[HN Gopher] Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada
___________________________________________________________________
Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada
Author : aluket
Score : 300 points
Date : 2021-05-05 07:29 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| In other Prion news, there's a prion disease, Chronic Wasting
| Disease (CWD), affecting populations of wild Deer, Elk, etc. in
| North America and other chunks of the world. It's not yet known
| to infect people, but please be careful when eating wild game.
| [1]
|
| My mind first went to this issue when I read the headline, though
| upon reading the article it's probably something else, as CWD
| isn't really a thing in that region [it's more of a Mountain
| state kind of thing thing]. And, of course, I'm not a prion
| expert, so I only vaguely know what I'm writing about.
|
| [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-
| nutriti...
| eganp wrote:
| The species barrier in prion transmission appear very strong
| [0]. Transmitting a prion from a hamster into a mouse often
| takes multiple passages of direct in brain inoculation. In
| these closely related species, perhaps it's less strong. It's
| doubtful that CWD can transmit to humans at typical exposure
| levels. In vitro, conversion of human PrP is possible, but
| exceedingly difficult.
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2736662/ [1]
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5667731/
| loonster wrote:
| CWD is in 25 states now. Some of them have cattle.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/occurrence.html
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| As mentioned in previous submissions, because it is happening in
| a certain area, industrial pollution can be considered as a
| possible cause as well.
| wobblyasp wrote:
| That was the going assumption as far as I understood (I'm from
| the area). They're hasn't been direct health advise on areas to
| avoid either, so it's slightly disconcerting.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Bathurst and Moncton are far enough apart that I'd rule that
| out.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I would generally agree, except in wonder what the
| aquifers/groundwater looks like in that region and also the
| sea water along that coast (likely more of a biological
| source than an industrial one in that case, I think).
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| My bet is on either bacterial or agricultural source
| contaminating well water.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Why do you think that, and what do you mean by
| "agricultural source"?
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Well water contamination is common and people are
| increasingly neglecting to test on a regular schedule.
| One of the symptoms listed is gastrointestinal upset
| which makes me think it could be something that was
| ingested. They mention that Roger's condition has
| stabilized now that he's in a care home, tenuous but it
| seems location change resulted in change in progression
| of symptoms. By agricultural I mean waste from livestock.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Which of these is isolated to agriculture pollution, but
| not industrial pollution?
| admash wrote:
| Compounding USDA's lax practices has been its refusal to allow
| beef processors to independently test cattle for mad cow disease.
| In 2004, Creekstone Farms, a Kansas processor of black Angus beef
| with a large Japanese clientele, asked for permission to test its
| 300,000 cattle for BSE using a $500,000 testing site it had built
| to USDA specifications.
|
| But the agency ruled that the BSE test was licensed only for
| "surveillance" of animal health, and rejected Creekstone's
| request because it implied "a consumer safety aspect" that was
| "not scientifically warranted."
|
| https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/uoia-ftf0515...
| caymanjim wrote:
| > But the agency ruled that the BSE test was licensed only for
| "surveillance" of animal health, and rejected Creekstone's
| request because it implied "a consumer safety aspect" that was
| "not scientifically warranted."
|
| I read this as "you can test your animals if you want to, but
| you can't then use the results to make any claim or statement
| about them". I suspect they're free to test their animals, but
| not free to stamp "100% tested BSE-free beef!" on their steaks.
| I suspect this is what's meant by "surveillance". If that's the
| case, I agree with the gov't; private testing shouldn't be used
| to make claims. But it could be used for internal product
| safety, and if anything comes back positive, the USDA could be
| brought in to verify and take action.
|
| It's not entirely clear to me from the article.
| admash wrote:
| The "fun" question is whether prions are present in milk and
| other dairy products. One might argue that they are not, by
| virtue of them being largely localized to neural tissue.
|
| Of course, this raises the question of how CWD is being
| transmitted in elk, since elk don't eat elk.
|
| "Scientists believe CWD proteins (prions) likely spread between
| animals through body fluids like feces, saliva, blood, or
| urine, either through direct contact or indirectly through
| environmental contamination of soil, food or water."
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/transmission.html
|
| Milk is clearly a body fluid, though is curiously absent from
| the above statement.
|
| And as other comments about the difficulty of sterilizing
| prions make clear, pasteurization will have no effect.
| jtdev wrote:
| Prions persist in soil for years; elk eat where other elk
| have deposited prions.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Years? Oh jeez. The soil is covered with brain eating
| murder proteins?
| robbiep wrote:
| CWD was innoculated in a deer by insuflating prion bound
| with clay
| TheGallopedHigh wrote:
| Insuflation: the act of blowing on or breathing on
| titanomachy wrote:
| In this case likely means inhalation through the nose
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Yeah, the sense of smell is a basal one. The nasal cavity
| has bazillions of nerve endings that are almost directly
| wired to the brain.
|
| That's why so many drugs are snorted. It works faster
| than just about anything else other than direct
| intravenous injection.
| robbiep wrote:
| That's not at all why drugs work quickly through the nose
| - it has absolutely nothing to do with nerve endings, it
| has everything to do with a large surface area of mucus
| membranes allowing quick uptake into the venous system.
| dnautics wrote:
| They arent just localized to neural tissue; they are in high
| concentration in the tongue, which is probably why grazing
| animals are so susceptible
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| This is pretty messed up. As long as you meet legal
| requirements any additional testing should be permissible,
| caveat emptor.
| eganp wrote:
| The risk of cow->human BSE transmission is infinitesimal.
| Species barriers in prions are surprisingly strong and, for
| practical purposes, nearly impermeable [0]. In fact, the Prion
| Protein (PrP) in humans causes multiple distinct diseases
| including CJD, Kuru, and FFI. Infectious prion confirmations
| are probably highly influenced by glycosylation [1,2]. Even if
| this testing wasn't god awfully slow, it's unclear one learns
| anything from it.
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2736662/ [1]
| https://www.cureffi.org/2013/05/05/prion-protein-n-linked-gl...
| [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.14.431014v2
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >The risk of cow->human BSE transmission is infinitesimal.
|
| I don't think your sources support this conclusion. bovine
| spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) rarely passes the species
| barrier, but it is difficult, if not impossible to estimate
| what the rate is in the absence of mitigations.
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| What you are saying is dangerous. We had a serious set of
| exactly these transmission events in Britain only a few
| decades ago. Clearly the risk is not infinitesimal.
| mannerheim wrote:
| This is an incomplete description of the USDA's rationale.
| Although I agree that there shouldn't be a ban on private
| testing, the USDA's position is that BSE testing is ineffective
| at the time most cows are slaughtered, and would therefore
| provide an unwarranted impression of safety.
|
| > NOT A FOOD SAFETY TEST
|
| > BSE tests are not conducted on cuts of meat, but involve
| taking samples from the brain of a dead animal to see if the
| infectious agent is present. We know that the earliest point at
| which current tests can accurately detect BSE is 2-to-3 months
| before the animal begins to show symptoms. The time between
| initial infection and the appearance of symptoms is about 5
| years. Since most cattle that go to slaughter in the United
| States are both young and clinically normal, testing all
| slaughter cattle for BSE might offer misleading assurances of
| safety to the public.
|
| > ...
|
| > Why doesn't USDA test every animal at slaughter?
|
| > There is currently no test to detect the disease in a live
| animal. BSE is confirmed by taking samples from the brain of an
| animal and testing to see if the infectious agent - the
| abnormal form of the prion protein - is present. The earliest
| point at which current tests can accurately detect BSE is 2 to
| 3 months before the animal begins to show symptoms, and the
| time between initial infection and the appearance of symptoms
| is about 5 years. Therefore, there is a long period of time
| during which current tests would not be able to detect the
| disease in an infected animal.
|
| > Since most cattle are slaughtered in the United States at a
| young age, they are in that period where tests would not be
| able to detect the disease if present. Testing all slaughter
| cattle for BSE could produce an exceedingly high rate of false
| negative test results and offer misleading assurances of the
| presence or absence of disease.
|
| > Simply put, the most effective way to detect BSE is not to
| test all animals, which could lead to false security, but to
| test those animals most likely to have the disease, which is
| the basis of USDA's current program.
