Huh. I don’t know if I’m picking up what they’re putting down here, but it kind of sounds like suppressing fever e.g. with Tylenol would actually be bad for (normal) flu progression.
Isn’t it common knowledge that adults heal quicker with higher fever, and that suppressing fever is needed only if it reaches dangerous levels (in contrast to children where fever can be dangerous at lower levels)?
Fever helps against all kinds of illnesses but it can also be deadly, so having fever reducting medicine around is a smart precaution IMO. If you're otherwise healthy and are dealing with a mild seasonal infection and have got something important going on, I can see why people would choose to reduce symptoms at the cost of taking longer to recover.
Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.
> Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.
This is not specific to America; it's a thing in the entire Western world, and probably beyond. Because it's not like we have any other choice.
There is no slack in the system. Most people can't afford to have more than a few sick days in a year, and they prefer to save those up for when painkillers and cough medicine don't cut it anymore. Same with children, because a sick child staying home is usually equivalent to the parent taking a sick day themselves - either way, they're not at work.
We can talk about media or people going overboard once it becomes acceptable to skip work for a week because of sick kid, or in order to not get everyone in the office sick too.
Due to a condition I was born with, I was raised the opposite. No over the counter medication my entire life, with some exceptions. I usually decline pain management in ER, for things like broken bones, but for surgeries and stuff of course I have no choice as I go under.
I will take what the doctor orders though, to treat illness and conditions though thankfully at this stage there hasn't been many instances. Usually that's antibiotics.
Yeah it was pretty painful at first and at different times. Never like in tears pain though, just very distracting. I have broken two fingers and two collarbones, at different times, and a toe! Both collarbones were fully smashed to bits but did not pierce the skin, I had bruising for months.
I have an above average tolerance but I think what really helps is pain management techniques, which I believe can help all of us at different times of need. Chronic pain is a bitch, which I have, and not everyone has pain that is reasonably manageable, but even prescribed pain meds are really going to mess with you and I think it is worth avoiding if possible and not inhumane.
Copying Google AI's response here as it's at least as good as what I was going to recall:
> Fever is a key part of the innate immune system, acting as a protective response to infection by raising the body's temperature. This increase in temperature inhibits the growth of many pathogens, enhances the activity of immune cells like leukocytes, and improves the effectiveness of the adaptive immune response.
My Vietnamese in-laws commonly make a sweat tent to shorten the duration of sickness. I can't say if it works, but it's something I intend to try next time I'm sick.
When I feel like I have a virus I usually put on my hoody which I only wear when I feel ill and a scarf and before going to bed I drink a lot of herb or ginger tea (like two cans)
this is will heat up your body and you get some night sweats, this usually helps reducing the sick time.
I can't say if it actually helps, but its become a ritual for that occasion
Very simplified... It is a suppressor of symptoms like pain and fever which are the bodies way of letting you know something is damaged and killing off unknown foreign bodies respectively.
Suppressing symptoms does not remove the cause and is not a cure.
Pain being a way to let you know that something is damaged is close to true--close enough not to quibble with. But fever is not a way to let you know that foreign bodies are being killed off--that's his claim, and it's wrong.
It's a fairly common notion to "sweat out" a flu. Stay in bed, wrap yourself up in lots of blankets and just sweat the damn thing out. High body heat kills the virus.
So it would make sense that drugs like tylenol/paracetamol would make you feel better, but would keep the flu alive in you for longer.
Anecdotally, I have used this technique many times, also drinking hot tea besides being wrapped in blankets, and at least for me it has worked much better than when taking any kind of antipyretics.
There are cases when the fever is dangerously high and antipyretics are necessary. But when the fever is supportable it certainly accelerates the healing.
Although, we’re very unusual humans in the grand scheme of things. So using medication might be reasonable. The brain might start taking damage around 104F. That was probably a good tradeoff for a peasant farmer (our ancestors, on average). Most of us nowadays just think for a living, not such a good tradeoff for us. Take the fever suppressant, what’s the worst that’ll happen if you miss an extra day of work?
That's what we do here (Czech republic), we don't take meds until the fever goes over 39°C (above 40 you are looking for trouble). You lay in bed and drink enough to compensate for sweating. My grandma would make you onion tea.
> Fever is used by organisms as diverse as fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals (see for reference Basu and Srivastava, 2003). Since fever is metabolically expensive, it must provide substantial advantage to the host. Surprisingly little is known about immunological effects mediated by fever, a lack of understanding that might be attributable in part to the common ignorance in clinical practice with respect to benefits fever might provide. Post-operative infections can be prolong survival: patients developing empyema after lung cancer
surgery have improved 5-year survival (50% (n = 18) vs 22%
(n = 411)) (Ruckdeschel et al, 1972). In this light, it seems
unfortunate that fever is usually suppressed in hospital routine.
> The phenomenon of spontaneous regression and remission from cancer has been observed by many physicians and was described in hundreds of publications. However, suggestive clues on cause or trigger are sparse and not substantiated by much experimental evidence. [...] At least in a larger fraction of cases a hefty feverish infection is linked with spontaneous regression in time and is investigated as putative trigger.
> Professor Busch in 1868 introduced the infection of cancer patients by purpose as a novel strategy to treat cancer. He achieved a dramatic regression with his first patient using live Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, the pathogen leading to erysipelas, published in the German Journal ‘Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift’ (Busch, 1868). Beginning in 1891, this strategy was exploited by Coley, who had some reading knowledge of German (Hall, 1998). Coley systematically applied Streptococcus pyogenes extracts – later called ‘Coley’s toxin’ – to cancer patients and achieved a remarkable rate of regressions. A retrospective compilation of cases considered inoperable at the time of treatment between 1891 and 1936, which was conducted by Wiemann and Starnes (1994, Table 2), determined a remission rate of 64% (108/170) and a 5-year survival rate of larger than 44%. Coley used to inject his extract once or twice a week over a period ranging from a few weeks to several months. His method became quite famous and was tested on hundreds of patients by him and contemporary physicians, but overshadowed by the development of X-ray treatment which was regarded to be much more powerful and of broader applicability.
> Since cancer is usually a slowly progressing disease with
occasionally long periods of dormancy, putative beneficial fever
effects should also precipitate as preventive efficacy. This can
indeed be found. In a cohort of 603 melanoma patients compared
to 627 population controls, an inverse correlation was found
between melanoma risk and number of recorded infections on the
one hand and between melanoma risk and fever height on the
other hand, leading to a combined reduction of melanoma risk of
about 40% for people with a history of three or more infections
with high fever above 38.51C (Koelmel et al, 1999). Mastrangelo
et al (1998) report a striking inverse correlation between the
number of infections and mortality from tumours in Italy in the
period 1890 –1960: every 2% reduction in the number of infectious diseases was followed by a 2% increase in tumours about 10 years
later.
