this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2024
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Your compassion for animals is awesome but your information about how and why viruses mutate and spread seems very flawed.
Yes, viruses may spread faster through animals in captivity which could lead to higher rates of virus mutations. But no, it's not the cause of every pandemic you have ever heard about. Pinning the cause on one specific behavior is beyond false.
The black death, specifically, was likely transmitted to humans via fleas from rats, as an example. What's key, is that nobody has even been able to prove that completely.
Are you aware rats and fleas are animals too? Humans and animals living close together is the reason viruses mutate. It's why Europe had many plagues while the americas had none. As soon as Europeans landed there, we brought mayhem with all the viruses we brought with us. It's because we domesticated animals, while in the americas they did not. We had many rats because of the poor hygiene and living so close together, with others and animals. We should make sure we distance ourselves from many different kinds of animals to reduce the chance or mutations.
Viruses mutate with almost every division. Hell, almost every strand of DNA that divides has mutations. It's a natural phenomenon and not exclusively caused by one particular thing or situation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation
You seem to be mixing up a few key aspects of how and why new strains are formed, and somehow, you are overestimating the transmissibility of a virus between different animals.
It's like you understand some of the key concepts of this stuff, but animal domestication somehow got mixed in as a root cause for natural processes.
So you do not increase the chance of mutation onto other creatures by having animals and humans living close together? What is your point? You're not saying anything different to what I'm saying. Viruses mutate, can jump from creature to creature. But when there are a lot of creatures living close together, it increases the chances. When there are a lot of different kind of creatures, there is a bigger chance of the virus mutating onto other type of creatures. Whether it's lifestock, rats, insects, domesticated animals, whatever. When we talk about animal to human transmission, it's called zoonosis.
Scientists (microbiologists for example) warn for this all the time, especially since covid. Here in the Netherlands there are a lot of animals living very close to humans, with all the giant farms so close cities, increasing the mutation chance a lot. During covid nerts farms were closed because of this in several countries including Denmark and the Netherlands. They banned animal markets in China because of this. Because densely packed animals and many different kinds of animals increase the chance of mutation, and when close to humans, the chance of zoonosis increases drastically.
So what am I mixing up here?
Here are some scientific articles:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.2736
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6787790/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240325114138.htm
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14830
You kinda keep jumping around regarding what your point is. First it was that caged animals caused all pandemics, and over time it has shifted to Europeans living close to animals caused all pandemics, and finally animals living close to humans caused all pandemics.
Yes, close contact between animals will increase chances of mutations - but what are we supposed to do? If your point is "industrial farming is bad and increases chances of pandemics", most people here would likely agree. But somehow you seem to be arguing that the black death was caused by people keeping rats and fleas in cages? Mixing your messages like this doesn't help your point come across.
Yeah, I noticed that they were bouncing around quite a bit and stating some facts, but also drawing some wild conclusions from those facts. (It's a lost cause trying to separate those two trains of thought, me thinks.)
Thank you for changing what I said to something different you can attack me on. If only people would take me serious on my fight against fleas in captivity.
I'm only trying to explain to you why you're getting the responses you're getting. Ignore me if you prefer that.
It's not an attack. You simply don't stick with any point long enough to have a proper discussion.
Get off the Ritalin, it's not helping.
Mmm yes that's why explorers and colonists famously never got sick with diseases from the "New World".
Hides Malaria and Ebola under a rug.
And the big America-pox itself, Syphilis
Just because Europe was so packed with people and animals together so much more viruses mutated into plagues doesn't mean other continents were immune to developing plagues. What is your point? You don't agree living close with animals increases the chance of mutations? Or are you in favor of exotic animals in cages? Or do you deny Europeans brought loads of diseases to the Americas? What are you trying to accomplish here? All these things I wrote are scientific and historical facts.
No they aren't. Black plague was spread by rats and most likely came from the silk road. You're talking about pop history, not actual history.
Yes and rats aren't animals who we lived close together with, right....
Not willingly.
The Americas had less domestic animal species yes, but they had their own plagues, they just weren't recorded.
On the flip side, every species that allowed itself to be domesticated is now at its highest population levels in all of history. There are more cattle, dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, etc alive today than ever before.
Yes, there is disease that will jump species and that sucks but that's just life, yo. Even with those that died from that, across all specific species in relation to man, every single species had and is still better off for the arrangement. The stories can be told in the sheer numbers alone.