Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Guardian, unusually warm weather probably wouldn’t happen without our help.
Anthrax outbreak triggered by climate change sickens dozens in Arctic Circle
Seventy-two nomadic herders, including 41 children, were hospitalised in far north Russia after the region began experiencing abnormally high temperatures.
A 12-year-old boy in the far north of Russia has died in an outbreak of anthrax that experts believe was triggered when unusually warm weather caused the release of the bacteria.
The boy was one of 72 nomadic herders, including 41 children, hospitalised in the town of Salekhard in the Arctic Circle, after reindeer began dying en masse from anthrax.
Five adults and two other children have been diagnosed with the disease, which is known as “Siberian plague” in Russian and was last seen in the region in 1941.
More than 2,300 reindeer have died, and at least 63 people have been evacuated from a quarantine area around the site of the outbreak.
“We literally fought for the life of each person, but the infection showed its cunning,”the Yamal governor, Dmitry Kobylkin, told the Interfax news agency. “It returned after 75 years and took the life of a child.”
…
Anthrax spores can survive in frozen human and animal remains for hundreds of years, waiting to be released by a thaw, according to Alexei Kokorin, head of WWF Russia’s climate and energy programme.
“Such anomalous heat is rare for Yamal, and that’s probably a manifestation of climate change,” he said.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/anthrax-outbreak-climate-change-arctic-circle-russia
So how is Anthrax normally contracted?
Working with infected animals or animal products
Most people who get sick from anthrax are exposed while working with infected animals or animal products such as wool, hides, or hair.
Inhalation anthrax can occur when a person inhales spores that are in the air (aerosolized) during the industrial processing of contaminated materials, such as wool, hides, or hair.
Cutaneous anthrax can occur when workers who handle contaminated animal products get spores in a cut or scrape on their skin.
Eating raw or undercooked meat from infected animals
People who eat raw or undercooked meat from infected animals may get sick with gastrointestinal anthrax . This usually occurs in countries where livestock are not routinely vaccinated against anthrax and food animals are not inspected prior to slaughter.
In the United States, gastrointestinal anthrax has rarely been reported. This is because yearly vaccination of livestock is recommended in areas of the United States where animals have had anthrax in the past, and because of the examination of all food animals, which ensures that they are healthy at the time of slaughter.
Injecting heroin
A newly discovered type of anthrax is injection anthrax . This type of anthrax has been seen in northern Europe in people injecting heroin. So far, no cases of injection anthrax have been reported in the United States.
Read more: http://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/basics/how-people-are-infected.html
Although Russia has serious problems with drug abuse, we can hopefully rule out the injection route, given so many children in one area became ill.
The much more likely source of infection in this case is eating undercooked meat, from infected animals which have not been vaccinated. Consumption of raw meat and animal products is a cultural tradition in Siberia.
Blaming a few unusually hot days on climate seems a bit of a stretch. Tying “climate” to a small though deadly outbreak of an obviously endemic disease is nonsense. In my opinion, blaming “climate” is just a convenient means for the Russian branch of the WWF to try to associate a tragic though preventable healthcare disaster with their global warming narrative.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
July average for 1915 is the record for Salekhard at 19.53C. This July.only 18.8C. Global cooling?
This article ignores the particular way in which anthrax persists in this area of Siberia…
This area has permafrost and corpses of people and animals are usually not deeply buried, but get frozen into top layer of permafrost…
anthrax survives as spores in frozen bodies and when permafrosted corpses thaw, spreads into the water supply
this outbreak is undoubtedly caused by thawing victims, human or reindeer, from the 1941 outbreak.
And up to you whether you accept the science of climate change and ascribe that as the cause of unusually high temps/thawing permafrost (this is the region where those peculiar holes possibly from methane outbursts have been seen: its permafrost is melting)
http://www.popsci.com/how-did-anthrax-flare-up-in-siberia
‘And up to you whether you accept the science of climate change and ascribe that as the cause of unusually high temps/thawing permafrost (this is the region where those peculiar holes possibly from methane outbursts have been seen: its permafrost is melting)’
warming / cooling rarely extincts live that evolved for more than millions of years. it mere shifts the boundaries of habitats.
extinction is to await by evolving strong competition in habitats.
And how does that relate to thawing permafrost or anthrax outbreaks (related to thawing permafrost)?
‘methane is thawing’ – yes, while on some locations methane is freezing on the bare surface on other sites methane is likely to be thawing.
http://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-siberian-crater-attributed-to-methane-1.15649
“A mystery crater spotted in the frozen Yamal peninsula in Siberia earlier this month was probably caused by methane released as permafrost thawed, researchers in Russia say”
google pingo .
” while on some locations methane is freezing on the bare surface on other sites methane is likely to be thawing”
Must be a rather cool summer then, since the thawing point of methane is -296 F.
I’ve never been to Yamal (a huge peninsula, larger than California, I guess) but I knew a man who spent several summers there in the 1970s. He told me that in July and August it can be very hot there, to the extent that a member of his team had a heat stroke. All of them, being pale-skinned Russians, managed to get burned by the Sun, and were “almost eaten alive” by gnats. There are literally clouds of gnats there.
I should mention that Eskimo-like deer hurders of North Siberia are regularly eating raw meat and raw animal fat (of seals and deer), it is a necessary part of their diet, without it they wouldn’t be able to survive. Their physiology is tuned up to this diet, changing it is out of question. Gruniad journos may not be aware of that — if they are aware at all, that is.
Anthrax was weaponized in the USSR. Somebody remembers that outbreak in the suburb of Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg) in the 1970s? The whole population of that town dropped dead on the spot. Photos taken from helicopters during decontamination showed corpses of the people who stood in a queue to buy something, lying on the ground without even breaking the queue.
Since deer-hurders of Yamal had time to be hospitalized, I guess this time it’s a natural strain of anthrax.
We have had a minor anthrax outbreak in Sweden this summer too, though it has only affected cattle and horses, at least so far. And the summer here hasn’t been particularly warm, and there is certainly no permafrost that can melt. It’s a rather peculiar outbreak since it has affected several farms at some distance from each other and with no obvious connections.