You usually don't get a fever from a cold (except in Japanese anime), if there's a significant fever it's more likely to be a flu. Or, these days, could be Covid.
The reasoning behind this is that birds have higher body temperature in our fever range.
They put mice infected with a flu virus modified to have the bird variant of a gene in an oven and the virus indeed didn't degrade as much compared to the unmodified control.
I wonder if Tryptase affects Avian flu as well. Anyone know?
I'd also argue my partner and I got Avian flu one Xmas from eating free range eggs when there was an Avian flu pandemic up the road from them in Norfolk and the British Govt ordered culls.
Tryptase:
"A striking finding was decreased tryptase content in mast cells with copper overload, whereas copper starvation increased tryptase content." [1]
"Influenza A viruses are negative-stranded RNA viruses. Like many other enveloped viruses, they code for a surface glycoprotein that must be cleaved by cellular proteases for activation. HA, a major influenza surface glycoprotein, is translated as a single protein, HA0. For viral activation, HA0 (assembled as trimers) must be cleaved by a trypsin-like serine endoprotease at a specific site, normally coded for by a single basic amino acid (usually arginine) between the HA1 and HA2 domains of the protein. After cleavage, the two disulfide-bonded protein domains produce the mature form of the protein subunits as a prerequisite for the conformational change necessary for fusion and hence viral infectivity" [2]
I also wonder, by virtue of being a single strand of RNA, how long does it take for mutations to make the virus no longer viable in the environment it resides in?
In other words is a this a 3-4day process of replication and mutation which in effect kills itself off, rendering the need for immune system response and cough, cold, flu rememdies nothing more than containment effects?
Well, if you let your innate immune system do its job, fever can actually kill many pathogens and also ramp up your immune system response. It's fascinating that human cells can survive at slightly higher temperatures than most pathogens, giving us an advantage. It's not comfortable to have a high fever, and there's a slight chance of kids getting febrile seizures (although most are not actually that bad), but we do more harm ot ourselves for little comfort or a complete lack of soicism.
I get headaches sometimes. I know 200mg of ibuprofen can help me, but I chose not to. Pain is part of reality. If we mask it, we have little incentive to address the root cause.
I had COVID-19 in August this year. I had a 39.5°C fever for 2 days, then it subsided for 7-8 more days - I didn't take any antipyretic. You know, you can actually tolerate it if you accept it as something normal. And it's also a great experience to actually learn to know when you have a fever - you don't need a thermometer even.
Pyrotherapy. The idea of fighting untreatable (at the time) illnesses by inducing a fever in the patient. There's actually a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotherapy
As in deliberately infect a syphilis patient with malaria, which can give you a very high fever. The first time I heard about that one was in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, turns out it was one of the non-fictional parts of the books (which were a mix of historical facts and fiction).
Quote: "In general, the body temperature was maintained at 41 °C (105 °F).[1] Many diseases were treated by this method in the first half of the 20th century."
The malaria variant was not the common variant, that was saved for extreme cases, apparently (e.g. Syphilis). Mostly it was hot baths and the like.
I, for one, will stick to my near-daily sauna sessions.
I don't take any antipyretics, nor have I given to my kids, unless the fever is 39-39.5°C and climbing. Otherwise, you're sabotaging your own innate immune system!
I do the same. Fever is a feature, unless the infection is so pervasive the fever itself becomes a health hazard (at which point you need to see a doctor ASAP, not lower your fever)
Taking an antipyretic for a regular flu completely defeats the purpose. Let your immune system do its thing, it is pretty good at it.
That's a vaccine for one strain: H5N1. I'm sure birds have many more strains and variants of virus. I'm sure a proper virologist can dive in here ...
I think people assume that a fever is caused by an infection but my understanding is that a fever is a response to the infection. The body raises its temperature deliberately to destroy a viral infection, even though it is unpleasant, as well as deploying the other defenses.
It seems, according to this article, that these bird 'flu infections are resistant to being cooked by a fever and that makes them more dangerous - we've lost a defense strategy.
Not a proper virologist, but H5N5 killed a person in Washington state recently.
There will likely be some cross protection on the H5 antigen, just as some regular flu shots provide cross protection against the N1 antigen of H5N1. (The H5 and N1 subtypes won't be completely matched, respectively, but you don't always need complete matching for some protection.)
I'd imagine that in the event of a Bird Flu pandemic, a vaccine would be developed and dispatched quite quickly, unlike with COVID, where during the early days experts were saying it was possible we'd never get a vaccine.
If COVID demonstrated anything it is exactly the contrary, that we should not count on readily available vaccines, and rather should have *systemic* responses ready to be implemented when needed (including vaccine development, but not only). Every new virus is a new challenge and a vaccine may take time to develop. Meanwhile isolation protocols, masks etc. are all sensible actions. Prevention and prior investments into a wide range of measures, from education, to health protocols development and to vaccine technology research are all necessary to have these systemic responses ready in place.
The US has antivaxxers in charge of health policy now, and they have specifically targeted mRNA vaccines with funding cuts. They seem likely to hinder rather than help any near future vaccines development program in response to a pandemic.
The reason they said it wasn't possible wasn't that making a vaccine was physically impossible. They said a vaccine might never arrive because vaccines have such a poor track record against respiratory viruses. The assumption the (cough) experts were making was that nobody would roll out a useless vaccine.
But they would! The COVID vaccine was advertised as 95% effective after two shots and done, and within months it was at negative effectiveness and people were being told to take infinity boosters. That's the exact scenario originally anticipated. The only mistake was assuming the regulators wouldn't sign off on a useless vaccine backed by dodgy trials. We were told to take our medicine anyway and then the vaccine boosters tried to gaslight everyone into thinking it was a great success even as millions of people saw friends and family who'd taken five shots come down with Omicron for the third time in six months.
It doesn't work because respiratory viruses mutate very quickly. They evolve around both natural immunity and vaccines very fast, but vaccination triggers population lock so the effect is worse than just letting people fight it off naturally where you get more natural variability in defenses.
That's why if you look carefully at the data for flu shots they don't work. They're reported as effective because the original specific virus goes away, but people still get flu and die at the same rate because "flu" is more than just one very specific virus. End effect on mortality is zero.
Maybe it'd then be a good idea to have labs secretly funded by a joint venture half-US, half-Chinese, in China, doing gain-of-function research on these?
And then maybe that if some shit hits the fan, it'd then be a great idea to ask someone neck and tie deep in that funding and in that research to act as the "expert" to tell us if we should put masks on or not once it leaks?
