hckrnws
Years ago just before covid (~2019-2020), I had spent a couple years driving a motorbike all over Vietnam from the south to the north. Nomad life, just living hotel to hotel. It was an awesome experience and a big part of that is that there is livestock (chickens, cows, goats, pigs) literally hanging out all over the place.
One interesting thing I came across was that the further north I went, the fewer random pigs I saw on the streets. Eventually it got to the point where there wasn't any. It was noticeable.
Things eventually turned into checkpoints where a local military would stop you, make you get off your motorbike and spray down the wheels and under carriage with some liquid (probably bleach). Asking about this, it was all about trying to limit the spread of some virus infecting all the pigs. Most likely given the regional spread, it came down from China.
Googling it now, it was called ASF and killed 86,000 pigs (probably more)...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10310380/
https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadRepo...
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/30/5/23-1775_article
If the USDA is talking about this... it could very well be a huge deal.
Wow it's so mad that "just before COVID" is already "years ago". It feels so short ago.
I'm kinda worried that this will happen again with the bird flu. Pigs are genetically very close to humans. The pandemic lockdowns were one of the worst times of my life and so were the other measures.
Not a matter of if but when. Biosurveillance costs money that farms and meat processing plants don't want to spend. So drink up that raw milk, it's totally safe.
Why is this important?
> Many influenza experts are concerned about enhanced zoonotic potential for H5N1 viruses that might spill over and establish ongoing infections in swine populations. Swine already endemically carry many human spillover H1 and H3 viruses, and pigs are prone to easily reassort viral segments when co-infected with 2 viral strains. This potential reassortment between a mammalian-adapted H5N1 and swine-human H1-H3 / N1-N2 endemic viruses in commercial production swine is a potential shortcut to a fully adapted H5 human pandemic strain[0].
[0]: https://hogvet51.substack.com/p/california-h5n1-dairy-outbre...
:( I was going to hope the pigs would recover soon but they killed them all
That's what happens to all pigs on farms. They get killed for us to eat. They don't care why they're killed, but if you do, you can stop eating them.
Don't worry the next batch will get some snuggle blankets.
[dupe]
Crafted by Rajat
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