The plant pathogen genus Phytophthora, a water mold with similarities to a fungus, is a worldwide threat to ornamental and commercially valuable plants due to how it can develop undetected in the early stages of an infestation. While there are some species of Phytophthora that begin an infestation on the above ground portion of a plant, a much larger portion of the approximately 170 known species of the pathogen start out destroying a plant from within its roots. Phytophthora moves upward from the roots through the water channels of the plant, interfering with the plant’s ability to absorb water as it goes. The effect makes the plant appear drought-stricken, which is essentially the case.
One of the plants heavily afflicted by Phytophthora in the past 30 plus years has been the cocoa tree, Theobroma cacao, and specifically the cocoa trees planted in western Africa, where most of the world’s cocoa beans are produced. The species of Phytophthora doing the most damage in that period has been Phytophthora megakarya, a disease that blackens the pods which contain the cocoa beans, rendering most of them unfit for consumption. This disease and a virus transmitted by mealybugs called cacao swollen shoot virus (CSSV) in combination have decimated cocoa tree plantations in western Africa in recent decades.
A Venn diagram showing the combination necessary for disease to form. This can apply to humans and animals as well as to plants. Illustration by Earlycj5.
Phytophthora megakarya was introduced from the Americas, where it had long co-existed with the native cocoa trees. The cultivated cocoa trees of western Africa had developed for generations without having to cope with infestations from megakarya, though they had long been contending with Phytophthora palmivora, a less devastating disease for them.
CSSV was native to the forest trees of western Africa, where it did little damage because of long term co-evolution of the trees with the virus. The introduced cocoa trees had no inherited defense against CSSV, resulting in afflicted cocoa trees losing vigor and dying within a few years. Meanwhile, the ants that farmed the mealybugs for their sugary secretions have ensured they continue to live safe from predators by guarding them, even building shelters for them.
Chocolate has grown steadily more expensive, at a rate beyond ordinary inflation, due primarily to shortages of cocoa beans caused by these pathogens. Another reason for chocolate price increases has been related to the salutary shift away from indentured labor on cocoa plantations, making the price more accurately reflect the true cost of production. The cost of production is bound to catch up with any resource as nature asserts itself in one way or another, or in many ways, and imagining that we are immune or insulated from the effects of that assertion is mere hubris and folly. Ultimately, we will pay the price.
— Izzy
“What made eradication possible was a really good vaccine and political support. There was a real incentive to do it. You don’t ask a cow if it wants to be vaccinated. You just do it.” — Ron DeHaven, former CEO of the American Veterinary Medical Association, speaking about the eradication of rinderpest, a cattle disease related to the measles virus.
Rinderpest and smallpox are the only two infectious diseases that have been eradicated around the world. Smallpox is the only disease to be eradicated that infects only people. Eradication of other infectious diseases, like COVID-19 for one, is unlikely because there are alternate hosts in the animal population, and while it may be feasible to vaccinate domesticated animals such as cows to the point of herd immunity, it is unrealistic to think the same can be done for wild animals.
Ruins of the Smallpox Hospital built in the 19th century on Roosevelt Island in New York City. Photo by Flickr user Adam Jones.
Cows have another favorable trait in reaching herd immunity besides being easily available for their shots, which is that they don’t subscribe to bizarre, illogical, and unscientific conspiracy theories egging them on to refuse vaccinations, if that was a possibility for them. Rinderpest, like its cousin infecting humans, the measles virus, is among the most contagious diseases on the planet, and the more contagious a disease is, the higher the percentage of a susceptible population must be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity. For measles and rinderpest, that’s over 90 percent.
Smallpox is – was – in the middle of the scale as far as its contagious qualities, but among the deadliest at around 30 percent fatalities. Influenza, with notable exceptions throughout history, such as the 1918-19 Spanish Flu outbreak, is at the lower end of the scale for both contagiousness and deadliness. COVID-19, like the other Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) viruses to which it’s related, is higher up the scale for contagiousness than the annual flu, but it is nowhere near as deadly as smallpox, though deadliness as always is strongly affected by a victim’s socioeconomic circumstances. The poor, as always in any affliction, die in droves, while the better off have access to the best care and are less likely to be infected in the first place.
One by one through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, diseases that had killed hundreds of millions over thousands of years were brought under control with vaccines and other public health measures, such as better sanitation. There have always been people of skeptical of the effectiveness of vaccines or suspicious of the motives of the medical people, often affiliated in one way or another with a government entity, who administered the vaccines. The difference in then from now is that before about 1980 evidence of a world without vaccines was still readily available to everyone, rich and poor, living in the industrialized northern hemisphere or in the largely agricultural southern hemisphere.