Why we keep killing the birds that survive the infection is beyond me. It's an evolutionary pressure that we refuse to allow to work.
It's almost as if we want to give the flu as many opportunities as possible to spill over, instead of just letting the birds who have immunity survive and thus basically drive the virus to extinction.
> Why we keep killing the birds that survive the infection is beyond me
We don’t know the reservoir capabilities of novel viruses, nor can we confidently rule when a previously-sick bird is well and non-infectious at scale.
> It's an evolutionary pressure that we refuse to allow to work
We’re selecting against birds that get infected in the first place. (Probably to no tangible effect. But the goal isn’t to have birds that can survive a plague, it’s to prevent it in the first place.)
Thanks for the response! I agree that it's not obvious the reservoir possibilities.
I don't agree that we're selecting against birds that get infected in the first place, or at least I don't think that's how it works. My understanding is that if any birds on a farm get sick, the whole house is killed. Maybe the whole farm.
To me that seems like selecting for lucky birds not selecting for populations that never get sick because lots of populations never get exposed.
I could be wrong on my understanding or how I interpret the impact, though, so I'm super open to learning more.
The main idea behind culling is to prevent the virus itself from evolving inside the herd. Viruses evolve much more rapidly than birds.
Now sure, if there were a clear way to tell that some birds have been infected and survived and recovered, it could be a good idea not to sacrifice those birds, and even to specifically breed them. However, there is no good way to do so, especially not with any confidence. It's much more likely you'll end up infecting any population that you put these new birds in to.
So, the best and cheapest solution is to sacrifice the entire group, to prevent the disease from spreading to other populations, and to do so quickly, to prevent the virus from evolving or crossing a species boundary.
I believe the rationale is that during the process of infecting a flock of birds the virus would be exposed to pressure that would encourage its mutation, especially as these birds begin to successfully fight it off. The current avian H5N1 only needs a couple of mutations to spread human-to-human pretty well.
So the current culling of entire flocks is seen as a means of nipping any of these mutations in the bud.
During the 20th century the American government (as well as others) put a lot of effort into finding ways to control people. Drugs, control of the media, MK Ultra and Mockingbird are just two examples of many. Everything more or less failed. Dosing unsuspecting civilians with LSD doesn't have much useful effect.
But one thing worked, and they should have known it all along. Fear. If you can make people afraid, you can control them. They want us to fear birds. They want us to fear our neighbors. They want us to fear other governments, and faceless terror organizations that are probably hiding in your bushes outside, if you see something, say something!
They did know it all along. It's been used since time immemorial.
But mass media and social media have given it new opportunities. Ironically I think we all expected that having access to more information would have been a tool against that, but it turns out to be much less effective at explaining fear than conjuring it.
Even with a flawed messenger pointing the wrong tools at the wrong target, isn't "avoiding ultraprocessed foods, seed oils, pesticides, and fluoride" still fundamentally a step in the right direction, compared to previous politically-connected health campaigns, like the infamous one not so long ago to "get out and move", which placed blame on kids for being unable to out-exercise a bad diet, while doing absolutely nothing to criticize or curtail the industry that pumps carbonated water full of sugar and then deliberately markets it to impressionable, easily addicted, easily manipulated children?
All criticism levelled at the people loading obscene amounts of sugar into bread, tomato sauce, baby formula, water, and every other food under the sun is good criticism, even if it comes from a sometimes-problematic mouth.
Ultra processed foods is not a well defined category, so saying avoid UPFs is meaningless.
There are several “UPFs” that have better health outcomes than NOVA 1 “unprocessed” foods, because the NOVA system was never developed to categorize foods by how healthy they were but instead how closely they matched a fairly regional Brazilian diet.
There is no evidence that “seed oils” are bad beyond their caloric density, and seed oils like Canola oil are some of the healthiest fats we have, far more than the lard they’ve been encouraging people to consume instead (which is almost certainly worse than most seed oils, except possibly rhe single scenario where a fast food chain may be heating and reheating the same fat source many times over).
No one is buying and consuming oesticides, so that’s in actionable advice for people.
There is absolutely no evidence fluoride levels in US water are anywhere near dangerous levels. Having people buy and maintain expensive filters simply to keep fluoride out of their water likely won’t help with anything, and will likely displace some other more healthful actions they could be taking, like spending the money on buying berries for their kids.
1. The idea that UPFs being poorly defined == UPF is a meaningless designation has always sounded like absurd whataboutism that stops real progress to me.
Surely you don't mean to suggest that just because UPFs aren't perfectly defined, that means there's no fundamental difference between a diet composed of skittles, donuts, and ice cream cookie sandwiches versus a diet composed of organic, plant-based whole foods, right?
2. You say there is "no evidence" that seed oils are bad... yet when I search for "canola oil health hazards", the very first thing I see is "Canola oil has been associated with potential health hazards due to its high omega-6 fatty acid content, which may contribute to inflammation and chronic diseases when consumed in excess. Additionally, the refining process often involves chemicals like hexane, which raises concerns about the presence of harmful byproducts, although these are typically present in very low amounts in the final product."
Am I crazy to prefer that the amount of hexane in my food be as close to absolutely none as possible? Am I crazy to not wanting to be loading myself up with something that's at least clearly associated with inflammation and chronic disease?
3. Why do we have to assume that the optimal replacement for seed oils is lard? Is it possible to consider that maybe we'd all be better off if we stopped eating french fries, rather than merely switching what greasy junk we're frying them in?
Is EWG not a generally reliable and trustworthy source of information? Do you mean to suggest that no foods grown outside ever have any pesticides on them, or that the pesticides never follow the food all the way to the grocery store? Haven't plenty of agricultural products over the years, including Round Up, been linked with high probability to various cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, etc?
5. Why do we assume that filtering water means taking away other healthy actions? Do we need to be giving kids MORE sugar just because it's natural (berries)? Is there not extensive scientific literature linking fluoride ingestion with decreased IQ?
6. Why can't we have a open, good-faith conversation about these topics without engaging in tribal politics? Why do we get so emotionally attached to current narratives and beliefs about these kinds of things even when we know those beliefs are formed based on incomplete information and should be subject to change as we learn more over time, a standard exercise of basic epistemic humility?
Skittles are bad for reasons having nothing to do with "ultraprocessing". This is just the new incarnation of people believing Mexican Coke is healthier because it's made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup.
Care to engage more substantially than this, or are you just repeating the argument that because UPF is imperfectly defined, that means UPF as a category is absolutely worthless and therefore we should dismiss all precautionary options surrounding any and all UPFs with prejudice?
