Bacterial Outbreak Infects Thousands After Factory Leak In China (cnn.com) 46
schwit1 shares a report from CNN: Several thousand people in northwest China have tested positive for a bacterial disease, authorities said on Tuesday, in an outbreak caused by a leak at a biopharmaceutical company last year. The Health Commission of Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu province, confirmed that 3,245 people had contracted the disease brucellosis, which is often caused by contact with livestock carrying the bacteria brucella. Another 1,401 people have tested as preliminarily positive, though there have been no fatalities reported, the city's Health Commission said. In total, authorities have tested 21,847 people out of the city's 2.9 million population.
Brucellosis had been much more common in China in the 1980s, though it has since declined with the emergence of vaccines and better disease prevention and control. Still, there have been a smattering of brucellosis outbreaks around the world in the past few decades; an outbreak in Bosnia infected about 1,000 people in 2008, prompting the culling of sheep and other infected livestock. In the US, brucellosis has cost the federal government and livestock industry billions of dollars. About 60% of female bison at Yellowstone National Park carry the bacteria, according to national park authorities.
Brucellosis had been much more common in China in the 1980s, though it has since declined with the emergence of vaccines and better disease prevention and control. Still, there have been a smattering of brucellosis outbreaks around the world in the past few decades; an outbreak in Bosnia infected about 1,000 people in 2008, prompting the culling of sheep and other infected livestock. In the US, brucellosis has cost the federal government and livestock industry billions of dollars. About 60% of female bison at Yellowstone National Park carry the bacteria, according to national park authorities.
Re:6 in 10 infectious diseases come from animals (Score:5, Insightful)
6 in 10 infectious diseases come from animals [livescience.com].
After a few years of pandemics, more and more people will go vegan. A few years later the meat and dairy industries will collapse. The last step will be governments outlawing meat altogether.
Um... no. With the exception of bacterial diseases like salmonella and e.coli, almost exactly none of the diseases that make humans seriously ill come from farm-raised animals (and even those two mostly come from using the droppings of those animals as fertilizer for vegetables, rather than from eating the animals or consuming milk). Zero pandemics have involved farm animals.
Why? Because we've been raising these animals for food for millennia, and as a result, humans have a pretty solid immune response to any of the diseases that affect those animals.
The diseases that turn into pandemics invariably come from animals that humans do not commonly associate with, like bats and non-human primates (Ebola, SARS, MERS, COVID-19, etc.).
So basically, even if you ignore the fact that humans are absolutely not biologically evolved for a pure-vegetarian diet, much less the vegan diet that you propose, and pretend that somehow protein deficiency won't kill far more people than pandemics ever could, what you're proposing will not only do nothing to solve the problem, but also risks increasing the number of animal species that humans don't interact with, thus creating even more future vectors for disease than we already have. So centuries from now, we'll end up with the next Ebola from wild cows, and it will be because you insisted on banning consumption of meat and milk.
In other words, from a scientific perspective, it's hard to imagine how you could be more incorrect even if you were trying.
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I'm sorry, but I had to stop there. #grammarnazi
Mixing approximation descriptors with absolute descriptors makes no effing sense.
Umm.. huh? "Almost exact" has a very clear and obvious meaning. It means within a small epsilon of being exact, but not necessarily exact. The inexactness, of course, comes from a few extremely rare illnesses like BSE and scrapie that are not communicable from person to person unless you're a cannibal, but that do exist, albeit with total fatalities that are within the margin of error of being zero from a global health perspective.
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#grammarnazi - continued.
"Almost exact" has a clear meaning because one is an adjective and the other a adverb, and it is clear that "almost" is describing "exact", but not "Almost exactly" where they are both adverbs. It would be like talking about a "black white", or an "opaque transparent" object.
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. When multiple adverbs are in a row like that, they always modify subsequent adverbs unless you have an obvious list construction or a conjunction (e.g. "He boldly and decisively ate the burrito"). There is absolutely no ambiguity in that sentence whatsoever.
Presumably you're confusing the inadvisability of using intensifiers with non-gradable adjectives (e.g. more unique). However, that does not apply here, first because exactly is not an adjective, and second b
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Holy crap. I just wrote "I've did". And this is what happens when you edit a sentence too many times. *bangs head against desk*
Re: 6 in 10 infectious diseases come from animals (Score:2)
I was really enjoying this discussion about grammar, and then you threw in the "I've did", and it really put things over the edge. Thanks!
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Yeah. Muphry's Law strikes again. :-D
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Wow. How did I not notice that one? I guess when I'm reading things online, I just automatically turn off the proofreader part of my brain because I feel lucky to get something that has a subject and a verb. :-D
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Agg! What would Srinivasan Ramanujan say, raised on a steady diet of Wren and Martin!!
