Is eating bats a part of the cuisine in Congo, or where did those children get the idea from?
Edit: oh, there's a hunger crisis going on there apparently, nevermind. Of its approx. 106M strong population, ~26M are experiencing acute food insecurity. [0] They're also in active conflict with Rwanda? [1]
Edit #2: apparently it is part of the cuisine also, see replies below and elsewhere in the thread. [2]
I saw that phrase and thought it was pretty weird. Hunting wild animals for food is not some fringe thing that happens in "other places" I've eaten tons of fish, duck, deer, elk, etc. that were all "wild animals".
Absolutely agree, but poison doesn't exactly spread like an infection. Plus I guess most herbivorous animals by now do have a fair bit of intuition what to eat and what not to.
I praise apnews for using "Unknown Illness" instead of the dark pattern-ish "Mysterious Disease", so to the taste of the likes of CNN. Small steps towards reason.
Why are bats so often a vector? Is it because they are airborne mammals? Meaning they can cover a lot of ground and come in contact with a lot of other vectors, and also have biology more similar to humans than, say, birds?
I am aware that birds are also a common vector, but bats seem to be the greater risk.
> In vitro work has suggested that molecular adaptations that support the physiology of flight, a trait unique to bats among mammals, may allow bats to tolerate rapidly replicating viruses that express heightened virulence upon emergence in less tolerant hosts such as humans — thus offering a possible explanation for bat virus virulence. Bats and birds share a suite of convergent flight adaptations—both taxa are remarkably long-lived for their body size and appear to circumvent metabolic constraints on longevity through cellular pathways evolved to mitigate oxidative stress induced by flight.
Many African cultures have a tradition of eating “bushmeat” (ie. meat from wild animals).
It’s not dissimilar to the tradition of hunting deer/rabbit/etc in the west (which has its own concerns about a disease jumping species like chronic wasting disease aka Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans). However, the diversity of Africa’s “bushmeat” and the economic conditions in some areas seem to increase the chances of a zoonotic disease spreading to humans.
I read through a bunch of other articles on this and have not been able to find anything that has more details than this specific article. Sounds like it's possible that it's a malaria variant but far too early to tell
> In recent years there have been reports of viral haemorrhagic fever (VHF) epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa where malaria is endemic. VHF and malaria have overlapping clinical presentations making differential diagnosis a challenge.
That's for initial presentation, not disease progression. You might want to read and understand the article before you post it.
"Most VHFs and malaria initially present with similar non-specific symptoms and signs of fever, headache, joint pains and weaknesses, posing challenges in differential diagnosis"
The news article we're discussing states only "hemorrhagic fever symptoms".
Which could be "blood from the eyes", or it could be "fever, headache". Is there another source for specific symtoms in this outbreak you're working off?
> The disease affects all ages but with a majority of cases from 5 to 45 years old presenting symptoms such as fever, chills, headaches, myalgia, aches, neck pain, polyarthralgia etc. The first cases were reported on February 9.
And a WHO statement in there:
> Differential diagnosis
under investigation include malaria, viral haemorrhagic
fever, food or water poisoning, typhoid fever, and
meningitis.
Would it be true to say that last month I had hemorrhagic fever symptoms when I had the flu? No. So it seems the article is just fear mongering with incorrect information if they're are not actual hemorrhagic symptoms and only generic, non-differential symptoms.
I can only go off the information I'm given. I can't help if the article is incorrect.
Lol. No, you would say they have an unidentified febrile illness.
You could just as easily say they have symptoms of malaria, or an STD. The inclusion of "hemorrhagic" is either an indicator of information that wasn't expressly stated, or it's incorrect and fear mongering.
FWIW: Mutations that cause the pathogen to kill the host quickly often "hurt" the pathogen because it doesn't have a chance to spread to other hosts. Hopefully this illness spreads "slowly enough" that this mutation has a poor chance of surviving.
I don't "pathogens evolve" and malaria is a viable reasoning here at all. There's a practically endless list of better hypotheses than Plasmodium suddenly completely breaking it's normal patterns.
For what it's worth though, vector-borne diseases in general (such as one spread by insects) are also largely exempt from the (erratic) tendency for the pathogen to evolve some moderation, as the host doesn't need to move itself and only needs to be fresh enough to attract attention from the vector species.
What is sad is that until the disease spreads out of Africa there won't be much done.