"Ultra processing" is corollary to unhealthy food, not causal. It's not the ultra processing that makes it unhealthy.
That's the crux of this disagreement. Assuming the relationship and then assuming the next step that the antitheses must be true. Unprocessed foods aren't inherently healthy and ultra processed foods aren't inherently unhealthy, the two things have nothing to do with each other.
"Whereas most prior research has estimated effects of exposure to extremely high levels of fluoride, we consider exposure to levels of fluoride within the range typical in most places and of greatest relevance to policy debates about government water fluoridation. We use data from the nationally representative (United States) High School and Beyond cohort, characterize fluoride exposure from drinking water across adolescence, adjust for confounders, and observe cognitive test performance in both secondary school and at age ~60. We find that children exposed to recommended levels of fluoride in drinking water exhibit modestly better cognition in secondary school, an advantage that is smaller and no longer statistically significant at age ~60."
I'm very much overweight, though not morbidly obese. I have been at my best weight when I did "get out and move". The problem, of course, is that schools, jobs, and modern infrastructure don't make that as easy to do as in prior decades. You can't just tell people to do something that has been made difficult to do and expect them to do it.
This is simply not true. Bird flu mainly spreads among wild birds and that is where it has its reservoir. It would still exist even if the world was free of bird farms. It also usually doesn't spread between farms because, in the event of an outbreak, all the animals on the affected farm are culled. At most, bird farms slightly increase overall contact between birds and humans.
It’s like this with most animals that we have learned to live with in close proximity. Zoonotic viruses are responsible for many of our diseases today, but through natural selection we are adapted to many.
This is partly why European disease wiped out Native American populations to a large extent. Europeans carrying diseases from animals they lived closely with.
But it's not (just) about us living in close proximity to them, it's about putting them in an environment that makes it impossible for them to live healthy lives and incubates potential zoonotic diseases.
We have not been factory farming for centuries. More like a century. And it hasn't been a century with a sterling track record! I think we can all recall an event in recent memory where having a lot of animals in close proximity and unhealthy conditions went super duper wrong. And we have problems with new strains of bird flu every couple of years.
People used to literally live with the livestock attached to home or even under the same roof. This was probably the case for most of agricultural history.
Factory farming is bad, over use of antibiotics in live stock is bad. But OP's point is that this is how many of the diseases in human history and therefor unlikely we would ever be able to avoid this while raising animals for food. As they said, both are true
I can't speak for OP, they may have been advocating for giving up farming animals (or fowl) altogether, but personally I see a huge inflection point between traditional and factory farming methods with regards to the level of risk. When you are compromising the immunity of your livestock, you beg trouble.
I understand the temptation to zoom out to a several hundred year timespan, that can be clarifying. But when (as in this case) there are substantive differences in recent history, it muddies the waters. I totally buy that endemic diseases are largely zoonotic diseases plus time. But that doesn't clarify how much risk exists in our current methods of farming. Factory farming is not equivalent to traditional farming in this respect. History is not featureless and when we flatten it we lose important details.
Living in close proximity is one thing, but growing them at the speed and scale which we do with factory farming must massively increase the rate of development of viruses. It’s almost as if we designed a special program just to develop a virus that would wipe us all out.
Yeah. It's very cheap to grow large amounts of canola seed, soybeans, potatoes, corn, and wheat to make all manner of high-salt, high-fat, high-carb junk food.
It’s even cheaper to just eat the potatoes, corn, wheat, soy directly like humans have at least for 1000s of years. It would also be healthier and less damaging to the planet as well as local environments, and save tens if not hundreds of billions of animals lives.
The processing is simply unnecessary and the output isn’t food but essentially drugs that people get addicted to. That’s completely different from the actual food that we grow.
I am not sure how dangerous it is. Not saying it is not but maybe hyperbole.
I have been hearing this and the climate change stuff since I was young as a threat to humans and I think there must be a lot more than science in here, at least, in my humble opinion.
Flu has a long track record in causing pandemics with new variants, e.g., the Spanish flu in 1918–1920. Outbreaks spread much faster now thanks to air travel. We do have the advantages of P2 masks and mRNA vaccines.
Huh. I don’t know if I’m picking up what they’re putting down here, but it kind of sounds like suppressing fever e.g. with Tylenol would actually be bad for (normal) flu progression.
Isn’t it common knowledge that adults heal quicker with higher fever, and that suppressing fever is needed only if it reaches dangerous levels (in contrast to children where fever can be dangerous at lower levels)?
Fever helps against all kinds of illnesses but it can also be deadly, so having fever reducting medicine around is a smart precaution IMO. If you're otherwise healthy and are dealing with a mild seasonal infection and have got something important going on, I can see why people would choose to reduce symptoms at the cost of taking longer to recover.
Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.
> Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.
This is not specific to America; it's a thing in the entire Western world, and probably beyond. Because it's not like we have any other choice.
There is no slack in the system. Most people can't afford to have more than a few sick days in a year, and they prefer to save those up for when painkillers and cough medicine don't cut it anymore. Same with children, because a sick child staying home is usually equivalent to the parent taking a sick day themselves - either way, they're not at work.
We can talk about media or people going overboard once it becomes acceptable to skip work for a week because of sick kid, or in order to not get everyone in the office sick too.
>Most people can't afford to have more than a few sick days in a year
Sick days are unlimited in my country (and of course don’t count as vacation or similar).
I think this is relatively standard for European countries, though not 100% sure.
> like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick.
Basically how I grew up. I took painkillers and throat lozenges in my backpack to school.
Due to a condition I was born with, I was raised the opposite. No over the counter medication my entire life, with some exceptions. I usually decline pain management in ER, for things like broken bones, but for surgeries and stuff of course I have no choice as I go under.
I will take what the doctor orders though, to treat illness and conditions though thankfully at this stage there hasn't been many instances. Usually that's antibiotics.
Broken bones? A broken femur or a shin is hell.
Yeah it was pretty painful at first and at different times. Never like in tears pain though, just very distracting. I have broken two fingers and two collarbones, at different times, and a toe! Both collarbones were fully smashed to bits but did not pierce the skin, I had bruising for months.
I have an above average tolerance but I think what really helps is pain management techniques, which I believe can help all of us at different times of need. Chronic pain is a bitch, which I have, and not everyone has pain that is reasonably manageable, but even prescribed pain meds are really going to mess with you and I think it is worth avoiding if possible and not inhumane.
Copying Google AI's response here as it's at least as good as what I was going to recall:
> Fever is a key part of the innate immune system, acting as a protective response to infection by raising the body's temperature. This increase in temperature inhibits the growth of many pathogens, enhances the activity of immune cells like leukocytes, and improves the effectiveness of the adaptive immune response.
