A missing Mountain Village hunter was found just in time for Easter. Scott Hess left the village on his snowmachine on Wednesday, April 8. When he did not return, a search was launched on Thursday, April 9. Alaska State Troopers spokesperson Megan Peters confirmed that Hess was spotted on the trail between Mountain Village and Scammon Bay on April 11 around 7:30 p.m. He did not need any medical assistance. On Facebook this weekend, he thanked those who helped find him and got him home in time to celebrate Easter.
The race is on to develop and distribute antibody tests for the coronavirus, driven by the idea that these tests will inform individuals when they are immune to the virus and can return to their normal lives.
This isn’t the first time there’s been an urgent need for an antibody test. In the 1980s, it was a different crisis: HIV/AIDS. Unlike the coronavirus, a positive antibody test for HIV means that a person is currently infected with the virus, meaning the test could be used to diagnose.
Dr. Robert Gallo, the co-founder and director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, was one of the scientists who discovered HIV, and later went on to develop the first antibody test for the virus.
A virus infects your body by entering healthy cells. There, the invader makes copies of itself and multiplies throughout your body.
The new coronavirus latches its spiky surface proteins to receptors on healthy cells, especially those in your lungs.
Specifically, the viral proteins bust into cells through ACE2 receptors. Once inside, the coronavirus hijacks healthy cells and takes command. Eventually, it kills some of the healthy cells.
How Does Coronavirus Move Through Your Body?
COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, starts with droplets from an infected person’s cough, sneeze, or breath…
Beijing is said to have approved the use of bear bile to treat Covid-19. (Chiew Lin May/Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre pic)
PETALING JAYA: Two environmental groups have warned of a threat to the survival of the already endangered Malaysian sun bear, now that China is promoting bear bile as treatment for Covid-19.
Spokesmen for Monitor Conservation Research Society and the Malaysian Ecotourism and Conservation Society (Ecomy) told FMT they feared a rise in incidents of poaching.
Loretta Shepherd, Monitor’s communication coordinator, cited a recent study showing poachers were continuing to hunt for sun bears to cater to a demand by traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in Sabah and Sarawak.
According to the study, conducted last year, bear bile products were sold in 35% of traditional medicine outlets in Sabah and 19.3% of those in Sarawak.
Shepherd acknowledged that greater environmental awareness and reductions in the sun bear population had caused a steady drop in the use of bear bile over the years, but she said the threat of extinction remained serious.
She warned of the possibility of local traditional medicine practitioners following Beijing’s suit in promoting bear bile as a cure for Covid-19.
“Desperate consumers may easily be swayed,” she said.
“There is a very real chance that our sun bears will be at increased risk. We could see an increase in the use of bear bile medicine and a rise in the poaching of sun bears.”
A recent news report said Beijing had approved the use of bear bile to treat Covid-19, weeks after it banned the sale of wild animals for food, citing the risk of diseases spreading from animals to humans.
Last month, China’s National Health Commission issued guidelines recommending the use of an injection that contains bear bile powder, goat horn and three other medicinal herbs for the treatment of critically ill coronavirus patients.
Ecomy CEO Andrew Sebastian said he found it “repugnant” that Beijing was promoting the use of bear bile.
He accused China of “always fuelling the demand and supply chain” for wildlife.
“The demand for bear bile will increase and poachers will target the animals for current and future use.
“Local consumption is also something we need to be worried about,” he said.
Sebastian warned of a strain on the resources that the government has invested in for the protection of wildlife.
Nevertheless, he called for the investment of more resources into efforts to combat wildlife trafficking, saying such resources were especially needed in monitoring and the enforcement of laws.
He also claimed there is no possibility that a vaccine against Covid-19 could be found from wildlife sources.
Shepherd said promoting bear bile as medicine would perpetuate the notion that wild animals could continue to be exploited despite the availability of viable, legal and safe alternatives that do not endanger wildlife or people.
BY ROSS HARVEY – THE RELEVATOR – FREE TO REPUBLISH
Botswana hides behind national “sovereignty” while selling off its natural heritage to foreign hunters and treating elephants as mere commodities.
In February 2020 the government of Botswana auctioned off the right to hunt and kill 60 elephants — the first salvo toward a quota that aimed to allow the trophy hunting of 272 elephants this year.
Plans for those hunts, which would have been the first since the country’s 2013 hunting moratorium, were put on hold in late March by the worldwide pandemic when Botswana banned travelers from the United States and other “high-risk” countries. But the Botswana Wildlife Producers Association, which represents the hunting industry, quickly asked for an extension of this year’s hunting season.
If the COVID-19 lockdowns end sometime soon, the bullets could quickly begin flying.
Botswana is a cash-strapped nation, so one can perhaps…
Former President Barack Obama had multiple long discussions with Sen. Bernie Sanders in an effort to convince him to bow out of the presidential primary, playing a significant role in the Democratic socialist’s decision-making, according to a report.
In the weeks after former Vice President Joe Biden established himself as the presumptive Democratic nominee, following his win in South Carolina and sweeping victories on Super…
It was, well, something. Below, the lines you should see from it.
1. “It’s a tough deal. It was a bad, bad level. That was a bad group. That’s as high as it gets. It was bad grouping of tornadoes. Something that’s something incredible, the power.”
