Yes, WNV has been in the Middle East for a long time and isn't a big deal.
However, North America is what's called a "naive" population---no prior
exposure whatsoever, no protective antibodies from mom through the
colostrum, no warning.
Susan G
I've been having a parallel discussion on another list for the last couple
of days and someone suggested that the reason for all the worry is that it
is a NEW disease. But as a horse owner in Egypt, I've had to teach myself a
lot of veterinary med (I've always been fascinated by epidemiology
though...gruesome hobby but useful <G> here in the land of bugs). As someone
who moved 4 and 7 year old kids to Egypt years ago, the "no immunity to
strange bugs" thing worried me quite a bit as a parent. However, I found
that a diet low in junk food and a decent emphasis on cleanliness and common
sense kept my kids healthier than most of their local counterparts. I'm
being lazy by copying my response to the other list, but it covers most of
the points brought up on Ridecamp. There are a zillion varieties of viruses
and whatnot that can cause encephalitis. WNV in itself is, as Truman pointed
out, much less of a threat than St. Louis or Eastern Equine. But it isn't
the WNV that kills the horses or people...it's their reaction to the
challenge to the immune system. Not like pneumonia bacteria that CAUSE gunk
to clog lungs...you can get encephalitis as a reaction to lots of things.
Reyes Syndrome is a form of encephalitis too I believe that can be brought
on by using aspirin when a child has a cold.
First off, there are almost NO viruses or diseases that are NOT
here...except some of the truly exotic like African Horse Disease or Ebola.
Second, I don't think that it has anything to do with natural immunity
because if it did then all the jumpers that are imported by the Equestrian
Federation from Holland annually should immediately drop dead....instead
they are usually ridden to exhaustion and bought up by farmers and less
wealthy riders to be nursed back to health. And this is a situation that
has been going on for the 15 years that I've been here all of which was
pre-WNV concern. The disease was here but no one in the US had gotten it.
West Nile has been in Europe for some years as well....is it frontpage news
on Le Monde? No. My points are these:
1) The American media is far tooooo sales driven and will happily whip up a
media frenzy over anything that will boost sales. WNV is a perfect example.
Yes, the US media is free of censorship; but what bothers me is that so
often it also seems to be free of common sense and a sense of balance other
than the balance sheet.
2) Just maybe trying to get rid of all these diseases and viruses by
vaccinations and super-supplementations is working against you. Immune
systems that are challenged by parasites and diseases often build up the
immunity to meet the challenge of another disease. Do I worm my horses?
Absolutely, because even the forage grown for them is likely tainted with
the eggs of some parasite or other from the millions of four-legged denizens
of the countryside. Do I vaccinate my horses? Yes. Against tetanus and
salmonella, two things that they can't build up an immunity to, and rhino
for broodmares. We don't have strangles vaccine here so we have to just pay
closer attention to our horses and practice quarantine as much as possible.
When everyone was going berserk over hoof and mouth a while back, I asked a
senior journalist friend of mine who lives in the country near my stable
whether Egypt had a hoof and mouth problem. His reply? "Sure, we have hoof
and mouth, after all we have migrating herds of sheep and goats, as well as
water buffalo who wander around. Is it a problem? No. These animals are not
for industrial use where every little drop in production is important to
some accountant. If a farmer's sheep comes down with hoof and mouth, the
highest likelihood is that he will do one of two things: nurse it through or
throw a barbecue." It's the idea that sometimes you have to learn to live
WITH disease that's been forgotten in the US. They aren't going to go away,
the best you can do is try to manage your response.
I raise rat-hunting dogs for farms and grain silos because they are safer
than poisons. They will never eliminate rats. They will only control them.
American cities are overrun with rats. There are more rats than people in
New York and Boston and rats carry diseases that will REALLY kill people and
animals in much larger numbers than WNV, but people still haven't come up
with a way to maintain rat populations at safe levels. A sterile, safe
environment is amazingly boring, probably impossible and will probably
weaken us to the point that one bite of a big Mac could prove fatal.
We've had more than the average number of equine deaths with encephalitis
symptoms this summer as well. The only thing is, we don't know what kind or
what has caused it. There are only a few hundred possible vectors from
birds, ticks, mosquitos to cows, pigs, and chickens for encephalitis, which
is, after all, not a disease but the reaction to a disease or disturbance of
the immune system in which there is an inflammation of the brain and neural
tissue. I had a childhood friend who got it from a case of the measles. The
point is that we share this planet with a lot of interesting other life
forms, but it seems to be easier to forget that fact some places than it is
in others.
Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
maryanne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.ratbusters.net
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