My Vietnamese in-laws commonly make a sweat tent to shorten the duration of sickness. I can't say if it works, but it's something I intend to try next time I'm sick.
When I feel like I have a virus I usually put on my hoody which I only wear when I feel ill and a scarf and before going to bed I drink a lot of herb or ginger tea (like two cans)
this is will heat up your body and you get some night sweats, this usually helps reducing the sick time.
I can't say if it actually helps, but its become a ritual for that occasion
Well, yes?
Very simplified... It is a suppressor of symptoms like pain and fever which are the bodies way of letting you know something is damaged and killing off unknown foreign bodies respectively.
Suppressing symptoms does not remove the cause and is not a cure.
I think what they're saying here is that you're not just suppressing a symptom, you're suppressing a sickness fighting mechanism.
He said that.
Fever isn't just a symptom. It's a defense mechanism. The idea is that use of antipyretic drugs may make the infection worse.
The sentence is constructed, weirdly, but it's meant to say that fever is "killing off unknown foreign bodies"
Pain being a way to let you know that something is damaged is close to true--close enough not to quibble with. But fever is not a way to let you know that foreign bodies are being killed off--that's his claim, and it's wrong.
It's a fairly common notion to "sweat out" a flu. Stay in bed, wrap yourself up in lots of blankets and just sweat the damn thing out. High body heat kills the virus.
So it would make sense that drugs like tylenol/paracetamol would make you feel better, but would keep the flu alive in you for longer.
Anecdotally, I have used this technique many times, also drinking hot tea besides being wrapped in blankets, and at least for me it has worked much better than when taking any kind of antipyretics.
There are cases when the fever is dangerously high and antipyretics are necessary. But when the fever is supportable it certainly accelerates the healing.
It is, as others have pointed out.
Although, we’re very unusual humans in the grand scheme of things. So using medication might be reasonable. The brain might start taking damage around 104F. That was probably a good tradeoff for a peasant farmer (our ancestors, on average). Most of us nowadays just think for a living, not such a good tradeoff for us. Take the fever suppressant, what’s the worst that’ll happen if you miss an extra day of work?
That's what we do here (Czech republic), we don't take meds until the fever goes over 39°C (above 40 you are looking for trouble). You lay in bed and drink enough to compensate for sweating. My grandma would make you onion tea.
Our pediatrician didn’t want us to give Tylenol unless the fever was over 99.5 and not to bring them in unless it was over 101 with Tylenol.
You want your immune system to simmer, not to boil.
It may go further than that:
> Fever is used by organisms as diverse as fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals (see for reference Basu and Srivastava, 2003). Since fever is metabolically expensive, it must provide substantial advantage to the host. Surprisingly little is known about immunological effects mediated by fever, a lack of understanding that might be attributable in part to the common ignorance in clinical practice with respect to benefits fever might provide. Post-operative infections can be prolong survival: patients developing empyema after lung cancer surgery have improved 5-year survival (50% (n = 18) vs 22% (n = 411)) (Ruckdeschel et al, 1972). In this light, it seems unfortunate that fever is usually suppressed in hospital routine.
> The phenomenon of spontaneous regression and remission from cancer has been observed by many physicians and was described in hundreds of publications. However, suggestive clues on cause or trigger are sparse and not substantiated by much experimental evidence. [...] At least in a larger fraction of cases a hefty feverish infection is linked with spontaneous regression in time and is investigated as putative trigger.
> Professor Busch in 1868 introduced the infection of cancer patients by purpose as a novel strategy to treat cancer. He achieved a dramatic regression with his first patient using live Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, the pathogen leading to erysipelas, published in the German Journal ‘Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift’ (Busch, 1868). Beginning in 1891, this strategy was exploited by Coley, who had some reading knowledge of German (Hall, 1998). Coley systematically applied Streptococcus pyogenes extracts – later called ‘Coley’s toxin’ – to cancer patients and achieved a remarkable rate of regressions. A retrospective compilation of cases considered inoperable at the time of treatment between 1891 and 1936, which was conducted by Wiemann and Starnes (1994, Table 2), determined a remission rate of 64% (108/170) and a 5-year survival rate of larger than 44%. Coley used to inject his extract once or twice a week over a period ranging from a few weeks to several months. His method became quite famous and was tested on hundreds of patients by him and contemporary physicians, but overshadowed by the development of X-ray treatment which was regarded to be much more powerful and of broader applicability.
> Since cancer is usually a slowly progressing disease with occasionally long periods of dormancy, putative beneficial fever effects should also precipitate as preventive efficacy. This can indeed be found. In a cohort of 603 melanoma patients compared to 627 population controls, an inverse correlation was found between melanoma risk and number of recorded infections on the one hand and between melanoma risk and fever height on the other hand, leading to a combined reduction of melanoma risk of about 40% for people with a history of three or more infections with high fever above 38.51C (Koelmel et al, 1999). Mastrangelo et al (1998) report a striking inverse correlation between the number of infections and mortality from tumours in Italy in the period 1890 –1960: every 2% reduction in the number of infectious diseases was followed by a 2% increase in tumours about 10 years later.
https://www.nature.com/articles/6602386.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16444847/
I know someone who doesn't get fever. When he gets sick with regular cold or fly it's much longer and worse than for anyone else I know.
Most people don't get a significant fever when infected with most common cold viruses.
"Regular cold or flu"
if I wasn't clear he basically does not get fever that's just it, the body don't do it.
You usually don't get a fever from a cold (except in Japanese anime), if there's a significant fever it's more likely to be a flu. Or, these days, could be Covid.
The reasoning behind this is that birds have higher body temperature in our fever range.
They put mice infected with a flu virus modified to have the bird variant of a gene in an oven and the virus indeed didn't degrade as much compared to the unmodified control.
I wonder if Tryptase affects Avian flu as well. Anyone know?
I'd also argue my partner and I got Avian flu one Xmas from eating free range eggs when there was an Avian flu pandemic up the road from them in Norfolk and the British Govt ordered culls.
Tryptase:
"A striking finding was decreased tryptase content in mast cells with copper overload, whereas copper starvation increased tryptase content." [1]
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5728160/
"Influenza A viruses are negative-stranded RNA viruses. Like many other enveloped viruses, they code for a surface glycoprotein that must be cleaved by cellular proteases for activation. HA, a major influenza surface glycoprotein, is translated as a single protein, HA0. For viral activation, HA0 (assembled as trimers) must be cleaved by a trypsin-like serine endoprotease at a specific site, normally coded for by a single basic amino acid (usually arginine) between the HA1 and HA2 domains of the protein. After cleavage, the two disulfide-bonded protein domains produce the mature form of the protein subunits as a prerequisite for the conformational change necessary for fusion and hence viral infectivity" [2]
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC33880/
I also wonder, by virtue of being a single strand of RNA, how long does it take for mutations to make the virus no longer viable in the environment it resides in?
