British scientist Michael Gregor, the guru of popularization of science warned about the risk of new pandemics that could destroy half of humanity. Potential source – poultry, where the world contains millions of chickens.
On the subject Gregor published a book, equipped with three and a half thousand references to research on the topic. The current pandemic coronavirus compared to the potential risk posed by broiler, a scientist considers a “light rehearsal on dvoechku”.
the Sources is detrimental to human viruses, like Gregor, was animals. Tuberculosis came to us from the goats, measles – from goats and sheep, smallpox from camels, leprosy from water Buffalo, whooping cough from pigs, typhoid fever, from the same hens, and so on and so forth.
the Conditions in which chickens are kept on poultry farms are terrible. Each has an average space in a sheet of paper of size A4. They were stuffed with chemicals and antibiotics. While agree, the chicken-and-egg – product, to put it mildly, less rare than the meat of a pangolin or a bat.
the New pandemic, according to scientists, is caused by a new flu, which people infect chickens.
the Epidemic of Spanish flu in 1918-1920, considered the most deadly in the history of mankind. Then it infected 500 million people who died at least 50 million. During the year the Spanish flu was killing more people than the bubonic plague for a century, and for 25 weeks – more than AIDS for a quarter century.
the problem with the Spanish flu was that it, like the coronavirus, began innocently – a small cough, sore muscles. Then the temperature. And then the nightmare started. The highest mortality from the Spanish flu were in 20-34-year-olds. As for the end of the epidemic, as expressed by a scholar, “she has no one else began to infect” – its target is either dead or was not sufficiently susceptible to disease.
Only in 2005 was able to establish the source of the Spanish flu. It was birds.
the Next hit of a human strain of bird flu as it is known, appeared in 1997, it was H5N1.
infectious disease Expert Professor Michael Osterholm calls him “a cousin of the Spanish flu”. The H5N1 outbreak began in Hong Kong with three children. He got the throat and stomach, two weeks later he died. Then this kind of bird flu infected 18 people, a third of them died.
All of these people catch the virus from birds, most likely from a pet shop, from person to person, the variation is not passed. But the problem was that the virus before the “infectiousness among people”, according to its researchers, had very little mutations. If they occurred, mankind would have been a nightmare. Very simple transfer plus higher mortality and a pandemic has swept the whole world, taking in ten times more victims, h��m in 1918.
On the news about the coronavirus passed almost unnoticed in February the news of a large-scale outbreak of bird flu in China. It happened in Hunan province. At a poultry farm killed 4 000 broilers. To avoid the spread of disease, scored 18 000 chickens.
Similar was observed and in Europe – in Poland in December had for the same reason, to score thousands of turkeys and chickens.
How to avoid a terrible new pandemic of avian influenza? A fan of vegetarianism Michael Gregor sees two exits. First – to destroy all chickens in the world, which of course is not feasible. The second is to change the conditions of their cultivation.
the Inside of the hangars, where they raise chickens and hens, resemble a moving carpet of feathers. Broilers placed in a huge battery cells, plus, poor ventilation, fumes from manure – it is not surprising that diseases thrive there. The greater the density, the risky game of “Russian roulette” with a pandemic.
the Original H5N1 virus was found in wild ducks. He quickly killed the “host” and therefore poorly covered. But when tens of thousands of potential “owners” in one hangar, the virus mutates very quickly.
Gregor offers to raise chickens the old-fashioned, do not feed them with antiviral medications, what produced resistant strains. But the scientist, however, is pessimistic: “as long as there is poultry, there will be a pandemic”.
Finally, it is worth remembering the words of the late Nobel laureate, biologist Joseph Lederberga: “We live in evolutionary competition with bacteria and viruses. And there is no guarantee that we survive.”