|
| https://www.usda.gov/topics/animals/bse-surveillance-informa...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Thank you for the context!
| rvba wrote:
| Sounds like a way to not test anything at all.
|
| I really try to stay away from politics, but sounds as
| something made by some bribed political appointment.
| jfengel wrote:
| I'm curious why you'd say that. It sounds to me like a
| bureaucrat pointing out a scientific fact about the
| testing.
|
| I'm not an expert on testing for prions, but it doesn't
| surprise me that the test isn't good enough to pronounce an
| animal disease-free. And if that's correct, it's very much
| their purview to make it clear that advertising it as
| disease-free would be false.
|
| Most of the work at US agencies is done by career employees
| who are largely insulated from changes at the top. Politics
| certainly happens, but rarely at the level of individual
| decisions like this.
|
| Such agencies certainly aren't immune to regulatory
| capture, and it's conceivable that it's the case here. The
| scientists and bureaucrats who wrote that have likely
| worked with the cattle industry their whole careers, and
| have many personal contacts. Same for their bosses.
|
| But this memo turns on a specific technical point. If the
| tests aren't good enough, then they're not good enough. It
| wouldn't take regulatory capture for them to reach that
| conclusion, and this memo is exactly how they'd say it.
| It's also what it could sound like if they were being
| influenced by industry, but I'd say that the burden of
| proof is on somebody making that claim.
| throwaway_isms wrote:
| The rational middle ground would be to allow the private
| testing, but regulate any advertising or marketing of the
| testing and/or results on the basis it would likely confuse
| the consumers. If the interest in private testing magically
| disappears, then the intent is clear and might be a valuable
| factor for the consumers who might reasonably conclude the
| private company only had interest in performing testing they
| knew or should have known was immaterial for the purposes of
| marketing the testing to consumers as though it were
| material.
| gojomo wrote:
| This is the same error the CDC & FDA made in the early stages
| of COVID, insisting on fussy rationed tests based on hand-
| wavy ideas about public misinterpretation. That error likely
| contributed to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths by
| hiding initial community spread for a month or more.
|
| Mass testing, even testing that's mostly at a stage unlikely
| to detect anything, and only occasionally on less-typical
| older animals, will provide new useful info. Waiting to test
| until an a old symptomatic cow "most likely to have the
| disease" shows up is closing the barn door after the mad cows
| have already escaped.
|
| The USDA's logic is dangerous like the bureaucratic rationing
| of COVID tests, early on. At crucial times in early 2020, no
| matter how suspicious a case/death, and how well it fit COVID
| symptoms, if the patient hadn't returned from Wuhan in the
| last few weeks, a test was prohibited. That's a "we don't
| want to know" policy.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Considering the history of the meat industry, I'm OK with not
| allowing the farms to police themselves.
| macksd wrote:
| I think there's a pretty fundamental difference between
| "allowing farms to police themselves" and actually
| prohibiting them from doing voluntary testing for diseases. I
| would compare it to the difference between eliminating a need
| for prescriptions and prohibiting people from getting
| screened for skin cancer on the regular.
|
| Is there a better reason to prohibit voluntary testing than
| what is included in the article?
| rapind wrote:
| Are they being prohibited from testing though, or just
| prohibited from making safety claims based on those tests?
| shkkmo wrote:
| That isn't what is happening. The USDA is prohibiting
| suplemental testing. The allegation is that this is because
| that might reveal cases of infection that would show the USDA
| testing policies are not sufficient.
|
| Thus the USDA is placing their reputation over the health of
| US citizens.
| vkou wrote:
| Another poster makes the argument that the USDA does not
| prohibit supplemental testing, it just prohibits making
| safety claims on the basis of supplemental testing.
|
| I find their argument far more persuasive than yours. Is
| there more to yours?
| jtdev wrote:
| Considering the history of the USDA, I'm not okay with the
| USDA having final say in determining what I or my family put
| on the dinner table.
| NationalPark wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_A
| g...
|
| This?
| jtdev wrote:
| No, I'm referring to the regulatory capture and revolving
| door culture at USDA that has allowed Monsanto et. al.,
| to douse your kids cereal with glyphosate, refuse hemp
| production in the U.S., water down the Organic Governance
| Board with corporate shills, etc., etc.
| creamytaco wrote:
| I stopped eating US beef many years ago for this very reason.
| The Japanese are not stupid and it's quite obvious that
| something fishy is going on.
|
| Knowing what we know about the practices of most US beef farms
| and the countless USDA failures in both detection and
| enforcement of rules/regulations meant to protect the consumer,
| I think it's the wise path to take for everyone living here.
| fareesh wrote:
| I lived in Fredericton for about 7 years and have been around the
| province a bit. The air in Moncton is definitely unusual. I
| wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with it.
| kgin wrote:
| Interesting. In what way is the air unusual?
| w0de0 wrote:
| Ah, it must be malaria!
| dnautics wrote:
| > CJD test came back negative
|
| So a CJD test is usually staining a biopsy with congo red and
| observing apple-green birefringence in the image. This
| _generally_ works to detect amyloid plaques, which is common to
| all prions. So unless there was a lab mistake, the prion is
| localized elsewhere from where the biopsies are being done (FFI,
| for example, localizes to a different part of the brain) or they
| were using some other procedure, it 's seems pretty unlikely this
| is a prion disease.
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| Are there other tests to determine prion disease related brain
| degeneration? Seems hard to believe they can't identify at all
| what the cause is.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I do wonder if it's possible that vaccines that are designed to
| make the body produce certain parts of the spike protein could
| lead to prion diseases accidentally. Are we sure of the proteins
| coded for and also that this coding can't produce misfolded
| proteins? It's pretty unlikely but also we don't have long term
| testing of these proteins in the body.
|
| * please note I've had the first dose of Astra Zeneca and intend
| to get the second.
| wobblyasp wrote:
| I'm unsure of how vaccines are related here. First case was in
| 2015, and cases are relatively contained to an area
| devit wrote:
| Seems like prions only "infect" the same kind of protein, so a
| misfolded spike protein that the vaccine might produce would
| only cause other spike proteins to misfold, and they almost
| surely don't occur naturally in human tissue so there should be
| no risk at all.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Excellent explanation I guess the short term effects of
| producing these proteins is pretty small, that's good to
| know.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| As I commented below, I have only drawn loose correlations
| with no direct evidence as well... so to hear the mechanics
| of prion misfiling other same proteins is much appreciated.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| I'm wondering if the original Covid infection runs the risk for
| latent prion issues too --
|
| There's just no reason for the mass hysteria from governments
| from what I've seen spread amongst my friends - and I run
| dangerously close to leaving the "anecdotal data gravity well"
| with how many observations I've tracked, deaths included.
|
| It felt like they were withholding some long term effects to
| keep everyone calm.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| More people dead of Covid than TBC is not enough in your mind
| to make it a serious risk? How can you jump to prions (which
| no other viral disease has ever been known to cause) before
| simply looking at the massive death toll, despite the
| unprecedented restrictions?