In other words is a this a 3-4day process of replication and mutation which in effect kills itself off, rendering the need for immune system response and cough, cold, flu rememdies nothing more than containment effects?
Well, most humans (unlike me) take Tylenol even with a "fever" of just 38°C/100.5°F, so what difference does it make?
Unlike us, the virus will replicate much more quickly in their bodies. It wont kill them, but will likely make the infection last longer.
Havent had a fever in many years, since taking flu and covid shots each year.
Well, if you let your innate immune system do its job, fever can actually kill many pathogens and also ramp up your immune system response. It's fascinating that human cells can survive at slightly higher temperatures than most pathogens, giving us an advantage. It's not comfortable to have a high fever, and there's a slight chance of kids getting febrile seizures (although most are not actually that bad), but we do more harm ot ourselves for little comfort or a complete lack of soicism.
I get headaches sometimes. I know 200mg of ibuprofen can help me, but I chose not to. Pain is part of reality. If we mask it, we have little incentive to address the root cause.
I had COVID-19 in August this year. I had a 39.5°C fever for 2 days, then it subsided for 7-8 more days - I didn't take any antipyretic. You know, you can actually tolerate it if you accept it as something normal. And it's also a great experience to actually learn to know when you have a fever - you don't need a thermometer even.
Pyrotherapy. The idea of fighting untreatable (at the time) illnesses by inducing a fever in the patient. There's actually a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotherapy As in deliberately infect a syphilis patient with malaria, which can give you a very high fever. The first time I heard about that one was in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, turns out it was one of the non-fictional parts of the books (which were a mix of historical facts and fiction).
Quote: "In general, the body temperature was maintained at 41 °C (105 °F).[1] Many diseases were treated by this method in the first half of the 20th century."
The malaria variant was not the common variant, that was saved for extreme cases, apparently (e.g. Syphilis). Mostly it was hot baths and the like.
I, for one, will stick to my near-daily sauna sessions.
Oh! Today's a good day for sauna.
Unlike you?
I don't take any antipyretics, nor have I given to my kids, unless the fever is 39-39.5°C and climbing. Otherwise, you're sabotaging your own innate immune system!
I do the same. Fever is a feature, unless the infection is so pervasive the fever itself becomes a health hazard (at which point you need to see a doctor ASAP, not lower your fever)
Taking an antipyretic for a regular flu completely defeats the purpose. Let your immune system do its thing, it is pretty good at it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever#Management
He is not like the others
I agree - stoicism is almost fully extinct. Modern people are a bunch of whiners.
There is a vaccine though.
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-prepares-five-million-vaccine-...
That's a vaccine for one strain: H5N1. I'm sure birds have many more strains and variants of virus. I'm sure a proper virologist can dive in here ...
I think people assume that a fever is caused by an infection but my understanding is that a fever is a response to the infection. The body raises its temperature deliberately to destroy a viral infection, even though it is unpleasant, as well as deploying the other defenses.
It seems, according to this article, that these bird 'flu infections are resistant to being cooked by a fever and that makes them more dangerous - we've lost a defense strategy.
Not a proper virologist, but H5N5 killed a person in Washington state recently.
There will likely be some cross protection on the H5 antigen, just as some regular flu shots provide cross protection against the N1 antigen of H5N1. (The H5 and N1 subtypes won't be completely matched, respectively, but you don't always need complete matching for some protection.)
Kurzgesagt's fever video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cRZOUcpiOxY
Edit: This video asserts that the heat shock protein excess is what reveals an infected cell to the immune system.
Everyone pops a Tylenol/advil when they get a fever. Can’t be that bad.
I'd imagine that in the event of a Bird Flu pandemic, a vaccine would be developed and dispatched quite quickly, unlike with COVID, where during the early days experts were saying it was possible we'd never get a vaccine.
If COVID demonstrated anything it is exactly the contrary, that we should not count on readily available vaccines, and rather should have *systemic* responses ready to be implemented when needed (including vaccine development, but not only). Every new virus is a new challenge and a vaccine may take time to develop. Meanwhile isolation protocols, masks etc. are all sensible actions. Prevention and prior investments into a wide range of measures, from education, to health protocols development and to vaccine technology research are all necessary to have these systemic responses ready in place.
The US has antivaxxers in charge of health policy now, and they have specifically targeted mRNA vaccines with funding cuts. They seem likely to hinder rather than help any near future vaccines development program in response to a pandemic.
The reason they said it wasn't possible wasn't that making a vaccine was physically impossible. They said a vaccine might never arrive because vaccines have such a poor track record against respiratory viruses. The assumption the (cough) experts were making was that nobody would roll out a useless vaccine.
But they would! The COVID vaccine was advertised as 95% effective after two shots and done, and within months it was at negative effectiveness and people were being told to take infinity boosters. That's the exact scenario originally anticipated. The only mistake was assuming the regulators wouldn't sign off on a useless vaccine backed by dodgy trials. We were told to take our medicine anyway and then the vaccine boosters tried to gaslight everyone into thinking it was a great success even as millions of people saw friends and family who'd taken five shots come down with Omicron for the third time in six months.
It doesn't work because respiratory viruses mutate very quickly. They evolve around both natural immunity and vaccines very fast, but vaccination triggers population lock so the effect is worse than just letting people fight it off naturally where you get more natural variability in defenses.
That's why if you look carefully at the data for flu shots they don't work. They're reported as effective because the original specific virus goes away, but people still get flu and die at the same rate because "flu" is more than just one very specific virus. End effect on mortality is zero.
Any source on these claims?
But the current administration is antivax so…
Something I love to point out to Trump supporters is that he is the one who fast tracked the “clot shot”.
So was the one during COVID-19
Only after it made the vax.
Maybe it'd then be a good idea to have labs secretly funded by a joint venture half-US, half-Chinese, in China, doing gain-of-function research on these?
And then maybe that if some shit hits the fan, it'd then be a great idea to ask someone neck and tie deep in that funding and in that research to act as the "expert" to tell us if we should put masks on or not once it leaks?
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Why we keep killing the birds that survive the infection is beyond me. It's an evolutionary pressure that we refuse to allow to work.
It's almost as if we want to give the flu as many opportunities as possible to spill over, instead of just letting the birds who have immunity survive and thus basically drive the virus to extinction.
