Why Is There Now a Bovine Influenza?

[McCamy Taylor]

For a very long time, influenza was a disease of pigs, birds, human, seals, rats and occasionally horses and dogs. But recently, they have found a new form of influenza, in cows, one that has the potential to cross over into people. What gives?

http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/2/e00031-14.full

Could it have something to do with the fact that cattle feed is expensive? Now that mammal protein can no longer use used (Mad Cow Disease) ranchers have had to look for other protein sources. Like worms, things that cows would not ordinarily hunt in nature but if you throw them in their food, they will eat them, the same way they ate diseased cow brains. One would hope that the ranchers would not use snails, since one type of snail carries liver flukes. However apple snails are a popular protein feed source for chickens, pigs and ducks so who is to say that some enterprising cattle rancher somewhere has not been feeding it to cows, too, knowing that this snail does not carry the liver fluke? And, if my theory is correct, the nematodes that live within certain juicy protein rich critters---like snails or worms---may be the reservoir for influenza.

https://www.feedipedia.org/node/200
https://burnabyredwigglers.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/compost-worms-as-a-source-of-protein-for-animal-feed/

I was told that the reason ancient Hebrews banned pork was because of diseases like trichinosis. However, you can kill trichinosis by cooking the meat correctly. What if the pig issue arose because the Hebrews noticed that if you did not keep pigs you had less flu outbreaks? Cattle, on the other hand, chewing their nice health cud, were nice healthy animals. Until we started giving them diseased cow brain, worms, snails and maybe even left over pork chops to chew with their cud.

Will we have to start dosing our nations cattle with Tamiflu to keep them safe the way we do our chicken flocks?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Several decades ago an anthropologist, Marvin Harris,

suggested that the real reason pork is forbidden to Jews is that in the desert where they got their start, pigs are difficult to raise, and although their meat is quite delicious, it made economic sense for it to be forbidden. Of course, the prohibition against pork is couched in semi-obscure religious language. The trichinosis thing was conjured up much later as a rationale.

And in Biblical times, pigs would absolutely not have been connected to influenza outbreaks. They are implicated in China, where waterfowl and pigs are raised together, each consumes the others' feces, they merrily swap influenza viruses back and forth (although it's extremely important to note that neither gets ill from influenza) which then passes readily to humans. In China. Not in the Middle East. And especially not two or three millennia ago.

[McCamy Taylor]

4. Are you sure there was no influenza 3000 years ago?

In 70,000, when Toba erupted, the skies clouded up blotting out the sun and the human race went into a genetic bottle neck due to volcanic winter. For a few years to decades, one of the few sources of energy would have been geothermic. That means hot springs. Caves with hot springs. There was no sun for warmth or photosynthesis, no trees to burn. But in hot springs, there was geothermal energy and food to eat and a place to keep from freezing. One of the tastiest things to eat in a hot springs would have been snails. When people and birds and animals were forced to look for new food sources in order to survive that long winter, they would have stressed the hot springs populations, including the snail populations. And since there could have been any number of volcanic or meteor winters in the earths history, snails and other inhabitants of warm water could have faced that stress over and over again. Maybe they had to fight back. Or rather, the nematodes that made the snails their homes had to fight back.

Remember, in ancient times, everything that made people develop fever, cough and then die was called "plague." So, unless someone wants to take credit for developing influenza in a lab sometime in the last two centuries to use as a biologic weapon, I am going to guess that it has been around for a bit.

And birds do get sick from flu. Pigs get sick from flu. Lots of animals get sick from flu. Flu has been shown to hide somewhere in the environment for very, very long times and scientists have not been able to figure out where. I suggest that is because it is hiding inside roundworms. Maybe this is why the makers of FluBlok, the non chicken egg vaccine have been successful at growing their product in the eggs of armyworms. Maybe influenza virus and worms just naturally get along.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. I am not saying there was no influenza 3,000 years ago. But I am saying

that birds and pigs do not get sick from influenza. At least everything I read indicates they don't. They carry the virus but don't get sick. Humans do. And the essential reason influenza is the problem that it is in the modern world is that in China they raise waterfowl and pigs together, each eating the other's feces. They pass the influenza virus back and forth, and don't get sick themselves. The flu virus mutates then passes to humans. Were the Chinese to alter their animal husbandry practices, influenza would greatly diminish.

Snails are not a common food source. Never have been. So I seriously doubt they are a source of influenza. And not everything that made people develop fever, cough, and then die was called plague, although that word has been used somewhat indiscriminately in the past, although these days we tend to think of "plague" as Bubonic Plague, also known as The Black Death.

That the Toba eruption resulted in a human bottleneck is not widely accepted.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. Snails were a big food source back in the mesolithic era.

http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~dlubell/Ljubljana.pdf

And here is the first article that comes up when I google bird deaths from bird flu. There are lots of them. Artciles as well as bird deaths from bird flu. That is why it is called bird flu. Influenza A is primarily a bird infection as well, one that also affects humans.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/23/12/17-1086_article

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. From what I'm reading, those bird deaths are from an influenza that doesn't

jump to humans. And it does indicate that the bird deaths are a recent phenomenon.

Again, influenza as we know it and as infects humans seems to invariably come out of China and perhaps other parts of Asia for reasons that are well understood. That snails are somehow involved is an interesting hypothesis, but no more than that at this point.

[Kali]

2. did you mean to post this in the Lounge?

[McCamy Taylor]

3. Yep, because it is random fluff to keep me preoocupied while I have the

flu for the third time this year. Not meant to be part of a serious research study. Though the more I read between fever spikes, the more I am beginning to suspect that I may be on to something.

For context, look at my other recent posts about influenza.

[McCamy Taylor]

7. Had another thought tonight as I could not sleep due to body aches.

What if the recent increase in the number of new strains---pandemics or novel flu strains---is related to the increase in the amount of land that is being farmed for rice in Asia? That land is wet land---essentially lakes. It is full of snails that love to eat the rice. And so, the farmers encourage ducks to hang out and eat the snails and other pests that eat the rice (still not sure its the snails but those studies showing that snails secrete a slime that helps influenza virus survive outside a host sure are suggestive)

Increased water for snails, increased ducks eating the snails, more chances for influenza to mutate---1918, Spanish Influenza would have been around the time that China and Japan had successfully implemented measures to increase rice production. 1957, the Asian Flu, would have been after China modernized again.

Maybe having lots of snails and lots of ducks together with lots of human farmers might create the perfect storm for lots of new influenza strains. Throw in the rats that are probably chowing down on the snails at night and you have even more possibilities, since rats can get flu, too.

Oh, and according to one source, ancient Greeks described influenza. And snails are an ancient Mediterranean delicacy.