African Swine Fever Is Spreading and Eliminating It Will Take Decades | Hacker News Reader

African Swine Fever Is Spreading and Eliminating It Will Take Decades

bloomberg.com

76 pointspseudolus62 comments

This is pretty horrifying:

A United Nations report suggests some food-waste containing pork was dumped from a ship visiting the port of Poti on the Georgian Black Sea and then eaten by one of the local pigs that are allowed to scavenge on garbage. Within weeks, 30,000 pigs had died and 80 percent of Georgia’s districts were thought to be infected.

I learned recently that pigs are fed all kinds of scraps even pork. Why aren’t they vulnerable to diseases similar to mad cow disease?

For the same reason BSE is rare, we stop higher risk spinal columns entering the food chain at any point. They are removed and incinerated.

Has there been any talk of risk that it can jump species?

Meat agriculture at large scale always presents a pandemic risk... zillions of animals crammed next to each other peeing and pooping next to human workers is never A Good Thing™, because it's a worse Petri dish/bioreactor than a college dorm or a hospital. Also, the antibiotics given to meat ag animals also risks human antibiotic resistance if the same one is given to animals. These are the main reasons I don't eat meat. In a sane world without corporate capture, fossil fuel use and meat ag would end immediately. Vegetarianism is necessary but often feels pointless like screaming into a hurricane while waiting for Godot.

When I first read about African Swine fever last year it was reported to have a "100%" mortality rate. Its like the swine version of ebola.

Contrary to popular belief, the mortality rate of Ebola is “only” around 50%.

Depends on which strain. Ebola Zaire is reported to kill with up to a 90% efficiency, while others more around 50%.

Here's what the World Health Organisation has to say:

The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks.

https://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/ebola-virus-disease

I think with aggressive treatment people have a higher chance of survival.

Ebola doesn't transmit very easily....this does.

Ebola also doesn't have a 100% mortality rate, so ASF is relatively worse.

What do you mean by “easily”? Do you mean it’s not airborne?

It's not airborne. From the article:

> The germ is hardy, capable of remaining active in water for a month, in meat and blood at room temperature for several months and for six years in cold, dark conditions. It’s resistant to temperature extremes, and can survive a day in vinegar-strength acids.

Ebola's only active for several days at room temperature. https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html

That's close to anthrax levels of nasty. Sometimes cattle in California and Nevada come down with anthrax even though the disease hasn't been endemic for 100 years.

I didn't say it was, I was asking GP to define what he meant by "easily".

And is most commonly transmitted via blood and vomit - two things common with Ebola patients but are more easily controlled for when the illness is known.

I don't eat pork (religious reasons) but I'm curious on why this virus is so lethal? Climate change letting African germs survive in North Eurasia? Are there any equivalents for other domesticated animals? Yes, there's Bird Flu which is similar (and worse in that it can jump species to humans), but what about cattle? Sheeps? ... Cats and dogs?

From the text:" One of their difficulties is that the large, complex DNA virus that causes African swine fever has some 170 genes and 80 proteins, many of them specialized in evading different aspects of the pig immune system. "

So it is evolution, probably facilitated by certain conditions.

A huge amount of genes is also a weakness and might be targetted with specialized measures (like a proteine/gene-blocker). But the usual tricks wont work as well.

My understanding is that bird flu is deadlier for humans (see: Spanish Flu) but swine flu is considered more of a risk of mutating into human flu

This is exactly the kind of virus we need to understand how to build a vaccine. Something like this in humans is scary. Here is to hoping that our understanding of biology is reaching a point where we have more methods of attacking these kind of things.

Food animals don't get the option to travel around town at will. There should be no possible way for the disease to spread.

The fact that the disease does spread means that farms are failing to provide biohazard isolation.

We can see a similar problem with chickens. We actually give vaccines to chickens. The vaccines would be pointless if the chickens were properly isolated from contamination. Viruses do not spontaneously form from chickens or from non-living matter.

Disease can be spread by more ways than simple food-animal-to-food-animal contact. For example, bovine TB kills cows but doesn't kill badgers, so a badger can spread it between herds. You can't stop that by isolating the cows.

There was a very controversial cull of badgers here in an attempt to stop it but even that didn't work.

Disease management is hard.

You stop that by isolating the cows from badgers and any other wildlife. Workers and their clothing and tools get cleaned when entering and leaving the facility.

The only thing hard about disease management is the competitive race to the bottom. Skimping on disease management means you don't have to train the workers, don't have to spend money on bleach, and don't have to repair holes in the walls. Maybe you don't even bother with walls.

You stop that by isolating the cows from badgers and any other wildlife.

Beyond raising cattle in a hermetically-sealed shed that is effectively impossible,and definitely beyond the bounds of any sort of economic reasoning.

Clashes a bit with the idea of happy cows grazing on alpine pastures this

One attack vector of the disease is transmission through tick bites. Ticks then bite boars. Swine fever also takes enough time to begin acting that a herd can become infected without there being any signs till it is too late to mitigate. Swine fever can also be transmitted by feed but it isn’t clear to me how that works. Sometimes pigs are fed to pigs but I don’t see how that would lead to a supply feed infection.

> Viruses do not spontaneously form from chickens or from non-living matter.

Well, they kind of do (albeit at a very low rate). Where else did the first ones come from?

Considering the similarity in Pigs and Humans shouldnt this be raising all sorts of alarms ?

Could this virus help eradicate wild populations of feral hogs?

Protecting the pork industry is all well and good, I love ham as much as anybody else, but sacrificing a few years of pork production seems like it could be a good deal if it means the eradication of environmentally destructive feral hogs.

This is how you destroy an ecosystem. Bringing in one organism to fight or replace another without thinking about the full consequences.

The Bolivian tree lizard cleanup strategy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=P9yruQM1ggc

Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend.

Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?

Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.

Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?

Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.

Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!

Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

Ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2743879

Ha, thanks for sharing that.

The Cobra Effect is precisely what I was alluding to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

In my home state we have tons of invasive species due to similar strategies over the years. It's a serious problem.

I've been chased by wild hogs a couple times. It's scary. However the answer is obviously not a massively robust virus which kills any pig it touches.

I mean, foreign feral pigs are a big problem in Oz. They aren't native to the recent ecosystem. But that whole cane toad thing didn't work out so good.

Here is the matching Simpsons clip: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mpzj1IvEhTA

They were a big problem in my back yard. I've been chased by feral hogs and it's not fun.

But we have to be practical about introducing invasive, hardy species into an ecosystem.

The thing is, a few thousand years is all that stands between "feral" and "wild". Witness dingos, our "native dogs".

Myxomatosis and Calicivirus worked out OK though.

Clever how you frame humans not intervening by stopping the spread of this virus as humans intervening.

I'm sorry but I wasn't framing anything as anything, in fact I wasn't speaking about stopping the spread of the virus at all.

Reread my post. I was talking about introducing a virus to kill off feral hogs.

I don't propose introducing the virus. I propose standing back and letting the virus run it's course, should it make it to the Americas.

I'm confused why you don't take this to the next logical step. If it runs its course things could get worse.

What if it jumps species?

What if our livestock doesn't recover?

If you read the article, it describes how hardy this virus is. That's not the kind of virus we want spreading and evolving.

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