> Why we keep killing the birds that survive the infection is beyond me
We don’t know the reservoir capabilities of novel viruses, nor can we confidently rule when a previously-sick bird is well and non-infectious at scale.
> It's an evolutionary pressure that we refuse to allow to work
We’re selecting against birds that get infected in the first place. (Probably to no tangible effect. But the goal isn’t to have birds that can survive a plague, it’s to prevent it in the first place.)
Thanks for the response! I agree that it's not obvious the reservoir possibilities.
I don't agree that we're selecting against birds that get infected in the first place, or at least I don't think that's how it works. My understanding is that if any birds on a farm get sick, the whole house is killed. Maybe the whole farm.
To me that seems like selecting for lucky birds not selecting for populations that never get sick because lots of populations never get exposed.
I could be wrong on my understanding or how I interpret the impact, though, so I'm super open to learning more.
The main idea behind culling is to prevent the virus itself from evolving inside the herd. Viruses evolve much more rapidly than birds.
Now sure, if there were a clear way to tell that some birds have been infected and survived and recovered, it could be a good idea not to sacrifice those birds, and even to specifically breed them. However, there is no good way to do so, especially not with any confidence. It's much more likely you'll end up infecting any population that you put these new birds in to.
So, the best and cheapest solution is to sacrifice the entire group, to prevent the disease from spreading to other populations, and to do so quickly, to prevent the virus from evolving or crossing a species boundary.
Because it's cheaper to fill the whole farm with foam and suffocate all the birds to death, then shovel them out.
I believe the rationale is that during the process of infecting a flock of birds the virus would be exposed to pressure that would encourage its mutation, especially as these birds begin to successfully fight it off. The current avian H5N1 only needs a couple of mutations to spread human-to-human pretty well.
So the current culling of entire flocks is seen as a means of nipping any of these mutations in the bud.
> It's an evolutionary pressure that we refuse to allow to work.
We also refuse to allow it to fail....
During the 20th century the American government (as well as others) put a lot of effort into finding ways to control people. Drugs, control of the media, MK Ultra and Mockingbird are just two examples of many. Everything more or less failed. Dosing unsuspecting civilians with LSD doesn't have much useful effect.
But one thing worked, and they should have known it all along. Fear. If you can make people afraid, you can control them. They want us to fear birds. They want us to fear our neighbors. They want us to fear other governments, and faceless terror organizations that are probably hiding in your bushes outside, if you see something, say something!
“They want us to fear birds” is wild man
Good thing birds aren’t real.
Technically they are dinosaurs man. Ancient fear comes back.
Alfred hitchcock was ahead of his time.
They did know it all along. It's been used since time immemorial.
But mass media and social media have given it new opportunities. Ironically I think we all expected that having access to more information would have been a tool against that, but it turns out to be much less effective at explaining fear than conjuring it.
You're right!
Just don't make comments like this here. Easy political snark doesn't add to the conversation.
I think this is a legitimate concern and criticism.
We've let too many bad ideas leak into the Overton window. Not every idea deserves the participation trophy of being taken seriously.
> Not every idea deserves the participation trophy of being taken seriously
They are literally the ones bringing it up.
Even with a flawed messenger pointing the wrong tools at the wrong target, isn't "avoiding ultraprocessed foods, seed oils, pesticides, and fluoride" still fundamentally a step in the right direction, compared to previous politically-connected health campaigns, like the infamous one not so long ago to "get out and move", which placed blame on kids for being unable to out-exercise a bad diet, while doing absolutely nothing to criticize or curtail the industry that pumps carbonated water full of sugar and then deliberately markets it to impressionable, easily addicted, easily manipulated children?
All criticism levelled at the people loading obscene amounts of sugar into bread, tomato sauce, baby formula, water, and every other food under the sun is good criticism, even if it comes from a sometimes-problematic mouth.
Ultra processed foods is not a well defined category, so saying avoid UPFs is meaningless.
There are several “UPFs” that have better health outcomes than NOVA 1 “unprocessed” foods, because the NOVA system was never developed to categorize foods by how healthy they were but instead how closely they matched a fairly regional Brazilian diet.
There is no evidence that “seed oils” are bad beyond their caloric density, and seed oils like Canola oil are some of the healthiest fats we have, far more than the lard they’ve been encouraging people to consume instead (which is almost certainly worse than most seed oils, except possibly rhe single scenario where a fast food chain may be heating and reheating the same fat source many times over).
No one is buying and consuming oesticides, so that’s in actionable advice for people.
There is absolutely no evidence fluoride levels in US water are anywhere near dangerous levels. Having people buy and maintain expensive filters simply to keep fluoride out of their water likely won’t help with anything, and will likely displace some other more healthful actions they could be taking, like spending the money on buying berries for their kids.
1. The idea that UPFs being poorly defined == UPF is a meaningless designation has always sounded like absurd whataboutism that stops real progress to me.
Surely you don't mean to suggest that just because UPFs aren't perfectly defined, that means there's no fundamental difference between a diet composed of skittles, donuts, and ice cream cookie sandwiches versus a diet composed of organic, plant-based whole foods, right?
2. You say there is "no evidence" that seed oils are bad... yet when I search for "canola oil health hazards", the very first thing I see is "Canola oil has been associated with potential health hazards due to its high omega-6 fatty acid content, which may contribute to inflammation and chronic diseases when consumed in excess. Additionally, the refining process often involves chemicals like hexane, which raises concerns about the presence of harmful byproducts, although these are typically present in very low amounts in the final product."
Am I crazy to prefer that the amount of hexane in my food be as close to absolutely none as possible? Am I crazy to not wanting to be loading myself up with something that's at least clearly associated with inflammation and chronic disease?
3. Why do we have to assume that the optimal replacement for seed oils is lard? Is it possible to consider that maybe we'd all be better off if we stopped eating french fries, rather than merely switching what greasy junk we're frying them in?
4. Plenty of non-organic foods have pesticides on them! https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/full-list.php
Is EWG not a generally reliable and trustworthy source of information? Do you mean to suggest that no foods grown outside ever have any pesticides on them, or that the pesticides never follow the food all the way to the grocery store? Haven't plenty of agricultural products over the years, including Round Up, been linked with high probability to various cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, etc?
5. Why do we assume that filtering water means taking away other healthy actions? Do we need to be giving kids MORE sugar just because it's natural (berries)? Is there not extensive scientific literature linking fluoride ingestion with decreased IQ?
6. Why can't we have a open, good-faith conversation about these topics without engaging in tribal politics? Why do we get so emotionally attached to current narratives and beliefs about these kinds of things even when we know those beliefs are formed based on incomplete information and should be subject to change as we learn more over time, a standard exercise of basic epistemic humility?