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Perhaps I'm a bit too relative in thinking our threshold
| for responding to pandemics should be in proportion to the
| response than previously seen pandemics and events... so
| here's what I mean:
|
| "Any mortality comparisons between these two pandemics in
| the United States, 2020 and 1918, must differentiate
| between totals and rates. The current US population, a
| little more than 330 million, is more than three times
| larger than the population in 1918, estimated at 105
| million. The 675,000 deaths attributed to the influenza
| epidemic made up 0.64 percent of the total population, a
| little more than six in every thousand people. By contrast,
| the more than 500,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 make up
| about 0.15 percent of the total population, or between one
| and two in every thousand people. If COVID-19 caused deaths
| at the same rate as the 1918 epidemic, the total would
| approach two million. Even the disturbing projections of
| more than to 600,000 deaths by July 1, 2021, would still
| remain below the rates recorded in the earlier epidemic."
|
| https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hblog20210329.512
| 9...
|
| So, by one token, you could say we did better through the
| response of drastic measures...
|
| Or we could note that the world didn't perform wide scale
| testing in the 1918-1919 pandemic to determine how many
| other seemingly unrelated deaths also contained Spanish
| Flu, or how many pandemic cases they really had back then.
|
| So without knowing how many contracted both sets of
| viruses, it's tough to make a call on the R0, but could a
| rough approximation of a pandemic's severity could be the
| proportion of populations, strata by types (age, whatever
| you'd like), that experienced fatalities?
|
| If so, does that mean the flu then was worse? What was the
| world response at that time? I'll bore you less and say
| that the measures taken then were no where near as strict
| as those now.
|
| So comparing that response to this new worlds response...
| why does there appear to be a disproportionate response
| that appears more strict in this age than the last?
|
| Many possible answers can fit the set of facts above... one
| extremely unlikely answer I've entertained is that the
| Covid-19 infection is latent in nature and could cause
| issues down the line.
|
| Prions share in that characteristic in some research... as
| in they have a latent emergence that some have been thought
| to be misdiagnosed as dementia or the like, when in fact it
| is probably mad cow disease.
|
| So those super, super loose correlations I look at and say,
| "hmm if someone tells me Covid causes a latent prion
| disease with solid facts, I wouldn't be surprised" -- I'm
| mot advocating that is what's happening, I'm just saying
| ruling it out as completely invalid without evidence is a
| little short sighted.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Why would you compare the death rates from a pandemic
| that happened immediately following a devastating world
| war, with famine and poverty all across the globe, at the
| very beginning of real medicine, in a world of borders;
| with one happening in 2020 in a globalized world where we
| have access to much more advanced medical knowledge, and
| where an outbreak in Wuhan can become an epidemic in New
| York?
|
| Not to mention, the initial death tolls in the unprepared
| places, like Lombardia in Italy or Iran, should be
| motivation enough for a quick and decisive response.
| Unfortunately, neither the US nor Europe nor Russia were
| smart enough to take such an approach, and instead of a
| quick and thorough lockdown + contact tracing that would
| have hurt daily life for maybe 2 months before back to
| normal, with almost no casualties (see Vietnam to note
| that this was entirely possible), we are getting 2 years
| of lukewarm responses that leave the same order of
| magnitude of deaths as the 1918 pandemic.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| That's a thoughtful discussion, and I hear your points,
| I'm just keeping a bit of "open weights" to the
| possibilities.
|
| To your point, we are more medically advanced and can
| track cell phones across the globe, which in some ideas
| could mean we need to respond less in an aggressive
| amputation of economies and more focused proper risk
| assessments - which also means I would have advocated
| from the beginning to ground all travel (air esp) and any
| economic activity to assess the situation for a month or
| two.
|
| So when evaluating Italy or Iran, we should be doing
| genetic testing and massive analysis on who gets severe
| vs mild cases, and is is a heritable trait that could
| explain anomalies in various communities.
|
| Again, beautiful discussion... not saying you're wrong,
| just leaving options open.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| India is currently at 3.5k deaths _per day_. Anyone who's
| been paying attention knows that the issue at hand isn't
| that COVID is some kind of super-disease, but that it
| causes a strain on emergency medical resources that can
| quickly cause chaos. Ventilator resources used up, oxygen
| unavailable, etc.
|
| There's no need to come up with a new conspiracy theory
| about COVID every day. The facts are way more boring, but
| it all does ultimately check out.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Right on - I would just say fairly early on in this
| process we knew what Covid did when to who and how, but
| we didn't adjust the strategy in the US to match the new
| information. Which left a big gaping 'Why'? (and yes,
| easily filled in with p < 0.05 possibilities)
| peteretep wrote:
| > Several patients have presented with transient "Capgras
| delusion", a psychiatric disorder in which a person believes
| someone close to them has been replaced by an impostor.
|
| > "It's quite disturbing because, for instance, a patient would
| tell his wife: 'Sorry ma'am you cannot get in bed, I'm a married
| man' and even if the wife gives her name, he'd say: 'You're not
| the real one,'" Dr Marrero says.
|
| You could spice up a lot of marriages if you could harmlessly
| cause Capgras delusion for a few hours
| medstrom wrote:
| As long as you induce it consensually, right? It sure would be
| uncomplicated, no real third party needed.
| regularfry wrote:
| That... wouldn't work. Consent must be continually given, and
| for Capgras to work you can't be aware it's a delusion at the
| time you're experiencing it.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I think the idea is that if you wanted to spice up a
| marriage with an affair, you could use this to "cheat" on
| your spouse with your spouse. Both parties would be
| consenting the whole time. One would just think they are
| cheating.
| regularfry wrote:
| Oh, I understand the concept. It's broken. If I am
| "consenting", but not to the action that's _actually_
| happening, I am not, in fact, consenting. If I believe
| that I am consenting to sex with someone that 's not my
| husband, in that moment I am _not_ consenting to sex with
| my husband. If they then have sex with me, _knowing that
| that is my state of mind_ , that is non-consensual.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Prion diseases terrify me. Especially having been in the UK
| eating beef at the time of the BSE outbreaks in the 1990s.
|
| I wonder if there have been studies on the scale of potential
| latent vCJD/Prion disease in the population?
| jeswin wrote:
| I lost someone very close to me to sporadic CJD. This was some
| time back, but the episode is one of the most troubling moments
| in my life because of the suffering it inflicts on the patient
| - the hallucinations with no way to communicate or to stop it.
| jeffkeen wrote:
| I lost my mom this way in 2016 and nothing has made me wish
| for legal euthanasia more than witnessing that suffering and
| decline.
| hyko wrote:
| There is ongoing surveillance from the National CJD Research &
| Surveillance Unit:
| https://www.cjd.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/figs.pdf
| [deleted]
| arisAlexis wrote:
| What happens if for example nestle has a contaminated factory
| product that millions eat and we will know it in 10 years from
| now?
| codingbeer wrote:
| Whenever a topic about something that could potentially destroy
| humanity comes up (say, climate issues), there is always some
| comment that makes a reasonable argument of why things are not
| as bad as they seem.
|
| This never happens when prions are the topic.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| The simplest counterpoint to prion cataclysm fear is that it
| hasn't happened yet. That implies a low chance that it'll
| happen anytime in the near future.
|
| There's no evidence that any significant human population has
| ever been wiped out by prions at any point in the history of
| the species. Heck, we haven't even observed widespread (>10%
| infected) prion disease in _any_ species.
|
| At least with something like climate change, there's the fact
| that post-industrial activity is doing something different
| than pre-industrial history. But this reasoning doesn't hold
| for prion cataclysm. It's more like asteroid apocalypse. Yes
| it could happen, but statistically it's not something we have
| to worry about on a civilizational timeframe.
|
| I don't see any justification for why humanity in 2021 is
| courting prion disaster to a greater degree than it was in
| 2000 BC. Animal husbandry has existed for fifteen thousand
| years. Maybe globalization would spread a prion outbreak
| faster. But the point is we've never even observed localized
| prion collapse. If prions were that dangerous, there should
| already be regional areas that have transformed into total
| no-go zones.
| cwkoss wrote:
| If a significant human population was wiped out in history
| - how would we know it was prions?
| XorNot wrote:
| Conversely industrialized meat production is relatively
| recent, and so the volume of prion's being introduced into
| the environment is potentially much higher then the rate at
| which they are degrading naturally, not to mention the
| degree of regional cross-mixing of sources.
|
| Prion contamination can now be shipped around the world in
| about 24 hours, where it can enter new populations much
| more easily.