In 1947, when the threat of disfigurement or death from smallpox was still very real to everyone, the citizens of New York City lined up for blocks to receive vaccinations in order to stem a possible outbreak.
Today, people in richer countries no longer see the effects of smallpox at all, and rarely do they see the effects of less disfiguring, less deadly diseases like measles. If COVID-19 were to leave visible scars on those who suffered and survived, instead of just the internal scars it does leave, one wonders if at least some of the people ready to dismiss the seriousness of the disease and the severity of the outbreak would be as obstinate about complying with public health measures.
If there were still children crippled by polio in every neighborhood, would there still be people who are more willing to believe an insane theory about vaccines they read in their Facebook “news” feeds than the scientific fact of once rampaging infections brought to heel in the past two hundred years? No doubt there will always be some hard cases who can’t be reached through reason, no matter what. The amount of the U.S. population vaccinated against COVID-19 is currently about 43 percent, and it needs to be over 70 percent to reach herd immunity. It will be best to cross that threshold before cold weather sets in again, forcing people back indoors. If it’s not, then COVID-19, a disease that will likely never be eradicated, only controlled, could surge once more, making this summer of relative freedom appear in retrospect like a fool’s paradise.
— Vita
“Oats. n.s. [aten, Saxon.] A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”
— from A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson.
The detrimental effect on the dairy industry of lockdowns state governments have instituted in reaction to the coronavirus could have long term consequences, tipping the balance abruptly toward greater production of plant derived milks, butters, and cheeses. Traditional dairy has been losing market share to plant derived dairy for decades, with losses getting larger especially in the past decade. Now loss of revenue due to coronavirus lockdowns of schools and restaurants could mean bankruptcy for many dairy farms and a long term shift toward lower production as traditional dairy transforms into a lesser role.
There will no doubt always be demand for traditional dairy products, but if supermarket shelf space is an indicator of what consumers want, then plant derived milks have taken the largest chunk of shelf space away from traditional dairy, while butters, and particularly cheeses have been less competitive. The consumption of animal milk products has always been a peculiarly human practice. The desire for milk and associated products is so great that people will go to great lengths to produce and consume ersatz milk derived from nuts and grains. It is beyond the scope of this article to investigate why that is; it is enough merely to point out that consumption of milk fulfills for many people a deep-seated need, a need met for all other mammals in infancy, and then forgotten.
Different brands of oat milk available in a German organic supermarket in September 2015. Photo by Fretdf.
“Milk. n.s. [meelc, Saxon; melck, Dutch.] 1. The liquor with which animals feed their young from the breast. 2. Emulsion made by contusion of seeds.”
— from A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson.
It follows then that animal milk production for human consumption is an artificial activity, consequently involving some pain and suffering by the animals, both mothers and their artificially weaned young. We have done these things for so long, for centuries going back ten thousand years or more to the beginning of agriculture, that we think the activities are natural. They are not. The closest parallel in the rest of the animal kingdom can be seen with how ants tend to aphids in order to secure for themselves the aphids’ honeydew secretions. Those secretions are not intended for consumption by the aphids’ young, however, but are merely a byproduct of their ingestion of plant juices. The relationship is closer – but not entirely the same – as our relationship to honey bees than it is to our relationship with dairy animals. The relationship we have with dairy animals is mere exploitation, closer to that of vampire bats with their prey, or to bloodsucking insects with their victims, or even to a virus with its host.
— Izzy
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”
— Matthew 6:5, from the New International Version of the Bible.
When state and local governments include churches, mosques, and synagogues in their lockdown orders due to coronavirus, it might at first glance seem to be an infringement on religious freedom, but such is not the case. It would be an infringement if government singled out particular institutions which were in almost every way like other institutions except for their religious character. In this public health emergency, however, the only concern government officials have with religious institutions is the one characteristic they share with some other institutions, which is how they typically gather together large groups of people, a characteristic more conducive to spreading coronavirus than to tamping it down.
Congregating for the purpose of religious worship is no more under attack in these coronavirus lockdown orders than assembly for the political purpose of voting. This hasn’t stopped some religious leaders from loudly claiming they and their congregants are being persecuted by government in general and by the Democratic Party in particular. It hasn’t taken long for the coronavirus to become politically as polarized as everything else in our society. The virus itself has not expressed a political preference and, like past viruses, attacks everyone equally.
No one is denying religious freedom to churchgoers, only the freedom to go to church in large numbers at one time. Congregating has always been an important element of religious ritual for many people in many religions, but a public health emergency supersedes the wish of some to carry on as always at the expense of and to the detriment of the many. People can still pray, and in most places they can still gather to pray in groups of less than ten or thereabouts.
Replica of Jesus Christ’s tomb at Easter 2017 in the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, in Paris, France. Photo by Tangopaso.
