The Worst Disease Ever Recorded

We have had different threads about critters on the verge of extinction. Usually the explained culprit is habitat destruction due to mean old humans. True in some cases as if a small lake is drained to make a parking lot all the fauna/critters have lost their world and may perish. Habitat destruction is not good for anything to include humans..However there are many ways to destroy a species without human interference. Due to all the continents being interconnected via shipping and air travel we have actually created a new Pangaea as far as the possible spread of pathogens. ...

A century ago, a strain of pandemic flu killed up to 100 million people—5 percent of the world’s population. In 2013, a new mystery illness swept the western coast of North America, causing starfish to disintegrate. In 2015, a big-nosed Asian antelope known as the saiga lost two-thirds of its population—some 200,000 individuals—to what now looks to be a bacterial infection. But none of these devastating infections comes close to the destructive power of Bd—a singularly apocalyptic fungus that’s unrivaled in its ability not only to kill animals, but to delete entire species from existence.

Bd—Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in full—kills frogs and other amphibians by eating away at their skin and triggering fatal heart attacks. It’s often said that the fungus has caused the decline or extinction of 200 amphibian species, but that figure is almost two decades out-of-date. New figures, compiled by a team led by Ben Scheele from the Australian National University, are much worse.

Scheele’s team estimates that the fungus has caused the decline of 501 amphibian species—about 6.5 percent of the known total. Of these, 90 have been wiped out entirely. Another 124 have fallen by more than 90 percent, and their odds of recovery are slim. Never in recorded history has a single disease burned down so much of the tree of life. “It rewrote our understanding of what disease could do to wildlife,” Scheele says. “It’s a terrifying summary,” says Jodi Rowley from the Australian Museum. “We knew it was bad, but this really confirms how bad. And these are just the declines we know about.”

Bd is hard to dislodge. A typical disease might cause an epidemic and burn out, only to be later reintroduced from a reservoir. But once Bd arrives, it doesn’t fade out, and it cannot be removed. Like rats on islands, it becomes a nigh-permanent fixture of the areas it invades.

www.theatlantic.com...

They and us have not long to live. Yes! It is time to panic.

Man, this sucks!! I love frogs legs, come on scientists, forget global warming and fix this!

originally posted by: InTheLight
They and us have not long to live. Yes! It is time to panic.

Well, [j that [/I] would certainly be helpful!

originally posted by: InTheLight
They and us have not long to live. Yes! It is time to panic.

Well, that would certainly be helpful!

So, human idiocracy and ignorance are the top two diseases that are screwing up this ecosystem. Ok, send some more medical people to Africa to bring back Ebola to infect all of us. Just call it a humanitarian effort, instead of training their people send some of ours over there just long enough to get infected and bring them home. That will incite fear into the public.

a reply to: InTheLight

They and us have not long to live. Yes! It is time to panic.

We shall not panic until we can frame this as a conspiracy.

Wait! This just in, a reporter for ThisReallyAin'tFake.com has just sent this in:

"I was exploring an abandoned military base, must of been abandoned for 60 years. I found a secret storage area. A large 4000 year old stele had hieroglyphics on it. It must have been there at least a hundred years, hidden by the deep state. I know it must have been a prophecy of some sort. And there was something in the prophecy that looked like this: "

"I just know that this must be serious. I can't tell where the secret base is, because an unmanned drone turned its mind wipe beam on me, but I've got this picture that I drew of the prophecy."

Okay, now we can panic!

We are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats (Crist et al. 2017). By failing to adequately limit population growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperiled biosphere.
. . .
To prevent widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss, humanity must practice a more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual. This prescription was well articulated by the world’s leading scientists 25 years ago, but in most respects, we have not heeded their warning. Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out. We must recognize, in our dayto-day lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home.

World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice

a reply to: pthena

continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats

The only rapid population growth is primarily out of Africa and the Muslim population. Most western nations and even Asian countries which are Buddhist are not making enough babies to replace what they already have.

It would not matter if some plague wiped out half the worlds population the Eugenics crowd would still be saying there are to many people..IMO

I'm all for humans cleaning up their act on this planet, but rapid extinctions of species have been happening since life has existed on this planet. Have humans exacerbated that in recent history? Yes, I think we certainly have.

To add just a pinch of conspiracy... sometimes I think maybe we have one or more megalomaniac corporations or groups on this planet who have dreams of re-building the world in their own image post-apocalypse, whether or not they helped said apocalypse along. Crazy? Sure, but some on this planet are just crazy enough.

a reply to: 727Sky

These creatures have no conscience. They just consume and consume with no thought put to whether or not there will be a continued food source. Like locusts, they devour entire swaths of life, only for millions of them to die all at once when the food runs out. They dont care if every last one of them, their own species, dies of starvation.. they are programmed to consume and that's what they do. China is proof we will control ourselves if it becomes necessary.

"We are bad, but not that bad are we?" I wonder to myself, not necessarily in response to anything in the OP.

a reply to: 727Sky

The fungal aspect recalls to ones mind the "mystery" illness in Oregon, for one example, in recent years...

There's a different fungus that's threatening to wipe out banana trees. It's called Panama disease, and back in the 1950's it wiped out the breed of bananas that was most commonly gown. These days, it's once again threatening to wipe out the banana crop.