#hendravirus

Unvaccinated elderly Mare. Euthanised.

I’m hoping the article you read on Hendra virus and the anti-vaxxer situation we’re facing was this one by the Atlantic because it’s quite good.

My personal take is that horse owners that refuse to vaccinate their horses for Hendra virus value their horse and their ego over the lives of other human beings, veterinarians in particular. They will not be swayed by facts, and are organizing behind loud-mouth bullies to make equine practice in Hendra areas more dangerous than it already is, both physically and legally.

So, some quick and dirty facts about Hendra:

A virus naturally occurring in flying fox bats, which transmits to horses and is basically always lethal. Occasionally transmits from horses into humans, and has a greater than 50% mortality rate with intensive treatment and you’re not side effect free even if you do recover afterwards.

Hendra can present with any symptom, including but not limited to respiratory disease, colic and lameness.

If the horse has an unknown vaccination status, the veterinarian is obliged to wear full Personal Protective Equipment, and ensure anybody else going near that horse is also wearing it, every time. It looks like this:

(Image source)

It takes 1 to 4 days for a Hendra test result to come back.

Veterinarians have been prosecuted by the government for attending Hendra cases and leaving treatments for owners to administer. A vet can be prosecuted if the owner does something putting themselves at risk even if it’s against the vet’s advice, like approaching without PPE.

Here are some of the arguments presented by Hendra Anti-Vaxxers

The vaccine is untested. False. It had less testing than other vaccines before release because it was pushed through as an urgently required vaccine to save human lives, but data has continued to be gatheres.

It has a high rate of side effects. False. It’s had just under 1000 possible, not even proven, adverse effects from half a million doses, making it possibly even safer than the tetanus vaccine, and safer than procaine penicillin, which horse owners seem particularly keen to get over the counter without a prescription.

It’s my choice to vaccinate or not for my horse. I am “Pro-choice vaccine.”

Which is a fascinating point, because surely the vet can have a choice as to whether to treat unvaccinated horses too? I mean, we choose to put seatbelts on when we drive, and there’s no mandatory obligation to treat an animal if we reasonably believe we are at risk.

If they were really about ‘choice’ they’d understand veterinarians have a choice too. Some of them have closed their practices to move out of Hendra areas. Some have stopped seeing horses altogether. Some only see vaccinated horses, and a few choose to charge extra and approach an unvaccinated horse in full PPE, because that stuff isn’t cheap.

And the horse, the creature known for it’s flighty, explosive nature and pathological fear of plastic bags, is not always approachable when all the humans are dressed as plastic bags.

There is a lot of vet hating around the Hendra ‘debate’, which is really more of a ‘tantrum’. And why should vets risk their lives and livelihoods for people that refuse to vaccinate and so obviously hate them? I wouldn’t do it. If somebody is so stubborn about risking my life then I would walk away, even if their animals are suffering or dying. It’s my life. It’s my choice..

Now, most horse vets are more sympathetic to the plight of their equine patients than I am, and would be more likely to consider seeing unvaccinated horses if it was the owner that got sued in the event of a hendra case, not the vet. Because as it stands, the vet doesn’t get to make the choice, they only get the consequences.

If anti-vaxxers want the ‘choice’ about vaccination, then they need to be liable for the ‘consequences’. They can’t get all the choice and none of the consequences, because that simply isn’t fair.

Prynhawn,

There’s a lot of fear and worry being generated by this novel coronavirus right now. The best way to combat that fear is to educate yourself to the best of your ability, using credible sources like the WHO and CDC.

Dr. Mike does a really good job explaining exactly how worried we should be, along with giving some updates on the progress of the virus. He stresses that we should be alert, and not anxious. 

The other think that he stresses towards the end of his video is that we shouldn’t let fear of this virus cause xenophobia towards Chinese people or people of Asian descent.

Until we have more information on the virus, it’s impossible to say whether or not is has the ability to mutate into/combine with something like Hendra, but there’s no evidence right now that suggests that we need to worry about something like that.

Not all bat species are known to carry Hendra, but basically yes. Wherever the bats go, they can bring Hendra with them.

And this is a particular concern as due to climate change snd habitat destruction, the range of the bats keeps changing. They are a highly mobile species, if they don’t like a habitat they don’t just sit down and die, they fly to a new location. And spread their viruses with them. Plus people insist on keeping horses near recently cleared habitat, and we’re mixing the three species (bat, horse, human) more than we ever have before.

This is partly why the vet profession is so worried. We don’t know how this is going to end, just that the situation is changing in front of us and we don’t want people or horses to die.

A different Anon asked: What are bats doing that far out in the ocean? In the picture you circled for us, parts of the ocean are included. Are bats really that far out from land?