I remember as a kid in the 80s that Ebola was a disease in Africa and that people were doing fast after catching it.
It is only a few years ago that it started to spread to the US and Europe and suddenly there was a vaccine (or medication, I do not remember) which was researched and produced quickly.
The place you are born in probably drives 99% of your future.
I read that these super fast killing ebola cousins emerge periodically but seldom spread far exactly because they kill before the infected person can travel far. Fingers and toes crossed that this idea is more than cope.
Ebola's been around for ~50 years with no apparent weaponization. Not every pathogen is conducive to being weaponized, nor is the "brilliant but willing to contract Ebola" list likely to be super long.
The Soviets did with Marburg though which is closely related. Allegedly the head of the program Nikolai Ustinov was killed when he was infected in an accident.
The Soviets tried, just like we tried having people do astral projection.
Losing top researchers to the effort is indicative of one of the big reasons it's tough to weaponize - you're quite likely to kill yourself and your own people in trying.
How so? Americans eat various mammals, birds, etc., including ones they hunt themselves. We have plenty of opportunities of our own to contract zoonotic diseases. What makes a bat weirder than, say, a duck?
The point is not "ducks are a specific risk"; the point is "Americans eat plenty of what we'd call 'bushmeat' in the Congo". There's nothing particularly odd about kids having a meal of grilled bat - it's just the local version of something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_stew.
Chicken and pig farms are likely the biggest zoonotic threats here.
lemme preface by saying i'm not intending to directly argue with you or even particularly address your points. I'm in a flow state right now and i am avoiding physical labor...
I don't eat much pork, i've had that (squirrel) stew - not a fan, and i raise fowl. Guinea, duck, turkey, chickens so far. Heck, i even raised a pig to slaughter, not something i intend to do again, either.
I originally was going to speak to "you eats what you gotta" but it's kinda irrelevant. The arguments for vegetarian and veganism fall on deaf ears, here. I've done the reading and lectures and studies. I've also had to give a goat of mine vitamin B injections because it was stargazing. Vitamin B is something that's in meat in abundance. Goats don't eat much meat - they will, but they're ruminants. So a vitamin B deficiency in a goat eating it's fill of subtropical rainforest cuisine... it was a nanny, so it is possible there was a slight nutrient imbalance, i guess.
The route to having chicken and pig farms be less zoonotic threats "just because" is liable to just famine billions.
not everyone can eat chitin.
edit: bacon and sausage are alright. my friend planted a mind-virus in my head 20 years ago that pigs can play video games and around the same time our mutual friend gave me wild hog to eat. I'll probably stop consuming pork altogether sometime in the next year or two. Wife can't eat red meat, so i already don't around her anyhow.
> The route to having chicken and pig farms be less zoonotic threats "just because" is liable to just famine billions.
Absolutely. My main objection here is to the folks going "lol bats eww what idiots" sort of tone when we're doing the same thing here, on an industrial scale, with likely similar consequences.
The folks in Congo are just trying to get enough to eat, and some of that means hunting, just as it often does in American rural areas.
Is eating bats a part of the cuisine in Congo, or where did those children get the idea from?
Edit: oh, there's a hunger crisis going on there apparently, nevermind. Of its approx. 106M strong population, ~26M are experiencing acute food insecurity. [0] They're also in active conflict with Rwanda? [1]
Edit #2: apparently it is part of the cuisine also, see replies below and elsewhere in the thread. [2]
[0] https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/drc-emergency
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021–2024_Democratic_Republic_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat
Before your edit I was going to link to this, much the same info: https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/...
The article notes there are regions where "wild animals are popularly eaten."
I saw that phrase and thought it was pretty weird. Hunting wild animals for food is not some fringe thing that happens in "other places" I've eaten tons of fish, duck, deer, elk, etc. that were all "wild animals".
I think people think of Carnivorous animals, when then they think of wild animals.
Simply put, you catch fewer(near 0) infections eating plants. Even more so for animals in the wild.
> Simply put, you catch fewer(near 0) infections eating plants.
Quite a few will poison you, though.
Absolutely agree, but poison doesn't exactly spread like an infection. Plus I guess most herbivorous animals by now do have a fair bit of intuition what to eat and what not to.
I praise apnews for using "Unknown Illness" instead of the dark pattern-ish "Mysterious Disease", so to the taste of the likes of CNN. Small steps towards reason.
They took your advice and changed it to "Mysterious illness".