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| > regional cross-mixing of sources.
|
| This is the part that worries me. If something happened
| like this even 300-400 years ago, it would probably just
| wipe out that village.
| [deleted]
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| This is the right way to think about it. That said, a 1%
| infection rate that isn't at all a threat to the species
| given normal biological processes* will cause us to
| completely flip our shit. While we wouldn't be wiped out,
| everybody would be real upset for a long while. Look at
| COVID.
|
| *Technology has given us things like nukes, so...could be
| harder to predict these days.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >I don't see any justification for why humanity in 2021 is
| courting prion disaster to a greater degree than it was in
| 2000 BC.
|
| Because the 'scientific' community need to keep their jobs.
| You know they too have mortgages to pay...
|
| So... point being there is endless stream of fear mongering
| (some of which ends up being true) to justify their
| existence.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Proteins do eventually break down in the environment. If
| you hugely multiply the number of humans and population
| density, you are creating a situation where prion diseases
| can become endemic where they couldn't have been before.
|
| This is probably exactly what happened with CWD - deer
| overpopulation plus the random protein misfold created the
| conditions for a contagious disease where it didn't exist
| before.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Do we know how long prions have been there?
|
| I'm not afraid of being hit by some asteroid hanging there,
| but if one day we spotted an asteroid whose trajectory was
| straight to earth, then being terrified would be quite
| legitimate.
| Teever wrote:
| > I don't see any justification for why humanity in 2021 is
| courting prion disaster to a greater degree than it was in
| 2000 BC.
|
| While the kinds of people who would fly planes into
| buildings, release nerve toxins in subway stations or club
| entire villages of outsiders to death have always existed
| the ability to research and manufacture prions did not
| exist in 2000BC.
|
| That combination of desire to destroy the world and the
| legitimate ability to do it with rapidly more accessible
| biotechnology is a disconcerting reality that we need to
| account for when discussing theses things.
|
| Imagine a religious extremists organization mass producing
| prions and placing them in key parts of food supply chain.
| We probably wouldn't have a clue until it was too late.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Biotech as a whole and its misuse by fanatics (or public
| servants in states with dubious moral ...) is a massive
| concern for the 21th century, but I don't really think
| prions deserve a special place in this list. There's way
| too much scary things in here (gene drive, artificial
| viruses, intentional smallpox spreading, etc.)
| Teever wrote:
| That may be the case but it's a different issue than "Why
| are prions more of a threat to humanity than they were 4k
| years ago?"
|
| With that said I sort of disagree with you. Prions are
| particularly attractive to a hypothetical bioterrorist
| due to the difficulty in detecting them, their durability
| and also the delay on effects. As I said above, once you
| know you have a problem it will be too late.
|
| Keep in mind these are just the prions that nature has
| produced. It is quite possible that humans are able to
| modify existing threatening prions or develop whole new
| classes of threatening prions that haven't developed in
| nature.
|
| Overall I think the most effective strike from a
| bioterrorist won't come from a single attack vector but a
| well timed combination of vectors. We've seen how
| something as minor as COVID has taken all of our
| attention and resources, now imagine if a terrorist timed
| something like COVID with a follow up strike like prions.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Or could it be that we have it and don't know it. Alzheimer
| cases are growing as we remove other causes of death.
| Dementia is just accepted as a consequence of growing old.
| It not like we section every brain of an old person who
| dies.
|
| We only noticed it on our farm animals because we brought
| the cycle time down as we fed downer cows to other cows as
| a source of protein
| TomSwirly wrote:
| What's this "we"? Some of us aren't going to get CJD
| because we aren't implicated in this whole cow-eating
| activity.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Actually, there is some good news. Many types of prions
| diseases do not spread from animals to humans (so far). There
| have been some studies around this with CWD, but also Scapie
| has been around for hundreds or even thousands of years and
| never made the jump. Even in areas with CWD, we see that herd
| numbers do typically rebound. It's believed that there is
| some genetic factor that prevents the onset of the symptoms,
| like the body's proteins are less likely to fold in that way,
| so you only accumulate what you eat, or that the body can
| clean up the misfolded proteins. So it's not like it would
| wipe out everyone. I think I remember reading that some
| people are also researching prion treatments with some
| limited sucess. I would imagine they would come up with
| something even more quickly if there was a epidemic type of
| situation, similar to how medical researchers around the
| world focused on covid.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Not to be a doomer but there are scenarios where neither
| genetic variation nor research would solve the problem. The
| correct mix of virality, incubation and lethality would do
| it. Pneumonic plague is terrifyingly close. I wish there
| was a bigger interest and investment in biology, I think
| it's the only viable path forward for humanity.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I was just discussing prions. Other pathogens do seem to
| present a bigger risk. I don't think anything would have
| 100% kill rate. Even weaponized microbes have like 99.8%
| or something. That still leaves about 16 million people.
| Plus there's all those preppers with their bunkers, some
| uncontacted tribes, people who live in isolated areas.
| Then it becomes more of a matter of how to organize, do
| they have the knowledge to survive in those types of
| conditions, etc. The species will survive, but it will be
| a very different world.
| medstrom wrote:
| You jinxed it, so I'll be the "some comment": prions won't
| spread everywhere all at once, so humanity will probably
| self-isolate in at least a few prion-free clusters.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, prion diseases are very rare in humans (or at least
| their transmission is rare), and there is no evolutive
| pressure to create a super-prion that can infect more people,
| like happens with other pathogens. Thus, the most likely
| situation is that it will continue to be very rare until we
| are able to change it into virtually non-existent by
| technology.
|
| They are a really scary thing, but it's a meteor strike style
| of scary, nobody really expects it to happen before we can
| deal with it.
| piker wrote:
| Actually there is a positive anecdote often cited. The Fore
| people of New Guinea engaged in ritual cannibalism which lead
| to the propagation of prions across generations. When they
| stopped, the generations of disease also stopped.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
| joshuaissac wrote:
| The Fora people even developed a prion that confers
| resistance to kuru:
|
| > researchers [...] discovered a naturally occurring
| variant of a prion protein in a population from Papua New
| Guinea that confers strong resistance to kuru
|
| > This community [...] has developed their own biologically
| unique response [...] this genetic evolution has happened
| in a matter of decades
| stormdennis wrote:
| Many countries would not allow people who lived in the UK
| during the 80s and 90s to give blood. I ate so many burgers
| back then too. Our kids after they were born weren't allowed
| beef for years.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| Yep I'm one of them. Lived in the UK in the early 80's as a
| child. Gave blood for the first time when I was in college in
| the 90's to the Red Cross here in the US, and they mailed me
| back saying to never give blood again but didn't specify a
| reason. It wasn't until a few years later that I found out
| why. And the fact I might have a prion disease lurking in my
| blood sometimes terrifies me.
| stormdennis wrote:
| I don't think it's a concern any more. The trajectory of
| cases that should have occurred if CJD was widespread in
| the community, never happened. One consequence of this is
| the blood donation ban has been lifted in most countries, I
| think.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Is there a blood test for that?
| stuff4ben wrote:
| I don't think so. I believe it was a screening question.
| Which was odd since they allowed me to give blood at that
| time.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Well they got your sample for testing going forward.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Did prions survive cooking? I'd have thought cooking the beef
| would have killed them.
| colechristensen wrote:
| If you took affected neural tissue and burned it to ash on a
| wood fire, there remains (although low) infective potential
| but probably only if you were trying in a lab. It takes 1000
| C incineration to defeat infectivity and even then they're
| still detectable.
|
| Composting so the proteins are broken down biologically is
| also an alternative.
|
| No amount of cooking prions that leave anything you want to
| eat makes infected material safe.
| robbiep wrote:
| I'm not so sure about the composting - the breakdown of
| organic material (well, protein in this case) in soils is
| largely brought about by proteases and proteases are
| largely ineffective
| giantg2 wrote:
| Agree that cooking is not an option.
|
| You can actually get that 1000C down to 600C if you also
| soak the tissue in acid prior to burning.
| FredPret wrote:
| That pretty much describes how I cook my steaks, a nice
| H2SO4 marinade followed by ten minutes in a bonfire
| shoemakersteve wrote:
| As long as you don't put ketchup on it.
| Hypergraphe wrote:
| Yes they do. From wikipedia : Prion aggregates are stable,
| and this structural stability means that prions are resistant
| to denaturation by chemical and physical agents: they cannot
| be destroyed by ordinary disinfection or cooking. This makes
| disposal and containment of these particles difficult.
| rndude wrote:
| Prions are incredible hard to destroy.
|
| To quote from Wikipedia:
|
| `Prion aggregates are stable, and this structural stability
| means that prions are resistant to denaturation by chemical
| and physical agents: they cannot be destroyed by ordinary
| disinfection or cooking.`
| iagovar wrote:
| That's not good.
| homero wrote:
| Are prions contagious through contact or only eating?
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's not entirely true. They know that bleach can be used
| against CWD for surface decontamination. I would call a
| 50/50 bleach water solution quite common for disinfectant.
|
| https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/household-
| blea...
| StavrosK wrote:
| Oooof...
