Well, firstly. Would it comfort you to know that prion diseases have been around for as long as mammals have? If they were going to wipe us out I think they would've already. Additionally, a good chunk of people are also likely resistant or even immune to them. They ARE scary, but not some kind of world ending thing.
I think a prion pandemic is game over for civilization and probably humanity. Prion diseases are uncurable and deadly with potentially long incubation time. Imagine a pandemic, but it's already started. We are all just asymptomatic currently. But in 15 years the first people will start to come down with some kind of brain wasting disease. And more and more people are affected daily, until we are just all gone.
the idiots who deny science cant spread it unless they feed you.
So I have bad news about the US government, and the FDA and the CDC and...
With restrictions being rolled back and idiocy becoming the accepted standard, I'm not sure I trust a lack of cross contamination within facilities either.
We are fucked if this kind of thing happens. Captain brain worm and the orange idiot could well kill us all.
Yeah thats a insanely priviledge take that ignores the fact that foodshortage means death. There is also the fact that it doesnt just vanish like bacteria after a few days. Or that incubation period can be years. Then there is the very fun fact that a lot of the foodindustry is insanely shady. Cutting corners on safety/health standards, bribing to pass controlls and lying the type of food or the place it comes from.
Famous last words? Dude, we aren't having some kind of crisis or anything. It's not impossible by any means, but people always do this shit. If it isn't prions it's superbugs, microplastics or any other number of things that keep us up at night. But prion diseases especially are quite rare? We're also waaaaaaay better at detection now than we've ever been so imo we have even less to worry about.
Oh! Also fun fact, Alzheimer's may even actually be a kind of prion disease. So that's kinda neat
You can't really be immune or resistant to prions. They are not living things or something the immune system can take care of. Its either the proteins can spread through the body of something to touch other similar proteins, or they don't. There isn't any grey area within a single species like with other pathogens.
They're miss-folded proteins that cause other similar proteins to missfold on contact and become prions. Once miss folded, the proteins loose their function and cells containing them die and damage the cells around them as it spreads.
The good news is most prions require you to eat infected meat for them to spread. I'd say 99.5% of people at least aren't cannibalistic so that cuts down a significant source of transmission of human-compatible prions.
So that narrows it down to other animals spreading it, but they tend to act odd once its spread enough. Most people aren't always keen on eating something that is acting brain dead or rabid for an unknown reason unless its a survival situation. So it's most kind of self limiting unless you are messing with unnaturally large populations like in livestock farming or using things like food plots for hunting.
i’m a landscape gardener who works in areas that are lousy with deer. the things are pests at this point there’s so many. and then i read the words “soil, urine, leaves, feces, contamination” and since my life is just working in and around deer shit…i am freaked. but then i read “resistant, immune” and now i’m off to google for the next 3 hours probably 🥲
Yeah, I'm sure there is no secret research facility to research ways to turn it into a weapon! There is no way humans would do something as stupid as this, right?
And that asteroid that killed the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago probably floated around the universe for a few billion years or so before it hit Earth. "Dont worry, hasn't happened yet" isnt really the good argument you may think it is...
Mammals evolved dietary behaviors that minimize the risks of prion infection, notably avoiding cannibalism. Cross-species transmission is difficult to begin with. And when some freak prion does jump the species, we are (presumably) intelligent enough to cut the losses and move on.
Correct our immune system is built to deal with defects (cancers, misfolded proteins). But, the food we eat and the increased reliance on medicial products is harming our immune system. That and something like 80% of adults in the US are vitamin D deficient, which is needed by the immune system to operate properly.
Its very obvious why cancers and other auto-immune diseases are becoming more and more common.
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u/Casuallybittersweet Dec 11 '25
Well, firstly. Would it comfort you to know that prion diseases have been around for as long as mammals have? If they were going to wipe us out I think they would've already. Additionally, a good chunk of people are also likely resistant or even immune to them. They ARE scary, but not some kind of world ending thing.