AP is usually less clickbaity than 'commercial' news.
Continuously updated Flutrackers.com thread: https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/africa/emerging-diseases...
Why are bats so often a vector? Is it because they are airborne mammals? Meaning they can cover a lot of ground and come in contact with a lot of other vectors, and also have biology more similar to humans than, say, birds?
I am aware that birds are also a common vector, but bats seem to be the greater risk.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9168486/
> In vitro work has suggested that molecular adaptations that support the physiology of flight, a trait unique to bats among mammals, may allow bats to tolerate rapidly replicating viruses that express heightened virulence upon emergence in less tolerant hosts such as humans — thus offering a possible explanation for bat virus virulence. Bats and birds share a suite of convergent flight adaptations—both taxa are remarkably long-lived for their body size and appear to circumvent metabolic constraints on longevity through cellular pathways evolved to mitigate oxidative stress induced by flight.
A colleague of mine wrote about the bat-eating problem in 2006: https://www.damninteresting.com/the-hazards-of-eating-bats/
(Technically this is a self-link, but it wasn't written by me, and there are no ads or the like)
Also often live in large colonies, so there's lots of transmission. Solitary animals give themselves less chances to incubate something really nasty.
I recommend the book "Spillover" about animal-borne diseases which looks at it in detail.
Is eating bats in Congo a cultural thing? Or this is just some random idea of these kids?
Many African cultures have a tradition of eating “bushmeat” (ie. meat from wild animals).
It’s not dissimilar to the tradition of hunting deer/rabbit/etc in the west (which has its own concerns about a disease jumping species like chronic wasting disease aka Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans). However, the diversity of Africa’s “bushmeat” and the economic conditions in some areas seem to increase the chances of a zoonotic disease spreading to humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat
I read through a bunch of other articles on this and have not been able to find anything that has more details than this specific article. Sounds like it's possible that it's a malaria variant but far too early to tell
almost certainly something like marburg, which has been found there before and is carried by bats
Article mentions testing negative for Marburg, but obviously very concerning
Pretty sure malaria won't cause hemorrhagic symptoms.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9036688/
> In recent years there have been reports of viral haemorrhagic fever (VHF) epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa where malaria is endemic. VHF and malaria have overlapping clinical presentations making differential diagnosis a challenge.
That's for initial presentation, not disease progression. You might want to read and understand the article before you post it.
"Most VHFs and malaria initially present with similar non-specific symptoms and signs of fever, headache, joint pains and weaknesses, posing challenges in differential diagnosis"
The news article we're discussing states only "hemorrhagic fever symptoms".
Which could be "blood from the eyes", or it could be "fever, headache". Is there another source for specific symtoms in this outbreak you're working off?
Someone else in the discussion linked https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/africa/emerging-diseases..., which states:
> The disease affects all ages but with a majority of cases from 5 to 45 years old presenting symptoms such as fever, chills, headaches, myalgia, aches, neck pain, polyarthralgia etc. The first cases were reported on February 9.
And a WHO statement in there:
> Differential diagnosis under investigation include malaria, viral haemorrhagic fever, food or water poisoning, typhoid fever, and meningitis.
Would it be true to say that last month I had hemorrhagic fever symptoms when I had the flu? No. So it seems the article is just fear mongering with incorrect information if they're are not actual hemorrhagic symptoms and only generic, non-differential symptoms.
I can only go off the information I'm given. I can't help if the article is incorrect.
> Would it be true to say that last month I had hemorrhagic fever symptoms when I had the flu?
Yes, especially if a few dozen others with the same thing die in a short period and you're in an area where hemorrhagic fever is naturally found.
Lol. No, you would say they have an unidentified febrile illness.
You could just as easily say they have symptoms of malaria, or an STD. The inclusion of "hemorrhagic" is either an indicator of information that wasn't expressly stated, or it's incorrect and fear mongering.
> You could just as easily say they have symptoms of malaria, or an STD.
Neither tend to kill in 48 hours.
Given the location, the mortality rate, and the apparent symptoms, including hemorrhagic fever in the diagnosis possibilities is very reasonable.
Pathogens evolve:
FWIW: Mutations that cause the pathogen to kill the host quickly often "hurt" the pathogen because it doesn't have a chance to spread to other hosts. Hopefully this illness spreads "slowly enough" that this mutation has a poor chance of surviving.