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Iirc hospitals that treat patients with prion diseases
| incinerate all materials that contact the patients. I don't
| know how they sanitize the rooms but it can't be cheap or
| eco friendly.
| XorNot wrote:
| Chemical agents which cause protein-crosslinking would be
| the preferred method - you can broadly make every side-
| group reactive and cause them all to stitch together with
| anything else organic, which tends to inactivate them
| (makes them a big blob which can't do much).
|
| But it's nasty stuff to work with, since it also happily
| does tons of damage to the proteins making up the humans
| applying it.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Do you have an example of such a chemical being used to
| effectively remediate prion contaminated environments?
| XorNot wrote:
| Apparently not: I was thinking glutaraldehyde which is
| used for cleaning in hospitals but reading up the advice
| for prions is explicitly opposed to cross-linking agents.
|
| Which makes sense I guess but it's also scary.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| You raised my hopes and dashed them exquisitely.
|
| Until we have better, cheaper, and less error prone
| methods of remediating prion diseases they're the #1 fear
| on my biological apocalypse list.
| turing_complete wrote:
| Destroying prions is eco friendly.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Humans need a non toxic environment. Plants, and life in
| general, will find a way. With, and without, us.
| Anon4Now wrote:
| Sterrad sterilization machines, which use a hydrogen
| peroxide gas plasma, have been shown to be very effective
| against CJD (mad cow) and other prion diseases. However
| they are very expensive, and almost 20 years after their
| launch there are only 20k systems installed world wide.
| ashildr wrote:
| A plasma of H2O2 sounds like the definition of a reactive
| environment...
| neartheplain wrote:
| Yes, prions can survive cooking. Emphasis mine:
|
| > 134 degC (273 degF) for 18 minutes in a pressurized steam
| autoclave has been found to be _somewhat_ effective in
| deactivating the agent of disease
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion#Sterilization
| basicplus2 wrote:
| Yes and they can pass on to other patients from surgical
| tools
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/surgical-
| exposure...
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The only way to destroy prions is to destroy all protein in
| the material. What's left wouldn't be worth eating.
| petre wrote:
| Yes they do, unfortunately. And there are recently discovered
| cases of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in elk, deer and moose
| worldwide. I hope it doesn't pass to humans. For the time
| being I'll refrain from eating game.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I would be more worried about beef. There has been no
| evidence of CWD jumping to humans, but there has been for
| BSE.
|
| Also, do you have a link for the distribution? My
| understanding is that it is spread over a large geographic
| area, but that it's found in smaller clumps.
| Hypergraphe wrote:
| Yep, been there in the 90s, scary shit.
| one2three4 wrote:
| I skimmed through it but my understanding is that this is not a
| prion outbreak. At least the relevant tests come back negative.
| Did I get it wrong?
| NoGravitas wrote:
| It's not a _known_ prion, like CJD. It could still possibly
| be an unknown prion. Or any number of other things.
| gadders wrote:
| I lived through it. I mean, it was scary, but the risks were
| low.
|
| I remember my landlord and his girlfriend at the time saying
| they were going to give up beef due to the risks. They said
| this whilst smoking cigarettes.
| eloff wrote:
| People are so good at ignoring large daily risks and freaking
| out about tiny unknown risks.
|
| Just look how many people are scared of the covid19 vaccines,
| but take bigger risks in their morning commute. Actually if
| you just stick to the AstraZenica vaccine with the risk of
| blood clots - you take a bigger risk just getting out of bed
| in the morning, even if you never leave the house.
| dnautics wrote:
| Yes and no. The vaccines are by definition new and
| untested. That the blood clots appeared suggests that the
| unknown surface area of the vaccine is higher than we
| expected; whereas the almost all of the risk on your
| commute are known _and_ preventable.
|
| For example let's say the vaccine causes a side effect that
| appears only two years from now; then you wouldn't
| necessarily be correct in asserting that the morning
| commute is more dangerous. By contrast, the morning commute
| causing an unknown side effect in two years is highly
| unlikely.
|
| (For the record I'm vaccinated)
| thehappypm wrote:
| Prions cannot evolve, which is why they represent such a tiny
| space in diseases. They're really more a quirk of chemistry
| than biology.
| orblivion wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is the case. They replicate. There
| might be an error in replication, no? Or is that just really
| hard? Is it that their existence is in a sweet spot, and
| nothing even marginally different would work the same way?
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| They can't evolve independently but biological systems that
| produce proteins can evolve new proteins and new ways of
| manipulating proteins. A nightmare scenario would be a
| bacterial or viral mutation that produced a deadly prion.
| robbiep wrote:
| A nightmare scenario for me is the creation of mRNA coding
| for a misfolded PRNP being weaponised.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I don't think you need to worry too much about that,
| honestly. as far as bioweapons go mRNA is pretty
| involved.. if you need to inject your victim, that's
| already way too complicated. bioweapons are much more
| oriented towards tainting water supplies or air.
| robbiep wrote:
| I know a huge amount about the level of technical skill
| required to do something with mRNA. It's involved today.
|
| But in many ways it's less technically involved than
| (re)creating the horse pox vaccine from scratch.
|
| And in 20 years it could be as simple as something
| aerosolised (there are already research projects for
| nasal mRNA vaccines) we don't know quite yet where this
| will all lead to - PRNP is small enough at 200-odd amino
| acids long that it can be easily encoded on mRNA and as a
| fucked up disease vector that's surely worse than
| anything viral - a timebomb sitting in everyone's
| bloodstreams waiting 5-50 years to go off
| thehappypm wrote:
| This feels like being worried about sharks evolving machine
| guns.
| tauntz wrote:
| Prions terrify me as well because it seems like there's no
| stopping them..
|
| > In 2015, researchers at The University of Texas Health
| Science Center at Houston found that plants can be a vector for
| prions. When researchers fed hamsters grass that grew on ground
| where a deer that died with chronic wasting disease (CWD) was
| buried, the hamsters became ill with CWD, suggesting that
| prions can bind to plants, which then take them up into the
| leaf and stem structure, where they can be eaten by herbivores,
| thus completing the cycle. It is thus possible that there is a
| progressively accumulating number of prions in the environment
| senthil_rajasek wrote:
| There is also a study from 2014 that suggests that prions
| were not detected in stems even though the roots of wheat
| plants were exposed to them. I don't know if there is
| conclusive evidence yet on getting sick by eating a plant
| based diet.
|
| "This suggests wheat was unable to transport sufficient
| PrP(TSE) from the roots to the stem to be detectable by the
| methods employed."
|
| Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24509640/
| medstrom wrote:
| >It is thus possible that there is a progressively
| accumulating number of prions in the environment
|
| I really need to grow my own food.
| xeromal wrote:
| Make sure to keep the deer out!
| Xcelerate wrote:
| I had read this before. It's horrifying. How do you stop the
| chain reaction of proteins folding into lower energy states?
| It's not like a bacteria or virus; it's more like ice-nine,
| except instead of water it's your brain.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Bleach works as surface decontamination agent. They know it
| works for CWD, and I expect it works for others too.
| fao_ wrote:
| > Bleach works as surface decontamination agent. They
| know it works for CWD, and I expect it works for others
| too.
|
| I remember reading that nothing but incineration would
| work in the context of Food-and-Mouth disease, but it
| seems modern techniques in brain surgery do use bleach.
| Interesting.
|
| Essentially, the only thing that works is disintegrating
| the prions. You can't wash them off, since you're simply
| washing them into the water cycle. You can't deal with
| them in a way that preserves other biological matter,
| since they are proteins, disintegrating them means
| disintegrating any other proteins in that area.
| ben_w wrote:
| Foot-and-Mouth disease has a vaccine. I believe burning
| was for economic reasons: vaccination is expensive; the
| reproductive cycle (and by extension the population) is
| essentially human-controlled and the livestock population
| can recover quickly; and "we don't need to vaccinate"
| increases livestock sales.
| markdown wrote:
| Foot
| iamthepieman wrote:
| I'm missing the reference to foot and mouth disease. FMD
| is a viral infection and is not caused by prions.
| fao_ wrote:
| IIRC at the time the BSE outbreak in the UK[1] was
| referred to as "foot and mouth disease" and I've heard
| people refer to it as that since then. I wasn't even
| aware they were separate things.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_BSE_outbreak
| shkkmo wrote:
| There may have been some innacurate reporting, but FMD
| and BSE present very differently in humans so I doubt
| there was deep confusion.
| sokoloff wrote:
| For brain surgery, it seems like washing them off the
| implements and into the water cycle is still an enormous
| win in terms of risk.
| fao_ wrote:
| I'm not sure you understand how irresponsible that is.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That might be. I'm not an expert.
|
| Is it _more irresponsible_ than not removing them prior
| to operating on someone 's brain?
