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Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

medicalxpress.com

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Re: Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

#71
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 act…

> 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.

Re: Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"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.

Re: Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

#75
post #35
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Re: Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

#76
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, r…

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.

Re: Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

#78

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.

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.

Re: Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Re: Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

#80

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.

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.

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