Recent Comments

1. about 12 hours ago on Family Tree

   For some reason the comment section may be broken. You can look this up yourself since it just put up an empty comments box. The med school psychiatry dept at the University of Toronto has a large, painstaking study out showing increases in manic behavior two years later associated with excessive screen time during ages 10 and 11. Especially damaging were too much time on social media, or too much time playing video games, to too much sleep disruption from the screen time, or a combo. This is new and important info for any parent to have.

2. 2 days ago on Over the Hedge

   Of course, ever since Jaws people exaggerate shark risks.

   A better time investment might be some brave herps wrangler down there transplanting some already invasive pythons, really huge ones, to the Mar a Lago golf course water hazards, but not knowing how to evaluate the time of brave herps wranglers, i can not say that definitively.

3. 2 days ago on Over the Hedge

   Marvelously done!

4. 9 days ago on Over the Hedge

   You can always tell who has never studied any virology.

   What you are suggesting is WAY too difficult.

   Besides: WHY? It makes no sense.

   Spillovers of diseases from animals happen all the time. They are normal and they are common. Luckily, most are not well enough adapted and most happen in small human populations, so when they do take off they burn out. Smuggling bush meat gets them to population centers, though, and then problems happen.

   That said, there is ONE case of a government spreading an influenza, though it did NOT create that influenza. It was NOT our government, nor was it China’s. It happened in Russia during the USSR. There was a vaccine program for an existing influenza (attenuated = weakened virus rather than killed virus) and the researchers said the vaccine was not ready. Their gov’t said, "Well, try it in soldiers.’ The researchers said, “Only if the soldiers are isolated.” Guess what? The soldiers were allowed to associate widely instead, and so did that flu. The researchers were right to be worried, but they ultimately got blamed for what was forced upon them.

5. 9 days ago on Over the Hedge

   The adults likely will survive in high numbers. It is their CHILDREN (and the children of others) as well as immune-compromised individuals of all ages who are most likely to die of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenzas. People over the age of 15 often have exposure and some resistance from earlier avian influenzas and the flu vaccines for those. People 15 and under mostly have naive immune systems for avian influenzas. Worldwide for H5N1 (the most common avian influenza right now in North America) about half of the people found to have it die, but most of those are children, especially toddlers and preschoolers.

   At this point if this does mutate to become readily transmissible human to human then there will be way too many tiny coffins.

   It is very important that the NIH funds being withheld by Trump (despite court order) are returned, not only to help people in medical trials for other needs such as cancer, but also to help complete needed work on targeted types of avian influenza vaccines which are not as different from the current diseases as our stockpiled old ones are, and on other needed vaccines such as a general sarbecovirus vaccine to resist relatives of CoVID as well as CoVID. (At least a half dozen found in the wild pose zoonotic risk.)

   BTW, NIH investments in health advances tend to be profit centers and to our nation are worth almost three times what the federal government pays, while NSF funds are even more economically profitable for the U.S. in terms of advancements and patents. Withholding these is not for economic reasons; it is to bankrupt public higher education.

6. 9 days ago on Over the Hedge

   Of those, besides the original horseshoe bats, the animals which are known to have transmitted CoVID to humans are ONLY hamsters (Cricetidae), and fur farm American Mink (Neovison vison) which is very genetically distant from similar looking European mustelids like European mink and domestic ferrets Mustela putorius furo)and even quite different genetically from their wild American mink ancestors. Some other animals besides those two are known to have infected other non-human mammal species (cats, ferrets, American mink, gorillas, otters, white tailed deer, and hamsters). Bottom line: many more mammals have caught CoVID from humans and our waste than have infected humans.

7. 9 days ago on Over the Hedge

   Okay, let’s look at the range of animals which get SARS-CoV-2 that causes CoVID-19. (Yesterday i mentioned types of mammals which get Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenzas.)

   As with the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenzas not all of these mammal species can transmit disease to humans. With those bird flus duscussed yesterday, ill or dead birds have, of course. Infected raw meat or infected raw dairy are a transmission risk. Infected cattle have transmitted to humans. Infected cats have. And historically infected pigs have (very often) so pose a real influenza risk, and infected bats have historically been a risk (different species for different diseases often, though). At this point other animal reservoirs of bird flu have not been a zoonotic risk for humans even though those many types of mammals (listed yesterday) sicken and often die.

   Now, for SARS-CoV-2, the animals (besides the chain of infection beginning with horseshoe bats, and incredibly closely related sister viruses being found in horseshoe bat populations in the wilds of Thailand and two other nations — i want to say Laos, and either Myanmar or Cambodia but that is from memory) can infect a range of mammals. Those include cats, dogs, minks, ferrets, otters, a range of other mustelids, a range of foxes including the inaccurately named “raccoon dog”, white tailed deer (which still host Delta here in the U.S. but fortunately it mutated to be more of a problem for deer than humans at this point), binturongs, lynx, gorillas, lions, mountain lions, snow leopards, tigers, coatis, hyenas, and hamsters. There are likely to be others.

   Besides the original horseshoe bats, animals known to have transmitted CoVID to humans are ONLY hamsters (Cricetidae), and fur farm American Mink (Neovison vison) which is very genetically distant from similar looking European mustelids like European mink and domestic ferrets Mustela putorius furo)and even quite different genetically from their wild ancestors. See next:

8. 11 days ago on Over the Hedge

   Sorry, RJ, Hammy, and a number of your friends. Take precautions.

9. 11 days ago on Over the Hedge

   This is a list of U.S. mammals and mammals in U.S. zoos infected (and often killed) by Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza. These diseases have been moved pretty much everywhere by migration. Even Antarctica is dealing with it. Additional mammals have been sickened or died elsewhere including some wildlife which were already rare, and other domestic animals like donkeys in Egypt and horses in Tibet. Yes, and dogs. Ferrets have been used in testing so can contract it, too. The disease is especially deadly (and horribly so) in felines and in seals and their relatives.

   Cats, bottlenose dolphins, red foxes, Eastern gray squirrels, harbor seals, servals, house mice, deer mice, mountain lions, ermines, bobcats, Tigers, African lions, savannah cats, Eurasian lynx, Geoffroy’s cats, hybrid foxes, hybrid tigers, Canadian lynx, raccoons, Amur tigers, coyotes, polar bears, striped skunks, prairie voles, desert cottontails, Virginia opossums, American minks, Abert’s squirrels, fishers, American black bears, American martens, North American river otters, Kodiak bears, Grizzly bears, skunks of unidentified types, Amur leopards, Gray seals.

   I also recall reports of a family’s hogs infected in the NW, and a goat kid which died from infection passed by nursing because the mother was infected.

   There are influenza experts who would like testing of white tailed deer to be done.

   It is not contagious person to person at this point. In the U.S. HPAIs including H5N1 have so far been caught by people with some resistance from previous influenzas and their vaccines, so only one death so far, but worldwide the deaths for H5N1, the most common HPAI in the U.S., are about 50% with most being 15 years old and younger, most toddlers and preschoolers. Obviously, targeted vaccines are needed, though older avian influenza vaccines may help.

10. 26 days ago on Doonesbury

    Yet another “Hey, there.” to all the basement boy failsons. I do like how he worked in the imbedded assumption of entitlement in way that preys on a friend.