Another Global Pandemic Is Spreading--Among Pigs

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

A DISEASE OUTBREAK blossoms in China. Exactly how it emerges, far from the eyes of any surveilling scientist, no one can quite explain. It spreads with incredible speed, killing in wide swaths, freezing transport and trade, and causing vast economic disruption. Hitchhiking on global travel, it circles the world. There is no cure, and no vaccine. Inevitably, it arrives in the Americas, in July 2021.

Yup, 2021. The year is not a typo. This outbreak isn’t Covid; it is a parallel, hidden pandemic, a deadly animal disease called African swine fever that was detected in the Dominican Republic in July. African swine fever poses no risk to humans, but it is incredibly destructive to livestock: Those deaths in China were millions of pigs, at least one-quarter—and possibly one-half—of the entire herd of the world’s largest pork producer.

In the United States, animal health authorities are now on high alert. The US Department of Agriculture has pledged an emergency appropriation of $500 million to ramp up surveillance and keep the disease from crossing borders. African swine fever is so feared internationally that, if it were found in the US, pork exports—worth more than $7 billion a year—would immediately shut down.

“Long-distance transboundary spread of highly contagious and pathogenic diseases is a worse-case scenario,” Michael Ward, an epidemiologist and chair of veterinary public health at the University of Sydney, told WIRED by email. “In agriculture, it’s the analogue of Covid-19.”

https://www.wired.com/story/another-global-pandemic-is-spreading-among-pigs/

[NickB79]

1. There are over 10 million feral hogs in the US

If swine fever gets here, they'll spread it like wildfire across the southern US.

[Klaralven]

2. It is endemic in Sub-Saharan Africa

African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a large, double-stranded DNA virus in the Asfarviridae family.[1] It is the causative agent of African swine fever (ASF). The virus causes a hemorrhagic fever with high mortality rates in domestic pigs; some isolates can cause death of animals as quickly as a week after infection. It persistently infects its natural hosts, warthogs, bushpigs, and soft ticks of the genus Ornithodoros, which likely act as a vector, with no disease signs.[2] It does not cause disease in humans.[3][4] ASFV is endemic to sub-Saharan Africa and exists in the wild through a cycle of infection between ticks and wild pigs, bushpigs, and warthogs. The disease was first described after European settlers brought pigs into areas endemic with ASFV, and as such, is an example of an emerging infectious disease.

The first outbreak was retrospectively recognized as having occurred in 1907 after ASF was first described in 1921 in Kenya.[18] The disease remained restricted to Africa until 1957, when it was reported in Lisbon, Portugal. A further outbreak occurred in Portugal in 1960. Subsequent to these initial introductions, the disease became established in the Iberian peninsula, and sporadic outbreaks occurred in France, Belgium, and other European countries during the 1980s. Both Spain and Portugal had managed to eradicate the disease by the mid-1990s through a slaughter policy.[19]

ASFV crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and outbreaks were reported in some Caribbean islands, including Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti). Major outbreaks of ASF in Africa are regularly reported to the World Organisation for Animal Health (previously called L'office international des épizooties).

In 2018 the virus spread to Asia, affecting more than 10 percent of the total pig population in several countries, leading to severe economic losses in the pig sector.

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

[Klaralven]

3. Avian flu may be a third pandemic

2020–2021 H5N8 outbreak

In 2020 and 2021, an ongoing outbreak of Avian influenza subtype H5N8 has been occurring at poultry farms and among wild bird populations in several countries and continents, leading to the subsequent cullings of millions of birds to prevent a pandemic similar to that of the H5N1 outbreak in 2008. The first case of human transmission was reported by Russian authorities in February 2021, as several poultry farm workers tested positive for the virus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_H5N8_outbreak

China has had several outbreaks of Avian flu, resulting in the decimation of flocks due to high mortality and slaughter to control spread.

Then its swine industry was severely damaged by African Swine Fever.

Then there was the Covid 19 outbreak.

So China actually has a large budget for research on the detection of viruses, sequencing, and working on countermeasures due to past veterinary disease outbreaks.