Tag Archives: virus

Let’s stop the flu

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It’s flu season and many are choosing to get the flu vaccine. This choice is generally a good idea but should be made only after consulting your doctor. The vaccine is about 40% effective in preventing you from getting influenza. While getting the vaccine might keep you from getting the flu or lessen the severity it doesn’t stop the disease from occurring in the first place. Wouldn’t it be better to keep the disease from ever happening in the first place than relying on a partially effective vaccine to protect us? We think so and have written an article published in Juniper Online Journal of Public Health. We can actually stop the flu from developing thus preventing many people from getting sick or dying.

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A perfect storm created Covid-19

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The COVID 19 pandemic seems to have arisen from a perfect storm. Eating animals, wearing their fur, keeping wild animals in zoos, and having an unnatural relationship with nature have created the perfect storm. With human to human transmission, that storm has become a hurricane.

COVID 19 is a zoonosis. Zoonotic diseases are illnesses that can spread between animals and people. The flu and Ebola are also zoonoses. While scientist are still trying to understand the origin of the virus, it appears that it originated in bats. Bats are eaten in China and so are pangolins. The virus could have infected people directly or through intermediate animals, possibly pangolins or a combination of both. It begs the question, what are we doing eating these animals? Is it worth the amount it is costing us and the rest of humanity?

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New flu from pigs

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Pigs confinedWhat if we stopped raising pigs?  Easy answer: we would stop the swine flu.

We pay a very high price from raising pigs and, of course, the pigs do as well. A big part of that price is the swine flu. U.S. health officials are tracking a newly discovered strain of swine flu in China they say has the characteristics of viruses with potential to cause another human pandemic. Although the virus has not yet been detected in the U.S. or shown human to human transition, doctors have reason to worry it could spell trouble.

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Pandemics start by eating animals

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Covid 19 poster

Diseases that come to humans from animals are called zoonoses. The current corona virus epidemic, as well as the Flu, Ebola and other diseases, all started by eating animals, thus exposing humans to viruses that emerge from animals. Once that happens, the virus can spread from person to person, as well as from animals, and a pandemic can start.

In Wuhan, China, the alarmingly contagious virus currently spreading around the world, has been identified as a zoonotic coronavirus, similar to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) coronavirus, and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) coronavirus. This marks the third re-emergence this century of a zoonotic coronavirus.

Public health officials suspect that the current outbreak may have originated at a live-animal market in Wuhan. Selling and eating wild animals, disrupting ecosystems, and destroying forests all contribute to the risks of disease-causing viruses spreading into human populations. Read more

Preventing the Flu

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flu-season-ahead

It’s flu season again!  The flu is more common than many people think. Last year 25 million Americans got the flu. The question is, what can be done about it? Must we endure this every year? Is the only partially effective flu shot the only answer? And what does being a vegetarian have to do with it?

The effectiveness of the flu vaccine varies quite a bit from year to year – in years where there’s a good match of the vaccine to the viruses around us it can be effective 40-60% of the time, but in early 2019 it was only effective 29% overall, and some years it has been worse than that.

Cutting out the demand for meat is the only real answer, so being a vegetarian has everything to do with it. We could stop flu pandemics before they ever get started, and get rid of the flu once and for all. Remember, the flu vaccine only protects a person from getting sick, but it doesn’t prevent the virus from occurring in the first place. The flu doesn’t just happen – it is born and bred on super-crowded animal “factory farms”. Only the widespread adoption of a vegetarian diet and the subsequent collapse of factory farming can prevent the next flu pandemic. Read more