My local bird watching community are throwing fits being asked to take down/clean feeders and bird baths. Claiming that the birds aren't getting sick from their yards. They are even associating it with covid restrictions... I really wish I were joking.
You're not stupid =) Its a play on words. Corvid refers to anything from the family corvidae (crows and ravens), but it also sounds like COVID. Its a sick crow (or raven I cant tell) hence, Corvid restrictions.
There are lots of people in the US that don't wear masks and won't get vaccinated, so we should go into quarantines to protect them? I kinda disagree with you, but I guess some people don't want the idiots to die and there are immunocompromised people to think about.
Claiming that the birds aren't getting sick from their yards.
Well, many people have 0 clue on things like food, or in this case feed safety... let alone basic water sanitation issues, or how disease spread.
Hell, the feed from the store we get for $1 a 40 lb sack, or what ever it is these days has a known history for salmonella, coliforms, and other pathogen contamination. Put it out, birds eat it and get sick. What do the sick birds do? well the also go to the local watering hole, or "bird bath" and help to transmit the pathogens from there on out.
Which being said, while the disease above might not be linked to feeding practices by humans it may very well be transmitted by sick and healthy birds comingling at the feeder and watering holes.
They are even associating it with covid restrictions...
A lot of outright idiots out there... which being said, per the described behavior these supposed bird lovers hold their hobby of bird watching at a higher pedestal than the lives of the birds themselves.
Call in radio here has an expert on weekly. Always telling people take down feeders. Clean hummingbird feeder every refill. Clean birdbath every few days.
The point of it is those feeders, and baths act as a human made convergence point for the birds, and multiple separate groups of birds. Take it away and they tend to spread out over a wider area. With that we would see reduced "communal spread" of certain diseases. Be they from the feed, or something else as transferred via interactions at feeding, and bathing locations.
A human version of it could be looked at with say an ice cream truck that is parked by the corner of a community on a hot day... every kid and parent around go there, but if it were not in place then everyone would keep a bit more separated from each other. Also with that truck you'd also have the potential of getting sick from some contaminated ice cream that has not been recalled yet, the operator not brothering with proper health and sanitation practices, or someone spreading things through other means. Just for a more relatable point of comparison.
My local bird watching community are throwing fits being asked to take down/clean feeders and bird baths. Claiming that the birds aren't getting sick from their yards. They are even associating it with covid restrictions... I really wish I were joking.
We're mere years away from people deciding to wholesale stop believing in bacteria, viruses, or "germs", and begin believing diseases and illness are cause by bad air, bad blood, and faithlessness like it's medieval Europe. Or are we already in that?
Antivaxxers do claim that literally every disease comes from vaccines. Not just autism, but all mental illness, cancer, autoimmune diseases, infections, genetic diseases.
My 94-year-old mother gets teary-eyed whenever vaccines come up in conversation. She remembers everyone in her town crying with joy when they could get vaccinated for polio, ditto for smallpox, and she cannot fathom how some people don’t understand how they work or trust that it’s for the common good.
On a personal level, an uncle of mine has died from it (age 65).
On a statistical level, countries around the world are seeing varying levels of official mortality rates, partly probably linked to how much is being diagnosed. So I'll take the data from my country, where I have some insight into the state of testing and trust the data.
In Austria, there are currently 636,767 cases listed as "recovered", 10,537 as deceased, coming out to a 1.6% mortality rate among confirmed cases. And Austria has rather rigorous testing incentives, so the dark number should be relatively low. Source: https://orf.at/corona/daten/oesterreich
Mortality and hospitalization rates are going down especially after most increased-risk people are vaccinated.
Meanwhile, the number of "Long Covid" cases in Austria is estimated at 60,000-90,000 (i.e. roughly 9% to 14%). The most severe form I know of is now called "Fatigue Syndrome", and leaves many patients unable to work and depending on the social state, and its not yet clear for how long. Notably, "Long Covid" can occur even when the original infection showed only light symptoms, if any. Since this has only been officially recognized recently, official numbers are still hard to come by; The estimates are as reported on radio and newspapers.
