So what does this mean?If I mount a crow I risk getting west nile disease?
Is this what it honestly means?HELP ANY FEEDBACK.
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Though crows are vectors of the disease, lots of other critters are as well. Remember, it's caused by a mosquito bite. You don't have to mount crows in order to get it. All you really have to do is go outside and hit the antilottery. One mosquito bite out of zillions of them can infect you. No need to run.
Strangest thing is that they have innoculations for chickens and horses but not for people yet. The reason for that is that it's not lethal enough. If more people died or got critically ill, they'd be giving us the shots like anthrax to soldiers. If you are in reasonably good health and not very young or very old, symptoms are relatively mild and you may think you're having a mild cold or pollen attack. The sky's not falling.....yet.
I'm surprised that you haven't seen right through the innoculations
for chickens and horses.
Now, I can't speak for the chickens, but when I checked into the equine vaccine last, which was last year, it wasn't known if the
vaccine was effective or not.
We must have ran out of LAB animals to abuse. Is your suspicious mind
back in gear?
They may be needing human volunteers for testing.............
I work full-time at the NC Public Health Lab where we test for west nile. You can contract west nile from crows when you are skinning them and especially when you are removing their brain material...My advise is to wear latex gloves and a surgeon's mask while working with high-risk birds (mainly raptors and crows).
People have been skinning and mounting birds for years..what did they do before all this?
....but I've always worn rubber gloves and I always try to wear a dusk mask to keep from ingesting cut feathers along with the dust mites the live in them.
Ummmmm .....
They've been skinning rodents too, and living with internal and external parasites as well. Not bathing or washing their hands, eating undercooked or tainted meat ....
You name it - people have done it, and enough of them survived at least long enough to reproduce. But a lot got sick and died, never knowing that simple hygiene could have saved them.
Most of the time you should be "reasonably" safe skinning a HEALTHY bird that died from sudden trauma and was quickly frozen IF you don't have (or get) any wounds on your hands. But how do you know for sure that it was healthy? And what if you nick yourself on a shattered bone? Even a minor little "owie" will get infected. It's usually no big deal, but why bother with it at all when gloves are so cheap?
I confess that I do take them off once I reach the washing stage because I really need to feel what I'm doing at that point.
Nancy M.