A prion disease affecting deer is spreading rapidly across the animal’s population in North America, and has been dubbed as the “zombie deer disease” due to it’s The Walking Dead-esque symptoms. Even worse, it has scientists worried — so exactly how long do we have left before we need to pack an apocalypse survival kit?
To anyone who thought that the zombie trend was over for the year when The Last Of Us series finished in April, think again. Zombies is ironically a trend that just keeps coming back, except this time it’s getting real.
What is zombie deer disease?
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a prion disease that has been known to impact deer for years now. The symptoms of CWD include altering a deer’s behaviour, leaving it weak, stumbling, lethargic, and less likely to interact with other animals, but also less intimidated by humans.
Additionally, it causes deer to excessively salivate, lose their appetite and then weight, and give off an eerie blank stare — resulting in the much more dramatic name of the ailment; zombie deer disease.
It can take a deer with CWD almost two years to exhibit any symptoms, and due to being a prion disease it is incredibly complex.
Unlike a virus such as COVID-19 which would die on it’s own without a host relatively quickly, CWD can survive without a host for years, and cannot be killed by disinfectant. Or radiation. Or 600 degree heat.
With no treatment or cure it is always fatal.
The disease has been described as a “slow moving disaster” by epidemiologist Dr Michael Osterholm, however it’s seems to be speeding up.
Despite being known about since the 1960s, it recently has scientists more worried due to the increasing number of deer across North America that are catching the disease in key environmental areas, including Yellowstone National Park which recently discovered the disease present in deer there.
Concerns are that the disease could make the jump over to infecting humans if the wrong part of an infected “zombie” deer was to be consumed by a human, CWD has the potential (more on likelihood later) to have a “spillover” which then infects the unfortunate person.
I had always thought that if Yellowstone was going to cause the end of the world it would be through the eruption of its infamous super-volcano, rather than a The Last Of Us situation, ultimately making the national park twice as existentially horrifying as it already was.
So are we just doomed then?
In the face of a disease that cannot be killed by traditional means, takes years to identify, and has no known cure, it can certainly seem like we are SCREWED.
But fear not!
The good news is that experts currently say there is an incredibly small chance of the disease transferring from deer to humans.
Though prion diseases have been known to transmit from a livestock species to humans, such as Mad Cow Disease, this happened due to the infected livestock not having proper treatment before consumption.
Since the statistically unlikely breakout of Mad Cow, more stringent regulations on the treatment of livestock food-products have been created worldwide to ensure history does not repeat.
So while scientists say that technically it could transfer to humans, the chances are so low it’s not worth worrying about.
Worst case scenario, just avoid eating any deer at the Christmas dinner and she’ll be right!
Have a happy holidays, and zombie-free new year.
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