Skittles are bad for reasons having nothing to do with "ultraprocessing". This is just the new incarnation of people believing Mexican Coke is healthier because it's made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup.
I never heard anyone say it is more healthy. HFCS just tastes horrible if you grew up eating cane (or beet) sugar.
Bread is an ultra-processed food.
Care to engage more substantially than this, or are you just repeating the argument that because UPF is imperfectly defined, that means UPF as a category is absolutely worthless and therefore we should dismiss all precautionary options surrounding any and all UPFs with prejudice?
UPF as a category is absolutely worthless. What matters is the contents and effects, not the process used to get there.
https://peterattiamd.com/davidallison3/
"Ultra processing" is corollary to unhealthy food, not causal. It's not the ultra processing that makes it unhealthy.
That's the crux of this disagreement. Assuming the relationship and then assuming the next step that the antitheses must be true. Unprocessed foods aren't inherently healthy and ultra processed foods aren't inherently unhealthy, the two things have nothing to do with each other.
> ultra processed foods aren't inherently unhealthy
…but they are statistically associated with worse health outcomes.
Their nutrient profile, additives’ effects on eating behavior, and how human metabolism responds to engineered foods lead to harm for humans.
I may have seen it here, but there's a new article out on childhood fluoride exposure: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz0757
"Whereas most prior research has estimated effects of exposure to extremely high levels of fluoride, we consider exposure to levels of fluoride within the range typical in most places and of greatest relevance to policy debates about government water fluoridation. We use data from the nationally representative (United States) High School and Beyond cohort, characterize fluoride exposure from drinking water across adolescence, adjust for confounders, and observe cognitive test performance in both secondary school and at age ~60. We find that children exposed to recommended levels of fluoride in drinking water exhibit modestly better cognition in secondary school, an advantage that is smaller and no longer statistically significant at age ~60."
I'm very much overweight, though not morbidly obese. I have been at my best weight when I did "get out and move". The problem, of course, is that schools, jobs, and modern infrastructure don't make that as easy to do as in prior decades. You can't just tell people to do something that has been made difficult to do and expect them to do it.
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Didn't it literally take someone's life this week in Washington?
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This is simply not true. Bird flu mainly spreads among wild birds and that is where it has its reservoir. It would still exist even if the world was free of bird farms. It also usually doesn't spread between farms because, in the event of an outbreak, all the animals on the affected farm are culled. At most, bird farms slightly increase overall contact between birds and humans.
It’s like this with most animals that we have learned to live with in close proximity. Zoonotic viruses are responsible for many of our diseases today, but through natural selection we are adapted to many.
This is partly why European disease wiped out Native American populations to a large extent. Europeans carrying diseases from animals they lived closely with.
But it's not (just) about us living in close proximity to them, it's about putting them in an environment that makes it impossible for them to live healthy lives and incubates potential zoonotic diseases.
Which has been happening for centuries.
I’m actually not arguing against this being a bad idea though lol, just giving some historic trivia.
We have not been factory farming for centuries. More like a century. And it hasn't been a century with a sterling track record! I think we can all recall an event in recent memory where having a lot of animals in close proximity and unhealthy conditions went super duper wrong. And we have problems with new strains of bird flu every couple of years.
People used to literally live with the livestock attached to home or even under the same roof. This was probably the case for most of agricultural history.
Factory farming is bad, over use of antibiotics in live stock is bad. But OP's point is that this is how many of the diseases in human history and therefor unlikely we would ever be able to avoid this while raising animals for food. As they said, both are true
Some places would put the livestock on the ground floor/basement so their heat would warm up the house. I can only imagine what that would smell like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German_house
I can't speak for OP, they may have been advocating for giving up farming animals (or fowl) altogether, but personally I see a huge inflection point between traditional and factory farming methods with regards to the level of risk. When you are compromising the immunity of your livestock, you beg trouble.
I understand the temptation to zoom out to a several hundred year timespan, that can be clarifying. But when (as in this case) there are substantive differences in recent history, it muddies the waters. I totally buy that endemic diseases are largely zoonotic diseases plus time. But that doesn't clarify how much risk exists in our current methods of farming. Factory farming is not equivalent to traditional farming in this respect. History is not featureless and when we flatten it we lose important details.
Consider how many fewer people interact with livestock now than before factory farms.
I don't know if it matters but there are significantly fewer farmers than there used to be by several orders of magnitude.
Also, before cars, the streets of major cities were covered in horse shit.
I agree, I agree. I’m not a fan of the farming methods we have today mostly because of ethical reasons (hence why I’m vegetarian as well).
We are definitely making things worse, also by our use of antibiotics in livestock.
Animals living on a farm are a far cry from modern factory farming.
Living in close proximity is one thing, but growing them at the speed and scale which we do with factory farming must massively increase the rate of development of viruses. It’s almost as if we designed a special program just to develop a virus that would wipe us all out.
But hey, cheap food!
Not even cheap food, just cheap meat. We could still have plenty of cheap, salty, fatty food without the livestock.
Yeah. It's very cheap to grow large amounts of canola seed, soybeans, potatoes, corn, and wheat to make all manner of high-salt, high-fat, high-carb junk food.
Yeah bro, meat is the only non-junk food available.
It’s even cheaper to just eat the potatoes, corn, wheat, soy directly like humans have at least for 1000s of years. It would also be healthier and less damaging to the planet as well as local environments, and save tens if not hundreds of billions of animals lives.
The processing is simply unnecessary and the output isn’t food but essentially drugs that people get addicted to. That’s completely different from the actual food that we grow.
> just eat the potatoes, corn, wheat, soy directly like humans have at least for 1000s of years.
Humans (and our ancestors) have been eating meat for around 2.5–3 million years, and possibly even earlier if you include earlier hominin species.
Avian flu exists with or without farming birds.
I am not sure how dangerous it is. Not saying it is not but maybe hyperbole.
I have been hearing this and the climate change stuff since I was young as a threat to humans and I think there must be a lot more than science in here, at least, in my humble opinion.
Flu has a long track record in causing pandemics with new variants, e.g., the Spanish flu in 1918–1920. Outbreaks spread much faster now thanks to air travel. We do have the advantages of P2 masks and mRNA vaccines.
Can we simply remove fever and coughing somehow… super annoying and more dangerous than the virus themselves sometimes.
> Can we simply remove fever and coughing somehow… super annoying and more dangerous than the virus themselves sometimes.
You're basically asking to become a bat
So we can also fly? Sign me up!
And echolocation! Time to form a queue.
> Teach Yourself to Echolocate A beginner’s guide to navigating with sound.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-echolocate#
Fruitbat!
I do like some fruit.