I would most humbly beg the writers to refrain from employing symbols used mathematics in contexts that are not befitting the aforementioned symbols. I remain, Sir, your most grateful and sincere applicant, Signed, Srinivasan Ra
Chickens, pigs, ducks (Score:2)
The flu comes from pigs, ducks, and chickens.
The flu counts as a pandemic, even though it's usually not fatal.
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For some using the phrase "scientific perspectve" you sure spew a lot of lies and bullshit.
Most pandemics come from the livestock people eat. Bird flu, Swine flu. Those ring any bells?
Re:6 in 10 infectious diseases come from animals (Score:4, Informative)
Chinese farm animals winter over inside homes. They dont have a separate barns like they do have in USA or Europe. Thus mosquitoes carry parasites back and forth between humans and pigs and chicken. This is the reason for most influenza fevers originate from China. India is protected by Himalayas from Arctic cold, thus Indian farm animals are not brought indoors in the winter. Takes a few months for it to snowball and come over to rest of the world. People study whats brewing in rural China and predict the most virulent and most deadly of these viruses and create flu shots.
So our immunity to farm animals is not as total and complete as you suggest.
Domestication of cattle happened just 15,000 years ago. Dogs 25,000 years ago. Plant species were domesticated around 9000 years ago. Thus we have not really had that much of time to evolve good natural immunity for parasites from the cattle. Reasonably good for casual contact and contact with excreta. But for more serious contact with blood and other humors of the cattle, we are not there.
Tuberculosis (Score:2)
Say, several things that humans didn't have a strong defense against have had vaccines developed to lessen their impact. Tuberculosis is in cattle. I'm sure at some point we may have developed an immune system to handle it, but despite a millennia of contact with cattle, tuberculosis kills more people than any other infectious disease. You got me on the pandemic part, but tb is a nasty disease.
Also, you have a lot of recent advancements that are so common now that they are almost forgotten. You can get tb f
Re: 6 in 10 infectious diseases come from animals (Score:1)
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Well I know many vegetarians that I am much healthier than. I mean overly overweight or looking chronically malnutritioned. etc. I am in better shape than most of my coworkers in my age group. I eat fish, chicken, and pork as main protiens. Lots of legumes, and as much as I love duck and beef I eat it at a reduced rate for health reasons.
But I focus more on protein and veggies, and less on starches (noodles, rice potato)
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In other words the report is true but your understanding of the report is so far off as to be dangerous.
Why is this here? (Score:1, Troll)
Does Slashdot report on random outbreaks now or is it just when it's an anti-China story?
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That's ridiculous. The World is not collapsing under Trump. Only the U.S.A.
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Re:Why is this here? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's ridiculous. The World is not collapsing under Trump. Only the U.S.A.
I would assert that the US is not even collapsing under Trump. He is basically just a symptom and maybe a bit of an accelerator. But he nicely represents apparently about 40% of the voters, all people who think honor, integrity, truth and science do not matter. Once you have that many people of this "quality" things are basically over. Voting Trump out of office can slow this down, but the other side is of the same quality, just to a lesser degree.
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They do mean what I think they mean. As you are obviously functionally illiterate and a fuckup with no honor, integrity or understanding how things really work, why would anybody listen to you?
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110010001000 = OMBad = gaxiyi7905
Hello shithead.
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I think it would be more accurate to say that Slashdot reports on random, period.
They're hoping to get a bunch of hits (Score:2)
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No, it's far from a random outbreak. It's an outbreak from negligent human activity. How often does that happen?
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Pretty often.
Why are YOU here ? (Score:2)
No, seriously, why are YOU still here ?
I'm starting to get sick and tired of all the "why is this on /." whiners who keep coming back and posting their crap again and again.
Slashdot is not what you want it to be, it's not what it used to be; it is what it is. If you hate Slashdot so much, why do you keep coming back again and again just to bitch and whine ? Don't you have better things to do ? Don't you have a fucking life ?
Just go away and find another forum that's more in line with your interests and aspi
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I'm usually the one defending stories being on here. But this one doesn't seem to be of any relevance to the site at all. I'm defend posts about politics and culture but this is just propaganda.
Re:Why is this here? (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is "anti-China". Not that /. is actually anti-China, but "news" make for ad-revenue, hence anything that is hyped at the moment is good for that revenue.
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I figured because the biopharmaceutical industry is generally associated with Science and Technology (which is kinda nerdy) as well as the impacts this application of Science and Technology can have on the world. I don't think mistakes like this are unique to China, but I do think knowing about them (wherever they occur) is important as it might create pressure for better controls around the globe.
Simpsons did it (Score:1)
Simpsons did it
Quick! (Score:1)