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Comment by rjsw | Hacker News Reader

Before COVID, I had thought that bushmeat [1] could be the route that spread Ebola to Europe, people smuggle it in their luggage.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat

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Were it to spread to Europe, I imagine contact tracing and societal norms would result in a drastically lower r naught and basically make community spread a non-factor.

Europeans (at least European health authorities) would hopefully cut down on funeral activities like touching and kissing the bodies of Ebola victims, caring for relatives at home without PPE and sanitation, etc.

African countries face challenges with fighting Ebola, but they sure do make things even harder for themselves with certain practices that are pretty rough even through 19th century germ theory lens.

> people smuggle it in their luggage

Really?

Yeah. There's a reason why customs is so strict about the sloppy importation of food: it's host to diseases and pests, capable of causing ridiculous damage because someone has to have that "taste of home".

It’s the fact or otherwise of someone having carried raw meat in their luggage that I’m questioning, not the fact of customs officials caring about food moving across international borders. I’ve had fruit confiscated at a border, but meat in luggage seems like… a different paradigm.

Unrefrigerated and in a suitcase is somehow the least-bad part about bushmeat.

If you packed it with an ice pack and dry ice to keep that pack cool, it could remain about frozen for the flight.

Which reminds me of being at the SFO baggage claim. A security dog went straight for a person's bag. The security officer opened it up and found an old, stale sandwich. The person said they had forgotten their mother had stashed it there.

Usually that "taste of home" is part of a cultural ritual or folk medicine which is why you have these high risk smuggling issues. For them, it's a need, not a want.

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