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Prions aren't new, they're probably as old as proteins- and
| they haven't ice-nined the world yet.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| To be fair, neither did ice-nine until somebody decided
| to eat it.
| adamhp wrote:
| This really puts it into perspective...
| Metacelsus wrote:
| Gene-drive to edit wild animals so that they don't express
| PRNP (or express a stabilized version)
| titanomachy wrote:
| Stabilized maybe, it's probably necessary for something
| even if we don't know what yet.
| anotha1 wrote:
| To save someone else the time, the "ice-nine" referred to
| in this comment is _fictional_.
| fao_ wrote:
| To be fair, "Cat's Cradle" is a famous work of science-
| fiction
| Xcelerate wrote:
| The funny thing is when I posted that, I hadn't heard of
| Cat's Cradle; I was just familiar with what the fictional
| ice-nine referred to.
| Izkata wrote:
| However, "ice IX" _is_ real and distinct from "Ice-
| nine", so clarity is worthwhile.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_IX
|
| Also I only know of Ice-nine because of fun facts like
| this, didn't even know the name of the story let alone
| have read it.
| anotha1 wrote:
| For which generation?
| fao_ wrote:
| Are there many noteworthy modern science fiction authors
| that hold up to the Asimov / Clarke / Lem generation? I
| would think someone reasonably versed in science fiction
| would have at least _heard_ of it -- I 'm a "zoomer" and
| I have.
| FpUser wrote:
| I read a lot including Sci-Fi and did not find any who
| are close. Does not mean they do not exist. Most likely
| not as famous and not exposed to wide public.
| intergalplan wrote:
| The actual _writing_ from a lot of the golden age and New
| Wave sci-fi authors is... OK at best, with a few
| exceptions (Bradbury 's distinctively poetic and
| dreamlike prose, for example). Tons of modern sci-fi
| authors write stories with more literary merit, better
| clarity, better-conveyed action, more believable
| characters and dialog, and so on. The improvements there
| are really obvious when reading, say, an early 70s _The
| Hugo Winners_ or collections of 1950s stories, and then a
| 90s _The New Hugo Winners_.
|
| Whether their ideas and worlds stand up to Asimov and
| company, or happen to be appealing to a particular
| reader, is another matter, but the _command of writing
| itself_ is overall better, I 'd say. I don't think a
| modern author would have much luck getting novels or
| stories in major magazines published with Asimov-tier
| dialog & characterization, for example.
|
| Plus those eras were full of tons of garbage, in addition
| to what we remember. New Wave (60s and 70s) in particular
| tended to some very _special_ interests that I don 't
| think have held up too well, with some exceptions. A lot
| of that era's stories are very in love with sex & drugs
| and not in a way that really translates into a good tale.
| Most of those aren't exactly well-beloved these days.
|
| On the flip side, there are definitely some modern sci-fi
| authors that are among the most famous but have some
| _serious_ problems putting together an entirely good
| novel. I 'll refrain from naming names but among them is
| maybe the only author whose book has ever made me _mad at
| them_ for wasting such a good idea, setting, and opening,
| by just having no damn follow-through and getting super
| lazy in the last 1 /3 or so. They're probably a top-5 sci
| fi name, among active authors today. But I stand by the
| overall quality level being notably higher on at least
| _some_ dimensions, and it 's even true for that guy.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > Asimov / Clarke / Lem
|
| Asimov's SF is, sadly, hard to read these days. Clarke
| has held up better but still a bit dated. Lem reads as
| fresh as ever, but he's not so well known.
|
| (What happened to Bradbury and Heinlein?)
|
| Gene Wolfe is only one generation younger than these
| guys, and he just died, but I consider him a better
| writer than all the others I mentioned except Lem.
| shkkmo wrote:
| We have a number of very good modern science fiction
| authors that easily rival them. While none of them may be
| as iconic, I think that has more to do with competition
| in the genre and breadth of the market.
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| Name some? My experience with authors like Cixin Liu and
| some contemporaries is that they are unreadable, this
| could just be bad translations in Liu's case but I'm not
| at all convinced modern writers rival the classical
| greats in SciFi.
| nitrogen wrote:
| For a new generation of 10000 every day.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| [deleted]
| intrasight wrote:
| Seminal work of sci-fi, I highly recommend if for no
| other reason than to get the ice-nine references you'll
| inevitably come across.
| TearsInTheRain wrote:
| Maybe this is a naive question, but your immune system works
| by identifying foreign proteins and killing those cells. Is
| there no way for your immune system to target cells
| contaminated with prions?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The fundamental issue with prions is that they are *not*
| foreign. Prions are legitimate proteins made by your own
| body but folded wrong. A misfolded protein acts like a
| catalyst to cause more misfolding. Prions are *not* alive,
| they have no ability to reproduce other than through
| misfolding existing proteins. It's basically a form of
| crystallization.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Antibodies are shape-sensitive though, so there could be
| antibodies targeting the mis-folded protein. In fact,
| maybe many people exposed to them where able to develop
| an immune response and we just don't know about it
| because these people never had any symptoms (think about
| the survivor bias, but in reverse, or from the point of
| view of the prion).
| withinboredom wrote:
| Since prions can be inhaled via aerosoles[1], I often wonder how
| long it will be until vaping causes prion diseases to rapidly
| spread. Or new prions to be introduced.
|
| [1]:
| https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| What on earth does vaping specifically have to do with the
| aerosol transmission of prions? Unless there are misfolded
| proteins in the liquid, but that's just as likely as them being
| in your beef, the air around you, someone chopping meat or
| anything else.
|
| Your vaping reference seems odd.
| withinboredom wrote:
| If (and it's a big if) they were in the liquid, someone
| walking down the street and hitting their vape could "infect"
| quite a lot of people. The delay between that point and the
| onset of symptoms would make it very hard to pinpoint the
| vape as the cause.
|
| It's just interesting to think about.
| shoemakersteve wrote:
| > It's just interesting to think about.
|
| Is it? Your line of thinking is really confusing to me. The
| likelihood of this happening by accident is effectively 0%.
| Even if it was intentional, this makes even less sense.
| Because then the person would not only have to find some
| prions to put in their vape, they would also have to inhale
| it themselves to then blow it into other people's faces?
|
| I just really don't understand where you're coming from or
| why you would say any of this.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Eh? Loads of bad stuff can be inhaled via aerosols so idk why
| you're mentioning prion diseases specifically. I mean not that
| long ago there was a lot of 'off the market' e-liquids that
| would cause popcorn lung.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Lots of aerosol "air fresheners" out there in operation too,
| that use petroleum gas as carriers. It's just accepted that
| it's fine to inhale petroleum gas.
| ilamont wrote:
| One of the questions used to screen blood donors in the U.S. is
| whether they lived in the U.K. in the early 1990s. If you answer
| "yes," you can't donate.
|
| The reason is the outbreak there of bovine spongiform
| encephalopathy (BSE, aka "mad cow disease") and the human variant
| mentioned in the article, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) which
| may lie dormant for decades IIRC.
| williesleg wrote:
| father's health rapidly declined.
|
| "He had delusions, hallucinations, weight loss, aggression,
| repetitive speech," he says
|
| Canada...sounds like liberalism disease to me.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Related to Havana Syndrome?
| r721 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "Despite patients showing no trace of any known prion diseases,
| it hasn't been completely ruled out as a cause, he says.
|
| Another theory is chronic exposure to what's called an
| "excitotoxin" like domoic acid, which was linked to a 1987 food
| poisoning incident from mussels contaminated with the toxin
| from the nearby province of Prince Edward Island.