The President of the United States on devastating tornadoes that ripped through the South: “That was a bad group. That’s as high as it gets.” And away we…
(CNN)The meat supply is at risk. Farm workers are in fear. It’s hard to get groceries.
Health professionals — doctors, nurses and everyone down the line — are the rightful and obvious heroes of the pandemic, but if this dark episode has taught us anything about the way we live today, it could be that our society rests on the backs of a lot of people who cannot simply stay home and chill while the coronavirus blows through.
Food workers are front-line workers too — You probably saw the headline recently that one of the largest hog processing plants in the country had ceased production for the foreseeable future. The reason? Employees at the plant, a Smithfield operation, account for about half of the coronavirus cases in South Dakota.
Michael Mansfield QC (pictured) believes the government should introduce tighter legislation to make activities which destroy the natural world illegal ( Getty )
Eating meat could become illegal due to the ecological damage it does to the planet, a top British barrister has said.
Michael Mansfield QC believes the government should introduce tighter legislation to make activities which destroy the natural world illegal – and in the future this could even include banning the consumption of meat.
“There are plenty of things that were once commonplace that are now illegal such as smoking inside,” said Mr Mansfield, who will present his ideas at the Labour party conference on Monday.
“We know that the top 3,000 companies in the world are responsible for more than £1.5tn worth of damage to the environment with meat and dairy production high on the list. We know that because the UN has told us so.
“I think when we look at the damage eating meat is doing to the planet it is not preposterous to think that one day it will become illegal,” he said.
Currently 25 per cent of global emissions come from agriculture, with livestock contributing to 80 per cent of that.
Industrial agriculture relies on fossil fuels to create fertilisers and machinery to harvest crops and transport animals. Farmed animals also produce half of the world’s methane emissions. Research last year found that meat and dairy companies could overtake the oil industry as the world’s biggest polluters by 2050.
“It is time for a new law on ecocide to go alongside genocide and the other crimes against humanity,” said Mr Mansfield.
The top QC will be making a speech at the launch of the Vegan Now campaign at the Labour party conference where he will be sitting on a panel of experts debating the damaging effects of livestock farming on biodiversity and climate change.
Juliet Gellatley, director of animal rights group Viva!, who will also be on the panel, said: “Thirty years ago people didn’t bat an eyelid if you lit a cigarette in a pub or restaurant. But now society accepts smoking is harmful and totally unnecessary and so we legislated against it. The same could happen with eating meat.”
Experts behind the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found red meat had high greenhouse gas footprint because of the emissions livestock give out as well as the impact of land being cleared to grow crops for animal feed.
The report says we should be eating balanced diets with plant-based foods such as grains, vegetables and pulses, and animal-based food produced in sustainable systems.
Two new types of bird flu infections currently spreading in China could jump to humans threatening global health, scientists warn.
The avian influenza virus subtype H16N3, first identified in 1975 and currently detectable among wild birds in many countries, has so far not posed a threat to humans so far.
But a team of researchers from State Key Laboratory of Veterinary Biotechnology in Harbin, China, have isolated two H16N3 subtype influenza viruses that can bind to both human and avian-type cell receptors, according to findings published in Transboundary and Emerging Diseases[1].
The team led by Li Yulei also found evidence that genetic material from other species has been introduced into the H16N3 avian influenza virus, which suggests that it may infect other species and could therefore pose a threat to animal and human health in the future.
The findings come after the scientists carried out extensive surveillance of the H16N3 subtype of bird flu in large gatherings of wild birds in China from 2017 to 2019.
“Segments from other species have been introduced into the H16N3 avian influenza virus, which may alter its pathogenicity and host tropism, potentially posing a threat to animal and human health in the future,” the researchers wrote. “Consequently, it is necessary to increase monitoring of the emergence and spread of avian influenza subtype H16N3 in wild birds.”
Animal influenza viruses are distinct from human seasonal flu viruses and do not easily spread from human to human.
But some zoonotic influenza viruses – animal influenza viruses that have jumped species and infect humans – cause disease in people ranging from a mild illness to death.
The most recent case of a zoonotic virus is the SAR-CoV-2 coronavirus, which is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic that began in Wuhan, China, and has spread worldwide so far infecting 1.8 million people and claiming more than 113,000 lives[2].
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the global economy and overwhelmed healthcare systems in a number of countries including the United States.
China has emerged as ground zero for zoonotic pandemic outbreaks due to the prevalence of so-called wet markets where live animals – including endangered wild species – are sold for food.
The A(H5N1) virus spread around the world following a bird flu outbreak in Hong Kong, China in 1997 and human infections with the influenza A(H7N9) virus were reported in China in 2013, according to the World Health Organization [3].
While Hong Kong has taken steps to tackle the avian influenza in the Special Administrative Region’s wet markets, multiple different subtypes of avian influenza (H1N1, H2N9, H3N2, H3N3, H3N6, and H4N6) continue to circulate in live-poultry markets in mainland China[4].
The mortality rate of bird flu is estimated to be 60% making it at least ten times more lethal than COVID-19.
Two new types of bird flu infections currently spreading in China could jump to humans threatening global health, scientists warn.
Exposing the Big Game 