This effect is unfortunately balanced out by ways of killing the host that spray body fluids everywhere in large amounts and help transmission.
I mean it's still better for the pathogen if it can accomplish that and keep the host alive, but that's real finesse.
I don't "pathogens evolve" and malaria is a viable reasoning here at all. There's a practically endless list of better hypotheses than Plasmodium suddenly completely breaking it's normal patterns.
For what it's worth though, vector-borne diseases in general (such as one spread by insects) are also largely exempt from the (erratic) tendency for the pathogen to evolve some moderation, as the host doesn't need to move itself and only needs to be fresh enough to attract attention from the vector species.
What is sad is that until the disease spreads out of Africa there won't be much done.
I remember as a kid in the 80s that Ebola was a disease in Africa and that people were doing fast after catching it.
It is only a few years ago that it started to spread to the US and Europe and suddenly there was a vaccine (or medication, I do not remember) which was researched and produced quickly.
The place you are born in probably drives 99% of your future.
I read that these super fast killing ebola cousins emerge periodically but seldom spread far exactly because they kill before the infected person can travel far. Fingers and toes crossed that this idea is more than cope.
Question is, can you spread it before the symptoms appear ? Because if the disease kills in less than 48h, it is indead pretty hard to spread.
Unless someone weaponizes it.
Ebola's been around for ~50 years with no apparent weaponization. Not every pathogen is conducive to being weaponized, nor is the "brilliant but willing to contract Ebola" list likely to be super long.
The Soviets did with Marburg though which is closely related. Allegedly the head of the program Nikolai Ustinov was killed when he was infected in an accident.
The Soviets tried, just like we tried having people do astral projection.
Losing top researchers to the effort is indicative of one of the big reasons it's tough to weaponize - you're quite likely to kill yourself and your own people in trying.
Do they mean Bolobo? Can't find a Boloko Congo on Google Maps, only Boloko Nigeria.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/mvSx9GijV19H9YVz9
ha! thank you
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I mean, American kids are eating chicken during a bird flu outbreak.
a bit different lol
How so? Americans eat various mammals, birds, etc., including ones they hunt themselves. We have plenty of opportunities of our own to contract zoonotic diseases. What makes a bat weirder than, say, a duck?
November 2019 - present, I would argue.
I understand there's avian flu, too.
Also: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
I'm only finding vague statements that ducks are a vector anywhere near as impactful as bats.
Ducks are filter feeders as well as scavengers and as such bats eat more "vectors" than ducks, in my estimation.
The point is not "ducks are a specific risk"; the point is "Americans eat plenty of what we'd call 'bushmeat' in the Congo". There's nothing particularly odd about kids having a meal of grilled bat - it's just the local version of something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_stew.
Chicken and pig farms are likely the biggest zoonotic threats here.
lemme preface by saying i'm not intending to directly argue with you or even particularly address your points. I'm in a flow state right now and i am avoiding physical labor...
I don't eat much pork, i've had that (squirrel) stew - not a fan, and i raise fowl. Guinea, duck, turkey, chickens so far. Heck, i even raised a pig to slaughter, not something i intend to do again, either.
I originally was going to speak to "you eats what you gotta" but it's kinda irrelevant. The arguments for vegetarian and veganism fall on deaf ears, here. I've done the reading and lectures and studies. I've also had to give a goat of mine vitamin B injections because it was stargazing. Vitamin B is something that's in meat in abundance. Goats don't eat much meat - they will, but they're ruminants. So a vitamin B deficiency in a goat eating it's fill of subtropical rainforest cuisine... it was a nanny, so it is possible there was a slight nutrient imbalance, i guess.
The route to having chicken and pig farms be less zoonotic threats "just because" is liable to just famine billions.
not everyone can eat chitin.
edit: bacon and sausage are alright. my friend planted a mind-virus in my head 20 years ago that pigs can play video games and around the same time our mutual friend gave me wild hog to eat. I'll probably stop consuming pork altogether sometime in the next year or two. Wife can't eat red meat, so i already don't around her anyhow.
I think we're generally in agreement here, yeah.
> The route to having chicken and pig farms be less zoonotic threats "just because" is liable to just famine billions.
Absolutely. My main objection here is to the folks going "lol bats eww what idiots" sort of tone when we're doing the same thing here, on an industrial scale, with likely similar consequences.
The folks in Congo are just trying to get enough to eat, and some of that means hunting, just as it often does in American rural areas.