NEWS REPORTS MAKE NO MENTION OF THE EPIDEMIC OF HUMAN-TO HUMAN TB TRANSMISSION - 1,000 NEW CASES A DAY IN EUROPE ALONE. And this is the hard to treat tuberculosis, which is resistant to antibiotics.
The more "experts" warn about cat-transmitted tuberculosis, the higher the suspicion over what is really motivating this sudden hysteria.
Cats and dogs have been part of the family for thousands of years. They constitute a source of well-being for many people, contributing to emotional and physical health - a good thing considering the damage caused by the health industry through pharmaceuticals with dangerous side effects and through malpractice.
So, what could be behind this sudden medical alarm at possible cat-to-human, and dog-to-human tuberculosis transmission?
Please note the context of this medically-originated fear mongering about cats and dogs.
Europe: 1,000 TB cases a day, 380,000 a year
All of them human-to-human transmitted.
TB EUROPE COALITION: The burden is greatest in the eastern part of the WHO European Region which is home to 87% of TB cases.
In the UK TB rates are on the rise. London has the highest TB rates of any city in western Europe and, perhaps most worryingly, 8.4% of new TB cases are drug resistant.
Drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) is a growing public health emergency in Europe and, indeed, worldwide. According to estimates some 78,000 people are taken sick with multi drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) each year.
Treating these strains of TB is considerably more expensive at about hundred times the cost compared to treating standard TB. Treatment is also far more toxic for patients – despite the fact that drugs for standard TB treatment can already be considerably potent for some.
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Eastern Europeans continue to migrate to Western Europe, many of them infected with tuberculosis. London is a hub that attracts immigrants from Eastern Europe and all over the world.
And now health authorities are raising concern because of two possible cat-to-human TB transmissions? Something does not seem right.
Coincidentally, today's Daily Mail carries an article contradicting the common knowledge that rats contributed to Black Death transmission in 1348. Everybody knows that cats kill rats and mice, thereby aiding to keep their numbers in check. But now a scientist tells us that rats were not to blame for that Black Plague, after all.
DAILY MAIL - For centuries rats have been blamed for spreading the Black Death, helping to consign millions of people to an agonising death. But, according to one archaeologist, the rodents are innocent. Instead, the blame for passing on the disease that wiped out a third of the population of Europe could lie with the victims themselves.
The Black Death is widely thought to have been an outbreak of bubonic plague caused by bacteria carried by fleas that lived on black rats. The rodents spread the plague from China to Europe and it hit Britain in 1348.
However, according to historian Barney Sloane, the disease spread so quickly that the rats could not be to blame. Dr Sloane said the increased spread of Black Death over the winter of 1348 coincided with a seasonal decrease in the number of both rats and fleas, which are susceptible to cold. He also pointed out that rats are also killed by bubonic plague, but said there were no large deposits of rat bones from the 14th century. The epidemic, which is reckoned to have claimed 75million lives worldwide, spread from person to person in crowded medieval cities, Dr Sloane said. READ MORE
Please note that at the time of the Black Death, there were hardly any cats after a cat massacre inspired by Pope Gregory IX, who decreed that cats were used in witchcraft. After the cat massacre, mice and rat populations rapidly rose in numbers.
WIKIPEDIA - Pope Gregory IX's condemnation of heretics worshipping Satan in the form of a black cat in his bull Vox in Rama led to a massacre of cats across Europe. It is also claimed that this supposed "cat massacre" worsened the Black Death a century after Gregory's time, because the plague was spread by rats who were unchecked in Europe due to the decline of cat numbers. READ MORE
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THE ALARMING REPORTS OF CAT-TO-HUMAN TB TRANSMISSION BASED ON TWO POSSIBLE CASES:
TheTelegraph : TWO possible cases of TB transmission from cat to human
Family cats may be spreading tuberculosis to one another, officials have said. An outbreak among pets in the Home Counties has seen at least nine cats become infected with TB in a matter of weeks. While it is thought the most likely cause of the disease is pets fighting with infected badgers, officials have said they cannot rule out that the bacteria has been spread from cat to cat. Two cat owners have been confirmed as having caught the disease from their kitten and are currently being treated.
Dr Dilys Morgan, head of gastrointestinal, emerging and zoonotic diseases department at PHE, said other people could have been affected but said it was a "personal choice" as to whether potential victims took up screening. She said it was important to "get this into perspective" when considering wider risks. "These are the first documented cases anywhere in the world so what we have done, we have raised our risk from 'negligible' - that is no public health actions - to 'very low'.
The two human cases are linked to nine cases of the Mycobacterium bovis infection in cats in Berkshire and Hampshire last year, according to PHE. Both people were responding to treatment. Veterinarians believe domestic cats could be catching the disease by venturing into badger setts or from rodents that have been in badger setts. READ MORE (Notice the terms "May be" and The most likely cause".)
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The Daily Mail: ONE child alleged to have caught TB from his dog.
Britons have been urged to stay vigilant after it emerged that a dog had passed TB on to a child in the first ever recorded case in the country. The youngster, who was under 10, was infected with bovine tuberculosis after catching it from their family pet in Gloucestershire last year. READ MORE
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Cat illustration above: Sage, one of the many animals waiting for adoption at the Victoria, Canada, SPCA
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