[conspire] "immunity" (COVID-19, ...) Re: Numbers racket

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Alex Kleider (akleider at sonic.net):

> I have a vague memory of at one time learning that mad cow disease
> is a slow virus affecting the central nervous system and that a
> human needs to eat infected bovine central nervous system to
> contract the disease.

Actually 'mad cow disease' (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) is the
action of certain _prions_, which are probably the only pathogen class
weirder than viruses, in large part because while viruses are arguably
not alive in the first place, prions pretty _definitely_ aren't (by any
reasonable definition):  They're misshaped protein molecules that, in
animals, cause fatal neurodegenerative diseases.

When those _same_ misshapen molecules screw up human nervous systems,
that's called Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.  It's thoroughly horrible; you
want to be very far from it.  There are neither treatments nor cures,
and, once symptoms start appearing, sometimes after an incubation period
of 5-20 years, the patient unravels neurologically, leading to brain
death.

Cheery thought, eh?

But it leads to one of my favourite disease-themed jokes:  During the
United Kingdom BSE outbreak of the 1990s, two Guernsey cows in County
Kent were discussing the morning newspaper (as they do).  One of them
said to the other:  'Say, aren't you worried about mad-cow disease,
then?'

The other smiled and said 'Of course not.  I'm a squirrel.'


> Presumably meat gets contaminated by the CNS during slaughter but it
> isn't primarily the meat.

Well, that's the catch, isn't it?  The UK epidemic was caused by the
then-widespread practice of feeding cows a high-protein feed supplement
called meat-and-bone meal (MBM) that contained the remains of other
animals, which happened to include.... class?  class?  Bueller?  the
processed remains of cattle who had spontaneously developed BSE, plus
that of sheep infected with scrapie, a related prion-based degenerative
nervous disease, and the key error was careless inclusion of brain and
spinal cord tissue in said feed.

With good reason, the consequences of this inexcusable blunder included,
along with 177 human deaths, European Union blanket-banning all British
beef for a decade.


> It's probably a good policy to not eat CNS tissue from any animal.
> CNS- Central Nervous System: Brain and spinal cord.

Word.  ;->