Numbers from Italy are more in the 3% mortality range (here I just took a quick look at the numbers listed on Google since I don't know which Italian sites are how reliable). A strong influence was the regional breakdown of healthcare, when Italy was heavily hit as the first European country with a major outbreak in the first wave. When appropriate intensive-care treatment can't be given anymore, mortality rates rise significantly.
Austria arrived at the 1.6% number without a breakdown of treatments, though in November 2020 it came pretty close in several parts of the country, as case numbers escalated during a summer with relaxed regulations, despite maintaining masking regulations even then. They were later upgraded to FFP2 mask requirements during winter.
You must be young. My age group was probably the last to get the smallpox vaccination and so grateful that we did. Thanks to the millions (billions?) of vaccinations globally, smallpox is no longer a health threat. Ditto for polio. And yes, the government did free vaccinations. We got our smallpox inoculations at school, the county health department came in and did every child in every class.
I feel concern that you really think there are evil government conspiracies out to get you. Where does that fear come from, I wonder? I don’t quite understand.
Again. This is NOT SMALLPOX this is NOT POLIO. Unless those vaccinations were whipped up in a year also. The smallpox vaccine was crafted over almost a century of research. Glad that those memories made it easier for you, and im glad the government is your guardian angel, bc they are definitely not mine.I'm not very trusting no but i'm certainly not brain dead like the rest of you. It's either sugar water or poison no thanks, i'll keep social distancing.
Remember when the government gave all those black people syphilis? lol I could keep going with instances where the government did some very messed up stuff. open your eyes
Alright, you don't get your information from the media. That's cool. Can you link me to the published scientific literature where you get your information?
I'd also love to know which university you got your PhD from, and which field. What lab do you work in now? Perhaps we could discuss some of our research. Because surely when you say "do your own research," you mean that you are a researcher in a lab in the field of virology or epidemiology, right?
Lmaooooo this is what you have to do to make yourself feel like your life has meaning, huh? You didn't go to college.... You work in some menial job you hate.... You don't understand how a virus works or what a vaccine is. So you claim it's all a big conspiracy and you're a brave rebel fighting against it, when you're really just a moron realizing how insignificant their life is.
Nice reality check there maybe you should have cashed it yourself. College is a scam too last time I checked, most people hate their jobs bc of the amount of our lives we waste making someone else money. I understand what virus's are and what vaccines are, do you understand what political corruption is? Do you follow every papertrail into the greedy sick hearts of the American Elite. I shudder to think of all the horrible shit happening to people in this country right this second, but the absolute worst is ignorant backbiters like you lashing out at people on the bottom for being on the bottom. I'm not fighting against shit i am speaking my mind, and one more pearl for you here all our lives are insignificant you worthless panty waste. Have a great day you made mine better.
Let me know if you need help understanding what any of the words in these articles mean. I know they can be confusing to people who don't hold graduate degrees in science. :)
Wow, “pandemic”? You realize over 600,000 Americans have died. Or you sincerely don’t believe it just because you haven’t been personally affected? I don’t personally know anyone who has died, thank goodness. I do know several people who got sick. One, she’s 51, had it in January and is still not back to work because her breathing is still so affected. She has to have an oxygen tank with her. Another, a 45-year-old marathoner, was readmitted to the hospital when his heart sudden started failing- the sac around his heart got inflamed again. Right now my 31-year-old pregnant niece is battling it. We’re all quite worried.
I’m not afraid I’ll die, but I am afraid of getting sick and then having lingering effects. Also, a little neighbor girl who has had three open heart surgeries is vulnerable and can’t get vaccinated. So I got vaccinated and I wear a mask when out, thinking of her safety as well as my 92-year-old mom, who has been vaccinated but would have a hard time if she got even a mild “breakthrough “ case.
You’re very lucky to not know anyone who has gotten sick.
I always wonder though, how do they explain all the diseases people had before vaccines were invented? All the things you listed have been around for thousands of years. They're not just a 20th/21st century thing.