|
| ...
|
| Dr Cashman says they are also looking at another toxin - beta-
| methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA) - which has been implicated as an
| environmental risk in the development of diseases like
| Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
|
| BMAA is produced by cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green
| algae."
| dmix wrote:
| You get plenty of excitotoxins from eating MSG which may be
| causing diseases too.
|
| The amount of msg in commercial food has doubled the last
| decade apparently.
|
| So much we don't know about the body and what we put in it.
| kossTKR wrote:
| Please source the MSG claim. Asians eat huge amounts of MSG
| and as far as i know there isn't any pandemic like mystery
| diseases floating around over there.
|
| Highly advanced surveillance systems in South Korea, Japan
| etc. would be more than able to pick up such things.
| dmix wrote:
| https://www.honeycolony.com/article/excitotoxins-fda-
| approve...
|
| For some reason my edit immediately after making the post
| didn't make it but I meant to include this with a
| statement "I have no idea about the veracity of this
| claim or website".
|
| I'm not looking to defending this with one hard but it
| could be right.
| minitech wrote:
| If you have no idea about the veracity of this claim,
| it's irresponsible to flat-out write "you get plenty of
| excitotoxins from eating MSG".
| GordonS wrote:
| I hadn't heard this claim about MSG before. I did a quick
| search on Google, but didn't find anything that looked
| remotely reputable. I did a quick search on Google Scholar,
| and everything seemed to be refuting the claim. Do you have
| any sources you can share?
| arpa wrote:
| Yeah, the grandparent is talking out of their rear-end.
| MSG is well researched and relatively safe. There have
| been numerous studies refuting the existence of "Chinese
| restaurant syndrome" and/or attributing the symptoms to
| allergy to MSG. "Syndrome" was originally a self-reported
| case study and none subsequent studies with n>10 have
| been able to replicate the case.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| The original MSG/CRS "paper" was a hoax.
|
| Hell, it wasn't even a paper. It was more along the lines
| of a letter to the editor, IIRC. But a mixture of
| sinophobia and alt-med woo spread it far and wide.
| shawnz wrote:
| Do you mean to say MSG itself is an excitotoxin? It doesn't
| make sense to say there are excitotoxins in it. It's just a
| single compound.
| GioM wrote:
| The forests of New Brunswick are routinely sprayed with large
| amounts of glyphosphate herbicide.
|
| Is it possible that this is the cause, instead of prions?
|
| [1] https://www.conservationcouncil.ca/where-our-forest-is-
| being...
|
| [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/liberals-
| greens...
|
| [3] https://nben.ca/en/component/tags/tag/glyphosate-ban
|
| [4] http://www.stopsprayingnb.ca/?page_id=118
| bluGill wrote:
| No, glyphosphate is used in a lot of different places and is
| well studied. There are the usual conspiracy theories but the
| science is pretty strong.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| What science are you referring to? The most I've heard about
| it is the Bayer lawsuit.
|
| "A San Francisco jury initially awarded Johnson $289.2
| million after finding the chemical glyphosate in Roundup
| caused his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma" [1]
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/bayer-glyphosate-
| lawsuit/bay...
| decasteve wrote:
| A direct causal relationship is unlikely, however, the link
| between increased cyanobacteria in our waters and glyphosate
| spraying is possible and being studied elsewhere.
|
| New Brunswick also carried on with heavy spraying of DDT into
| the 1980s stopping much later than most places.
|
| There have been more diseased moose sightings in recent years
| too.
|
| What about the possibility of contaminated seafood?
|
| So many possibilities. Quite scary with no concrete answers.
| anonuser2 wrote:
| Thoughts on this guys? A potential greater risk of prions from
| the covid vaccine (Therapeutic)
|
| https://www.scivisionpub.com/pdfs/covid19-rna-based-vaccines...
| medstrom wrote:
| You really want to give anti-vaxxers more ammo over a
| "potential risk"?
|
| But welcome to HN.
| anonuser2 wrote:
| Yeah, well unfortunately there are anti-vaxxers but people
| who have genuine concerns over the long term safety of a
| completely experimental vaccine will be labeled as antivaxx
| to.
| medstrom wrote:
| Yes, it's a terrible idea to label them that way, so let's
| not. Still, we all bear some responsibility in keeping
| society sane, which might mean just declining to talk about
| evidence like this until it's solid.
| m1aw wrote:
| New account, publication is made by someone @vaccines.net which
| claims the following "We are concerned that the current
| outbreak of COVID-19 is actually a bioweapon attack and may be
| linked to the US anthrax attack of 2001, which originated from
| the US army base Fort Detrick."
|
| The publication has not been peer reviewed, and quotes several
| times articles published by the original author with similar
| claims.
|
| Are we spread miss information in HN now too?
| anonuser2 wrote:
| How is it misinfo? I am just saying it is a potential risk as
| you litterly fold proteins.
|
| What's wrong with questioning something completely
| experimental?
|
| Sure, it needs to be looked into more not a definite it is
| causing prions but could be a risk in the future.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| There was some research which suggested that a not insignificant
| number of dementia cases were actually misdiagnosed mad cow
| disease. Because CJD can stick around for a while without taking
| affect, I wouldn't be surprised.
| psyc wrote:
| This is a running gag for William Shatner's character in Boston
| Legal.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| I'm not a neurologist but maybe some of the prions from Mad Cow
| Disease can further the progression of dementia?
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| The age range starts at 18 for this outbreak.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| prions - scary shit.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| No evidence of prions so far.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I wonder how common diseases like this are that impact just one
| or just a handful of people?
| andai wrote:
| The long tail...
| londons_explore wrote:
| Indeed. You frequently hear "Everyone is different",
| "Symptoms can vary" and "Everyone acts differently to XYZ
| treatment".
|
| But perhaps these are all symptoms of diseases and
| combinations of diseases varying, rather than the people?
| Brakenshire wrote:
| " Although rare diseases may be individually rare, they are
| collectively common, with 1 in 17 people being affected by a
| rare disease at some point in their lives. "
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-rare-
| diseases-...
| jokoon wrote:
| I was scared for a bit.
|
| This reminds me that I first read about early cases of covid
| around october or november 2019.
| drran wrote:
| How and where you were able to read this?
| jokoon wrote:
| It made some news, it was suspicious cases of pneumonia in
| china. First time I read the article, I was like "uh oh". It
| did not make the headlines though, but it was still
| noticeable. I think I spotted it on reddit or hackernews.
| Maybe the article was on BBC? BBC has quite a good world
| coverage.
|
| I guess you can google news by year. I'm very certain those
| articles exist. Next time I heard about it, it was getting
| much worse.
| oblio wrote:
| I heard about Covid in January. It was still kind of
| localized, at the time, we didn't know much about it.
|
| Around mid-February I saw in the news that there was a
| somewhat big cluster in Italy and realized that everyone
| was screwed :-(
| ekianjo wrote:
| The first news about COVID were at the very end of
| december 2019 at least on mainstream media.
| oblio wrote:
| True, but between actually seeing the first news and
| figuring out: "Oh my God, this is going to be a global
| pandemic!", it took me a while. I think most people were
| in the same boat.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| My wife had taken a couple infectious diseases courses as
| part of her anthropology degree so she was tuned into
| this whole thing and the first article she read about it
| end of December I remember her freaking out. "Oh, great,
| another SARS-type virus has been found, we're screwed"
| and me being like "honey, you're being paranoid. relax."
|
| I hate it when she's right.
| Leherenn wrote:
| Some months back, I had the same recollection: an article
| about suspicious pneumonia cases in China published by the
| BBC sometimes in December. I did some searching, and
| nothing, I think the first article is from the 31st of
| December. Funny how the mind can trick you, maybe it is
| linked to "Deja vu" [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9j%C3%A0_vu
| Spare_account wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=suspicious+cases+of+pneumon
| i...
|
| This URL searches Google for your phrase "suspicious cases
| of pneumonia in china" filtered for results between Oct 1
| and Nov 30 2019
| samirelanduk wrote:
| I don't think there were any reports online until December
| 31st.
| satysin wrote:
| I journal daily and like to capture the news among my
| daily record. The first time I found COVID/Coronavirus
| mentioned by BBC News was January 3rd 2020
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50984025.