Some pastorsdon’t see it that way. They are pastors of Southern Baptist churches, by and large. They are led in their right wing political views and gullible belief in hoaxes concocted by their devilish foes in the center and left of American politics by people like Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. For these people, churchgoing is perhaps even more a social bond than it is a religious experience. They go to see and be seen.
Church is also a place where they reaffirm to each other their political bond, which is conservative at least, and right wing more often with each passing year. Taking away their church gatherings of dozens or hundreds of people in close proximity to each other is seen by them as prying apart the social and political bonds which are more important to them than the religious bonds affirmed in regular churchgoing. Their pastors can grandstand about supposed government and leftist persecution of their religious institutions, but their real worry is loosening the social and political bonds cemented regularly in seeing and being seen by their fellow congregants.
— Vita
In most of the country, daffodils (genus Narcissus) bloom in March and are among the first signs of spring. Some places might have blooms as early as February, and others not until April. In all places, the leaves pop up from the ground while freezing weather is still frequent, and inexperienced gardeners and curious onlookers worry that the plants have come up too early and will suffer damage from the cold. Not to worry. The daffodils have been through it all before and will be fine. Any damage they do incur from late winter weather usually comes from being bent down to the ground or snapped by the weight of a late snow or ice storm.
Deer, rabbits, and squirrels do not eat daffodil bulbs, foliage, or flowers since they are toxic. The plants spread by jumping from place to place by seed dispersal as well as increasing into clumps formed by daughter bulbs dividing from their parent bulbs, rather like offspring who have matured and set up housekeeping next door. Not all daffodils are noticeably fragrant, and as often happens with flowers it is the older, original varieties that are most fragrant, because plant hybridizers sometimes lose that aspect in pursuit of other traits such as size or color. Trade-offs.
Despite a substantial list of pests, fungi, and viruses that can adversely affect daffodils, in practice they should not gravely concern the gardener since the daffodils seem to cope well on their own. The worst condition affecting daffodils, particularly their bulbs, comes from poor drainage or excessive water, particularly in winter. Hardly anyone likes cold, wet feet, and daffodils are no exception. On account of the wet winter in most of the eastern half of the United States, daffodil displays may be subdued this March.
In the 1965 film Doctor Zhivago, a long winter finally turns to spring, heralded by a field of daffodils.
About the only thing an American gardener can say against daffodils is that they are not native to North America or to any part of the Western Hemisphere. Daffodils originate from southern Europe and northern Africa. That daffodils are not native here is an academic complaint, however, since the genie can hardly be stuffed back in the bottle at this point. Most of the people living now in the Western Hemisphere do not belong here, either, and it’s possible to argue they have done far more damage to the native habitat than anything innocent daffodils could have done. On the contrary, daffodils perform a great service everywhere because their trouble free disposition, loosening of hard soils, and cheerful announcement of spring give a greater portion to the gardener and non-gardener alike than they require in return.
— Izzy
Since gastroenteritis is commonly known as stomach flu, and since this is influenza season, people can mistake one illness for the other or believe they are different names for the same illness. They are not. Gastroenteritis is technically not influenza, though it is most often caused by a virus and usually presents with some of the same symptoms in the early stages – headache, body aches, chills, and fever. It is in the lack of respiratory distress symptoms that the two illnesses diverge, that and the continued nausea and diarrhea brought on by gastroenteritis. Nausea may subside to a low level, and vomiting may cease after the first bouts simply because of a lack of contents to regurgitate as the sufferer no longer desires solid food. Diarrhea continues, however, since the sufferer’s inflamed intestines do not absorb liquids as they should.
Typist wearing mask, New York City, October 16, 1918, during the “Spanish flu” influenza pandemic. Wearing a mask would have helped stave off the influenza virus, which is most often inhaled, but done little to protect the wearer from a gastroenteritis virus, which is ingested.
That last part is the most important in understanding how to treat gastroenteritis. Fluid intake becomes even more important than in treating a case of true influenza because while the overall risk of life-threatening complications is less, the risk of life-threatening dehydration is greater. As with any illness affecting them, pregnant women need to carefully monitor their symptoms as well as take special care using medications. In poor areas of the world, where access to clean water may be limited, dehydration is the biggest killer in cases of gastroenteritis. In wealthier areas, even though a sufferer got the infection by ingestion of contaminated food or water, access to cleaner supplies of both after the illness develops makes chances for recovery much greater. The important things to remember in getting well from a bout with this illness which, dreadful as it feels at the time, are that the risks of developing something more serious are lower than with the actual flu virus, and that dehydration needs to be remedied not just by drinking water but by replenishing salts, sugars, and electrolytes in the right combination.
— Ed.