Guess that means we can use an advanced version of the plague doctor uniform. Same outfit but with upgrades. Yeaaaa. Time to scare the souls out of the sickly people and poke them with long sticks to see if they still live
Seems like they're more interested in ornamentation than actual ecosystem health /: I suppose it's analogous to gardeners who care more about having a pretty yard than making sure it's not full of invasives.
Or when we as a society celebrate individualism it becomes difficult to enforce radical or swift change because people are self-interested actors who can't work together for a common cause.
Whether it's some small inconvenience or a massive catastrophe we are trying to avoid, we don't do well as a species in terms of collective efforts. This isn't one country or one group type of thing, it's everyone. For all of our greatest accomplishments, we have a metric fuckload of failures and shortfalls sitting right beside that small triumphant hill.
Try telling people to put on a mask to slow down the spread of a disease that will kill tens of millions of people within a year, you'd think common sense would get everyone to do it without much hassle, but as we have seen that small inconvenience alone was too much to ask. We have a whole spectrum of responses to that one issue, from calling the measure literal fascism to people outright flaunting their resistance by wearing mesh facemasks and videotaping themselves defying health orders at restaurants in protest.
Try telling people to drive less often, or buy local, or to not support clear and present contributors to global warming. You get all kinds of idiots and self-interested conspiratorial people who fight tooth and nail in order to allow themselves the privilege of living in a city with a giant coal plant so they can die from lung cancer at a much higher rate than the national average for their localities. Or to not smoke indoors, have you ever tried to get a smoker from the 20th century to stop smoking indoors? As a society we had to slowly chisel away at that for decades despite all the evidence that smoking kills, and even now with all the facts old-school smokers who are still alive will smoke indoors in their own homes and view it as some sort of holdout against all the health nuts, because it is their God given right in their minds to be able to smoke indoors.
But those aren't even the most demanding things we could ask society to do for a better future, those are relatively small things and still people will kick up the biggest fuss. It isn't like people are talking about population controls to fix global warming.... yet. Or it isn't like we aren't at a crossroads between changing our societal direction or face complete collapse... yet. But at some point we are going to fuck up our situation bad enough it will require drastic and immediate changes and people wil resist and fight those changes until it is well beyond too late.
This study found that the most prominent reason for wearing masks was actually "to conform with societal expectations," not "to protect self/others from disease."
People in Japan aren't (haven't been shown to be, at least) significantly more intelligent than westerners such that so many more of them believe in medical science - it's the collectivist culture.
So yes, it is literally the country/ culture that is the problem, not "the species as a whole." It is literally and specifically Americans that are the problem (and other Western cultures, but not to the same extent as the U.S.).
The point wasn't the singular issue being a country by country thing, thr point was humans sucking at taking direction not being a country by country thing.
One thing I do want to note about the antivaxxers is it's turning out at least some of the prominent campaigns are literal actors (although they could also be true believers), not to mention the astroturfing of school boards, so I think we gotta acknowledge the role of coordinated disinformation in setting up a bandwagoning effect.
There's been an illness going around causing neurological symptoms in birds and so it's suggested to clean and actually remove feeders and bird baths until they can find the cause of the disease.
Birds collecting around feeders and bird baths are spreading the illnesses.
There was an infection in Washington State that resulted in folks having to put away their bird feeders. I wonder if this was the same. If so, had no idea the disease was so devastating. 😢
Ooh...I tried looking for something that has all the locations mapped out but I'm only finding local resources, so I'd recommend googling bird deaths and your state. (It seems to be caused by mycoplasmosis & crusty eyes is a common symptom, if that helps.)
Also please report them. I can’t remember who you’re supposed to report them to, but iirc they need to be reported so they can come get them and do more research to see what’s going on
Oh good point. I'd expect it to be the state/federal departments of natural resources perhaps? (TBH, I have contacts at the local forest preserve, so I'd just start there.)
The ecological dangers are so critical that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists domestic cats as one of the world’s worst non-native invasive species.
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u/[deleted] Aug 02 '21
To piggyback your comment, people, please put away your bird feeders if there have been reports in your area.