Hunting can and does have a necessary place for healthy ecological systems. As I understand it, deer populations can get out of hand in parts of the U.S. here, and hunting seasons and licenses are strategically managed to help with that. I feel your same objections and even revulsion over the raw “just hunting for sport” that drives wealthy adventurers to Africa just to kill big (and often endangered) game for nothing more than a kind of trophyism. Such opportunists seem to me to be showcasing an arrested development - something they were unable to work out of their system with play guns as little kids. I’m with you there. But hunting practiced as a skill (even by people who don’t strictly need to hunt to keep from starving) isn’t the universal evil that I think you would paint it as. Many of these are people who love nature and even love/respect the species they hunt - not killing it wantonly or just for the sake of killing. You paint with too broad a brush.
You are probably right. I don’t like to see animals killed.
How do they assess what is too much of a population, like you gave the example of deer. They have done this with some animals in Australia. Who decides what is too much? And do they have the full picture? They would need to know how many of a particular type of animal is in the habitat.
Deer overpopulation is a real problem in our area in.populated regions. And overpopulation leads to disease, so perhaps in circular fashion, we get back to the origin of Covid, or perhaps at least the conditions that allowed it to spread. Population density seems to play a role in that, and even in rural areas, workers in close proximity like in meat processing plants were at high risk.
That is a tricky question - as I think we’ve learned over the last few generations in our growing awareness of just how interconnected and complicated everything in our biological environment is. There is no such thing as just “getting rid of one pest” or “introducing a new species into some biome” without that having profound effects throughout the whole inter-related ecological web. So much of it may just be our observation that “species x” now seems to have a population explosion (because perhaps some key predator has been reduced or eliminated … like the wolf). And that ‘explosion’ has adverse affects as far as we humans are concerned (lots of deer-kill on highways - and spread of disease like Phil has mentioned.) Nature will find its new balance again to be sure … eventually. Maybe not as quickly as we would like, or in ways that we would like; but the drive toward equilibrium will continue with or without our involvement.
Nobody is omniscient, but that doesn’t mean that “Arm chair speculator”, Joe Blow’s opinions, should be seen as having equal footing with those of biologists who both know and appreciate all these complexities.
I’m sure confused–you said wild animals rarely get sick.
@beaglelady and Dale, sometime around the 90’s I got a golden/lab cross puppy as soon as she was old enough to come home with me. This was back when you could still find puppies from unplanned matings for sale in the local newspaper. She soon got all her puppy shots but when she was almost a year old she looked sick enough to bring her to my vet on a Friday after teaching my classes. They told me she wouldn’t have survived the weekend as she had parvo. Of course they had given her the vaccine themselves so they explained they don’t always work. That is something we all are more familiar with during this pandemic. 95% effective is great and can stem the spread of a very contagious disease - but that still means 5% will be susceptible to getting it. My Sophie ‘won’ that lottery. She went on to live to be 16 and took walks every day until her last, when I found she had soiled her bed for the first time in her life and was too miserable to get up. When she wouldn’t eat or sniff the ground when I carried her outside, I arranged to have her put down that day. She was my first favorite dog. (I’ve had three more since.)
Glad she pulled through!
You know because of what we’ve learned from COVID it occurs to me that she may have contracted a milder case owing to having received that vaccine.
Even if they have watched a 10-minute video on essential oils?
Hey I’m sure he or she is very busy. If someone they really agree with on everyone posted it they probably don’t need to even watch it.
Everyone is potentially immune to the virus. But that is not the point. If all of the people who question the authorities on the virus suddenly get the virus and die in hospital then it becomes a bit sus.
I’m still reading the articles you linked, thanks, but so far I don’t see this.
It is about how the virus disables T cells, an important line of immune defense, thus rendering the infected person less able to combat the infection.
Ahhhh but not in everyone. And not only that people can get well from these diseases. So what is going on?
It is anecdotal evidence n=3. However it can become science if a larger sample is taken, say 1000 or more. Isn’t that what is done in drug trials? There is a proof of concept and then the evidence seen. So my example is on the way to becoming science.
Inventing evidence for your invented conspiracy theory seems right up your alley.
What does this have to do with anything?
Let us know when it is. Until then, I will side with the decades of science performed by multiple generations of highly trained and well informed scientosts who have published their work in peer reviewed journals. Oh, and the work on viruses I have done myself.
I’m just curious why we would care about the origin. What does it matter? It’s not a deliberate release from Wuhan’s lab, as it damaged the Chinese first (some of them have their own conspiracy theories about American soldiers having brought it there deliberately, but that is unbelievable, too). If it was a mistaken release, what would we benefit from knowing that? If it’s from nature, what would we benefit from knowing this?
I am concerned that the fringe elements will use it as a tool to blame others–whether it’s us blaming the Chinese, or their blaming us, or any other group, as the case may be. We have a terrible bug, and we need to control it. Maybe it’s an illustration of how behavioral counseling works better than analytical counseling–we need to learn how to live with the problem, not analyze who is at fault (especially as, with most of life, no one seems to be at fault). Thanks.
Very well said.
Yes, it’s not about blaming. That does not buy anything but ill will. But knowing how, why or who caused something can help in correction of existing problems and in prevention of future occurrences.
I agree with you that blaming other is not good, especially when we don’t have any evidence that there was any deliberate intent.
There is a problem however that causes the public to become upset with the matter. That problem is research in gain of function for viruses. What is the good of this research? Is this sort of research not the cause of HIV and ebola?
Thanks. No HIV is from simian immunodeficiency virus, and Ebola comes from a bat virus that does not harm its natural host as much as it harms the humans that it transferred to. The purpose of viral research is for multiple things, including genetics of cancer, and a host of really cool things that help with health, both for people and animals, such as vaccines against terrible diseases.
You and I won’t cast blame. However, I don’t understand. Maybe someone can explain more to me. Currently, the Chinese are crying foul (we would, too, if they were claiming we aren’t open enough). We already know how to prevent virus spread in the lab. We know, also, that many viruses jump from nature to humans. Why dig to find out exactly what happened?
Furthermore, the timing does not seem right. Right now, people are suffering. I can’t see that it will help in the short term to find out any of these details. Why not wait till emotions are less high?
There could be defective equipment or procedures, or inadequate training of lab personnel, or just irresponsibility and carelessness, any or all of which still need to be reparated to prevent future accidental release, if that’s indeed what it was. (And I think that’s a likely scenario.) Waiting is fine, but then memories fade and the facts become less accessible.
My problem with this argument is that we already knew that lab releases can cause outbreaks of deadly diseases, and we (globally speaking) already have requirements in place for equipment and procedures designed to prevent them. If we could learn of some specific flaw in existing requirements, that would be useful, but that doesn’t seem likely.