That photo of the minks looking out of the cages at the camera is a bit of a tear-jerker.
Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus
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Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus
#12> Denmark, the world's biggest producer of mink fur, said Wednesday it would cull all of the country's minks after a mutated version of the new coronavirus was detected at its mink farms and had spread to people. Questions: 1. Is this worrisome? 2. If Denmark is catching this, should we be concerned that the virus has mutated in other animals and has thus far gone undetected?
1. Yes. This is serious. Mutation is a big red reset button on the pandemic potentially. 2. No. Minks are kept in small cages with a very high density of biomass. This makes it a perfect incubator. Also ferrets have some similarities with humans in the upper respiratory system, making this more of a concern.
Apparently one of the upcoming vaccines in testing was already rendered ineffective by the mutation.
Edit: source for the claim about the vaccine's ineffectiveness against the mutated strains in german TAZ from two weeks ago:
Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus
#13That photo of the minks looking out of the cages at the camera is a bit of a tear-jerker.
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Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus
#14As a dane I'm not really proud that these things were here to being with
Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus
#15So uhm how likely is it that this new version is contained if they found 12 cases in people already?
It's possible there is only mink-to-human transmission and not human-to-human. This was the case for MERS, which was contained in part by culling chickens.
It is believed that some of the cases (all?) didnt have any contact with minks and therefore was human-to-human
Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus
#16I hope that ends the industry. And make the state provide better/different jobs for the people affected.
Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus
#17That's horrible, and how can anyone find that ok. Per "Guns, Germs, and Steel", it's not even strategic, because diversification of existing strains should naturally select the least deadly, as well as spread antibodies across species boundaries.
Humans > Minks
Humans raise mink in horrible conditions just to be slaughtered so we can make a fashion statement. Then, when the very conditions we created become an inconvenience to us, we slaughter them and fail to make even frivolous use of them, rendering their tortured lives even more pointless and sad.
After all that you have to be pretty callous and self-important as a species to think "Humans > Minks"
Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus
#18This is one of the serious dangers with the idea of letting the virus run wild to achieve herd immunity: you create a lot of animal reservoirs.
Though minks do seek way riskier than average.
Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus
#19> Denmark, the world's biggest producer of mink fur, said Wednesday it would cull all of the country's minks after a mutated version of the new coronavirus was detected at its mink farms and had spread to people. Questions: 1. Is this worrisome? 2. If Denmark is catching this, should we be concerned that the virus has mutated in other animals and has thus far gone undetected?
1. Yes. This is serious. Mutation is a big red reset button on the pandemic potentially. 2. No. Minks are kept in small cages with a very high density of biomass. This makes it a perfect incubator. Also ferrets have some similarities with humans in the upper respiratory system, making this more of a concern.
Not only that, the conditions of keeping the animals close but not too close even encourages selection for mutations that allow the virus to spread more easily through air.
If I remember correctly, ferrets were held under similiar conditions for "gain for function" experiments [0]. "Gain of function" means here how the virus can develop the ability (function) of spreading through the air when it e.g. initially required direct contact to be transmitted. An animal would be intentionally infected with the disease and a random mutation would allow the virus to jump to a separate cage to infect an animal there.
Pretty horrible and dangerous, imo. Research on this was banned in the US for a few years, see also [0].
Edit: a small bonus comment I just thought about: here is a time lapse of development of resistance to antibiotics on a large petri dish [1]. Observe how they used increasing concentrations of antibiotics to allow stepwise improvement of resistance instead of confronting the bacterium with an unsurmountable effect all at once.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation#By_effect_on_function
Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus
#20Norway's Fur Farming Prohibition Act is set to take effect in 2025.
May this neighboring scare hasten the demise of this abusive and unnecessary industry.