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Before COVID, I had thought that bushmeat [1] could be the route that spread Ebola to Europe, people smuggle it in their luggage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/

by rjsw 24d ago

Before COVID, I had thought that bushmeat [1] could be the route that spread Ebola to Europe, people smuggle it in their luggage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat

justin66 24d ago
> people smuggle it in their luggage Really?
- alex43578 24d ago
  Yeah. There's a reason why customs is so strict about the sloppy importation of food: it's host to diseases and pests, capable of causing ridiculous damage because someone has to have that "taste of home".
  - justin66 24d ago
    It’s the fact or otherwise of someone having carried raw meat in their luggage that I’m questioning, not the fact of customs officials caring about food moving across international borders. I’ve had fruit confiscated at a border, but meat in luggage seems like… a different paradigm.
    - deleted 24d ago
      [deleted]
    - alex43578 24d ago
      Unrefrigerated and in a suitcase is somehow the least-bad part about bushmeat.
    - gosub100 23d ago
      If you packed it with an ice pack and dry ice to keep that pack cool, it could remain about frozen for the flight.
  - aworks 23d ago
    Which reminds me of being at the SFO baggage claim. A security dog went straight for a person's bag. The security officer opened it up and found an old, stale sandwich. The person said they had forgotten their mother had stashed it there.
  - MisterTea 23d ago
    Usually that "taste of home" is part of a cultural ritual or folk medicine which is why you have these high risk smuggling issues. For them, it's a need, not a want.
alex43578 24d ago
Were it to spread to Europe, I imagine contact tracing and societal norms would result in a drastically lower r naught and basically make community spread a non-factor. Europeans (at least European health authorities) would hopefully cut down on funeral activities like touching and kissing the bodies of Ebola victims, caring for relatives at home without PPE and sanitation, etc. African countries face challenges with fighting Ebola, but they sure do make things even harder for themselves with certain practices that are pretty rough even through 19th century germ theory lens.
- Arodex 24d ago
  >Were it to spread to Europe, I imagine contact tracing and societal norms would result in a drastically lower r naught and basically make community spread a non-factor. It depends where in Europe. COVID created or revealed a crazy underbelly in a significant part of the population. And I don't see hospitals keeping up well with an influx of patients requiring very strict isolation protocols against any symptom of bleeding (and there are more people having abnormal bleeding than one imagines, especially with the aging of the population. Now imagine every one of them is a maximum level alarm). And despite the idea that public health is weak in Africa, African doctors and nurses are better trained and efficient against epidemics that their European counterparts.

by rjsw 24d ago

justin66 24d ago

> people smuggle it in their luggage Really?

alex43578 24d ago
Yeah. There's a reason why customs is so strict about the sloppy importation of food: it's host to diseases and pests, capable of causing ridiculous damage because someone has to have that "taste of home".
- justin66 24d ago
  It’s the fact or otherwise of someone having carried raw meat in their luggage that I’m questioning, not the fact of customs officials caring about food moving across international borders. I’ve had fruit confiscated at a border, but meat in luggage seems like… a different paradigm.
  - deleted 24d ago
    [deleted]
  - alex43578 24d ago
    Unrefrigerated and in a suitcase is somehow the least-bad part about bushmeat.
  - gosub100 23d ago
    If you packed it with an ice pack and dry ice to keep that pack cool, it could remain about frozen for the flight.
- aworks 23d ago
  Which reminds me of being at the SFO baggage claim. A security dog went straight for a person's bag. The security officer opened it up and found an old, stale sandwich. The person said they had forgotten their mother had stashed it there.
- MisterTea 23d ago
  Usually that "taste of home" is part of a cultural ritual or folk medicine which is why you have these high risk smuggling issues. For them, it's a need, not a want.

alex43578 24d ago

Were it to spread to Europe, I imagine contact tracing and societal norms would result in a drastically lower r naught and basically make community spread a non-factor. Europeans (at least European health authorities) would hopefully cut down on funeral activities like touching and kissing the bodies of Ebola victims, caring for relatives at home without PPE and sanitation, etc. African countries face challenges with fighting Ebola, but they sure do make things even harder for themselves with certain practices that are pretty rough even through 19th century germ theory lens.

Arodex 24d ago
>Were it to spread to Europe, I imagine contact tracing and societal norms would result in a drastically lower r naught and basically make community spread a non-factor. It depends where in Europe. COVID created or revealed a crazy underbelly in a significant part of the population. And I don't see hospitals keeping up well with an influx of patients requiring very strict isolation protocols against any symptom of bleeding (and there are more people having abnormal bleeding than one imagines, especially with the aging of the population. Now imagine every one of them is a maximum level alarm). And despite the idea that public health is weak in Africa, African doctors and nurses are better trained and efficient against epidemics that their European counterparts.