suffered from mild symptoms.  So even the J&J version works to keep you alive.  As very, very few of the vaccinated get tested anymore, you got to wonder how many asymptomatics are walking around infecting those who have not been vaccinated.  ANOTHER REASON FOR THE RELUCTANT TO BECOME SAFE BY GETTING THOSE VACCINES!

About those gas lines along the Eastern Seaboard, Colonial Pipeline Company paid nearly $5 million to a digital extortion group called DarkSide, located either in Russia or Eastern Europe.  Pipelines are now fully functional.  What next?  The U.S. grid or worldwide airport transport system?  Watch for a Netflix film coming soon.

First of all, about the subject of the day, Zoonoses have nothing much to do with Zoos or Noses.  The term deals with animal diseases that spread to humans.

The May issue of STANFORD written by Denis Ellis Bechard provided some valuable information about this subject, which had a lot to do with the creation of their eighth school yet to be named dealing with climate and sustainability.  You would think that Stanford is continuously evolving.  However, when they added #7, it was 70 years ago.  This new one seeks to address 21st century challenges to create a future in which humans and nature thrive in concert in perpetuity.  Thirty five faculty members throughout the campus are designing a truly interdisciplinary home for:

• Climate change.
• Energy technology.
• Natural environment sustainable urban development.
• Earth and planetary sciences.
• Human society and interactions.
• Food and water security.
• Human behavior and public policy.
• Health and the environment.

Let's see, now, what did they leave out?  They are searching for a dean and someone to be called the Director for Sustainability Accelerator.  There will be a variety of degrees, as for example, one in undergraduate sustainability management jointly with the Graduate School of Business.  You can imagine similar links to all other schools and the web of interactions to come.  I'd like to go back and get another degree.

You can read that article, so I will merely list a few of the worthy highlights:

• 70 to 80 percent of emerging and reemerging pathogens are zoonotic.
• The WHO team that went to Wuhan determined the COVID-19 virus could have hitched a ride with a number of species sold there: rabbits, civets, ferret badgers, raccoon dogs, pangolins.  The urban density (11 million people) provided the perfect setting for a massive outbreak.

• 
  In the past:
• Bubonic plague originated in gerbils.  Yes, gerbils, not rats.
• Smallpox came from rodents.
• Measles from cattle.
• Pasteur in the 19th century found out that people were getting sick from milk, so he developed pasteurization.  He later devised vaccines for anthrax and rabies.
• The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic is now probably suspected to have begun with North American domestic and wild birds.  So the standard theory of China being blamed is being shifted to the U.S.
• The Swine Flu Pandemic of 2009 was passed from migrating birds to farmed poultry to pigs then to humans, with the origin being in central Mexico.
• 
  How would you like to get infected with the Nipah virus, where there is no vaccine and 50-75% die?  Fruit bats and pigs involved.  Less than 1000 have succumbed, and the movie Contagion (2011, RT: 85/63) was based on a combination of Nipah and measles viruses.

• 
  In 2003 came SARS-COV-1 (horseshoe bats to civets in China) with a 9% mortality rate, then the 2012 MERS (bats to camels) in Saudi Arabia with a 35% MR, but spread to South Korea, where one person came home to infect 186, resulting in 38 deaths..
• You never heard of Rift Valley Fever in Africa, but it attacks livestock, with humans mostly asymptomatically infected and few deaths.  Can be spread by mosquitos.  Was being developed by the U.S. as a potential biological weapon.
• You've heard of the West Nile virus, which started in African birds, then carried by mosquitos to humans.  However, the American robin and house sparrow can be reservoirs.  Very similar to Zika, dengue, Japanese encephalitis and yellow fever.  Humans have an 80% asymptomatic rate.   There is no vaccine.  40% of horses so afflicted died.
• 
  Watch out for Chikungunya, a mosquito spread virus which had Tanzanian origins.   I ran into an outbreak when I went to Le Reunion in the Indian Ocean, and tried everything to protect myself.   Can now be found in Florida and Texas.  No vaccine.

• 
  Why are bats so susceptible?
• They live in crowded conditions.
• The environment is excrement-filled.
• Ability to fly and disperse.
• Over time they became immune themselves.
• The joke is that bats fear humans because we cause global warming, which is more and more being blamed for increasing the advent of future pandemics.
• By one estimate, 1.7 million viruses have yet to be discovered in mammals and birds, of which 800,000 might be transmittable to humans.
• The Stanford Hospital has a larger budget than the entire World Health Organization.
• Appearing soon:  pandemic insurance.

I close with a photo of shiso and honohono:

There are green and maroon versions.  How is it consumed?  Read this.  Rather see that leaf next to sushi or sashimi than those green plastic thingies.  Wrap the leave around the sushi or sashimi.  Also great as an enhancement for various martinis and mojitos.

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