But the point is, it was transmitted from animal to human. It’s endemic in animal species.
If it were to become endemic in animal species in this country (because we have wild bats, wild pigs and wild ungulates as well) that would be a game changer.
Hunting season would cease. And most of the farm fields would become ‘interesting’ as there are a LOT of wild pigs in those. And a big concern would be transmissibility to animals we DO butcher and consume. Like cows, pigs, and sheep. Not to mention dogs.
We have wild ungulates???!!!! RUN! /s
Hunting season would be like it is for CWD areas.
Kill them all.
We have an endemic Prion Disease in deer in at least Wisconsin .. and probably Michigan and Minnesota ... Prion disease - Mad Cow Disease, Kuru in Cannibals, Scrapie in Sheep, spontaneous Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans ... Spongiform Encephalitis are the same disease... 100% fatal. In some ways more scary than Ebola - takes up to 10 years to show up, and is caused by a protein particle. It is the only transmissible disease caused by non DNA - non RNA entity. A prion is a protein particle like many others but can and does fold itself wrong and become disease causing.. AND wild as it seems - such a non living rogue prion can and does ‘train’ normal prions to fold incorrectly as it does... resulting in a Swiss Cheese brain.. Off the chart strange... A few years back Wisconsin sponsored a kill off of no limit ... but the meat had to be destroyed as one can conceivably get Spongiform Encephalitis. Mad Cow Disease jumped species it is believed from Sheep Scarpie when English farmers feed freeze dried sheep carcass to their cows pulverized and mixed in with grain feed for added protein... then the prion jumped species from cows to humans when people ate the meat especially bone cuts and marrow. Cannibals get Kuru from eating the brains of their dead relatives. Not sure how deer get the bad prion or transmit it... maybe via a deer tick ...