|
| It is of course possible I missed a story but before
| January 3rd there was little to no mainstream news
| coverage. It is quite frustrating to find accurate
| articles now as many sites are falsely returned in date
| range Google searches. All "mystery flu-like pneumonia"
| stories I've found reported in December 2019 are medical
| news so it is extremely unlikely someone would come
| across such an article as part of normal news reading.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| The BBC were definitely covering it in late December 2019
| - I distinctly remember the TV coverage on New Years Eve.
| satysin wrote:
| If you have any links to articles or news reports I would
| be very grateful.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Here is a western news report from mid November:
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/16/china-bubonic-
| plague-ou...
| dqv wrote:
| If you can get access to an archive of South China
| Morning Post that _hasn 't_ been scrubbed, the term you
| want to search for is "mystery pneumonia" or "sars like".
| satysin wrote:
| Thanks, I have several Chinese/Asia news sources from
| December however I was asking for a BBC reference as
| M2Ys4U mentioned it was reported by the BBC on New Years
| Eve and the earliest I have is January 3rd.
| dboreham wrote:
| btw this is where the "19" comes from.
| phyalow wrote:
| On January the 4th their were posters (printed A4) up on
| Public Transport in Hong Kong. I remember thinking it was
| very strange - I had heard a story on the BBC world
| service the night before. The posters warned of a "Novel
| Pneumonia from Southern China". How the world changed...
| satysin wrote:
| How it changed indeed! Reading my journal for the first
| four months of 2020 is fascinating. I must have read over
| those first few months ten times since. So much has
| happened with advice and guidance changing as we learn
| more about the virus and the disease. So much mis- and
| disinformation. Crazy behaviours all over. I am so glad I
| keep a journal as it will be quite something to read back
| in a decade or two.
|
| Especially for my 8 year old son. He is old enough to
| understand things are not normal but young enough to not
| fully understand the gravity of the situation or have
| memories of much outside of his little bubble.
| herbst wrote:
| I found one (english) Timeline that Starts before 31.
|
| https://bfpg.co.uk/2020/04/covid-19-timeline/
|
| I too remember talking about it on Christmas.
| hattmall wrote:
| I remember hearing about it prior to that as well. I
| remember because I was building a shed and had someone
| helping me who was talking about it and it was prior to
| the new year, early December at the latest. He heard
| about it on a Doomsday type podcast.
| carlmr wrote:
| According to Giuseppe Remuzzi there were strange
| pneumonia cases in northern Italy in November 2019, but
| as far as I can see they were not reported until March
| 2020.
|
| Apart from that I remember the first reports from China
| in December 2019.
| asenna wrote:
| I remember reading about it end of December 2019. I
| believe it was a Reddit thread with some worrying reports
| on the ground.
| awd wrote:
| Funnily enough, there were some memes about it before
| December 17th 2019. Comparing some disease from 1920 with
| 2020.
| TorKlingberg wrote:
| Unless you have a link to the article from that time I'm going
| to guess that is a false memory or something unrelated.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I read a very accurate post on
| /r/wallstreetbets about covid-19 in late 2019/early 2020.
| paunstefan wrote:
| I remember someone made a joke about how there were
| pandemics in 1920, 1820 and 1720, and another user
| commented that there is a weird flu in some Chinese city.
| This was either in the last week of 2019 or very early
| 2020.
| dqv wrote:
| Yes I remember a friend who lives in Hong Kong posting a
| news article (from a Chinese news source) describing a
| "mystery pneumonia" the first or second week of December
| 2019. He hypothesized that it was because of bushmeat. I
| think the news article got scrubbed. I wish I had saved
| it.
| Spare_account wrote:
| Not the same guy, but perhaps you can help me understand if
| this event is related?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/world/asia/plague-
| china-p...
|
| Date: November 13 2019
|
| > _Li Jifeng, a doctor at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital where the
| two people sought treatment, wrote on WeChat, a social media
| platform, that the patients sought treatment on Nov. 3_
|
| > _"After so many years of specialist training, I'm familiar
| with the diagnosis and treatment of most respiratory
| diseases," wrote Dr. Li. "But this time, I looked and looked
| at it. I couldn't guess what pathogen caused this pneumonia.
| I only knew it was rare."_
| tremon wrote:
| At most it might have been a precursor to SARS-Cov-2, but
| it's unlikely to be the same agent. We've seen how wildly
| virulent that variant is; there's no way I can see that
| that virus could have been found in the wild in a city like
| Beijing and not cause the same problems we saw in Wuhan two
| months later.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| There are back-confirmed cases of covid in Italy in
| September 2019, so the Wuhan incident is definitely not a
| patient-0 situation (even if it could be a ground-0
| location from previous patient-0 situation, but its just
| a guess and we'll never know).
|
| Given that, having a case in Beijing in November 2019 is
| entirely plausible
| tremon wrote:
| Following that train of thought, what changed between
| Italy/Beijing and Wuhan? Was it sheer luck that made the
| first major outbreak happen in Wuhan, and not in Milan or
| Beijing? Or Los Angeles for that matter, I think I heard
| reports of suspect pneumonia cases from the US as well?
|
| What I was alluding to with "precursor" was that it may
| have been the same virus, but that some mutation in Wuhan
| might have made it so much easier to spread. My mind just
| has trouble imagining a model where a virus can lie
| pretty much dormant for half a year in different
| populations, and then surge in one place only and spread
| from there. That may well be a limitation of my mind, I
| simply don't see how that would work.
| dannyw wrote:
| If you have a deck with 2 hearts and 10 spades, your
| first flip could very well be a heart, even if with
| enough flips, 10/12 are spades.
|
| What I mean by this is that viruses may have arbitrary
| behaviour when the infected population is small. Let's
| say as of September 2019, five people in the world were
| infected with COVID. It's actually not improbable or
| crazy that the epidemic outbreak only started in Dec/Jan.
| dboreham wrote:
| This makes sense if the disease propagates linearly like
| bacteria on a petri dish. But it probably doesn't. It may
| spread more like a wildfire -- there can be burning
| branches blown miles from the main fire that only smolder
| or set a small patch of grass burning which flames out
| due to lack of fuel. Meanwhile the main fire is only
| stopped by water or other major geographic feature.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I could see it as possible. The spread is asymmetric. You
| could have one infected person who is not a super
| spreader only infect a few other people who just happen
| to be asymptomatic and not spread it to others. When your
| overall infected population is very small, like in the
| beginning of a jump from animals to humans, then you have
| a chance to get lucky in this way. Once you get to a
| larger infected population (like dozens of people) then
| you're more likely to have a super spreader and less
| likely to get lucky with only contacting asymptomatic
| people.
| [deleted]
| hobbescotch wrote:
| The province of New Brunswick has set up a website tracking this
| here:
| https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/ocmoh/cdc/neu...
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Interesting. The symptoms they list are entirely typical of
| FND, which accounts more than 1 in 7 referrals to a neurology
| department and is at least as common as MS [1]. They list 48
| active cases, but there would presumably be a lot more FND
| cases than that in NB. Also, it seems they only uncovered this
| new syndrome when they actively started looking for them via
| the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System. Could it
| just be that many doctors and neurologists are unaware of FND,
| even though it is by far the most common neurological disorder
| they see?
|
| [1] http://www.rcpe.ac.uk/journal/issue/journal_41_1/stone.pdf
| rvz wrote:
| Not this again. I really hope that the incubation period is not
| around the corner with another wave of vCJD 'variant Creutzfeldt-
| Jakob disease' aka (Mad cow disease).
| tcbawo wrote:
| I know someone in their early 40s experiencing dementia-type
| symptoms (consistent with frontotemporal dementia). It is early
| but is quickly getting worse. It's heartbreaking to see how this
| is affecting his spouse and children. So far, they don't have a
| diagnosis. They are still running tests. It has to be quite
| frustrating not to be able to point to a root cause. So little
| can be known without direct access to the brain.
| nick_ wrote:
| I have read a couple of times that an HSV infection (super
| common) can get into the brain and cause dementia. Just trying
| to help here, but maybe they could try an HSV antiviral?
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