More than 40 cases of a baffling brain illness that resembles mad cow disease has been reported in Canada, and according to CBC, the illness has similarities to the rare and fatal brain disorder known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and its variants, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which is also known as mad cow disease.
But even though it’s comparable to CJD, officials say it’s not the same disease.
Health officials in New Brunswick, Canada, are now struggling to understand how 43 people got the illness and what the obscure neurological disease is, and officials have confirmed that five people have now died.
According to CBC, the first diagnosed case in the area occurred in 2015, but the cases have proceeded to grow over the years, and in 2020, there were 24 recorded cases and so far in 2021, there have been six cases.
Bertrand Mayor Yvon Godin told the news site that residents are extremely concerned about the disease.
Godin said that residents are worried and that they’re questioning if it’s moose meat, is it deer or is it contagious? And that they need to know, as quickly as possible, what’s causing the disease.
As the investigation and research continue to figure out what the disease is, neurologist Dr Neil Cashman has offered some insight into what it’s not.
He says there’s no evidence that points to it being a prion disease like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and he told the CBC that there’s no evidence, not a hint, even in the three post-mortems that have been completed, of a human prion disease, and that came as a surprise to him.
And he said, so in reality, this is something different, and they need to get on the stick and figure out what it is, and as Dr Neil Cashman and a team of experts continue to search for more answers, he says due to the cases being restricted to specific areas, the illness fits with the notion of an environmental toxin.
And he said that a lot of scientific understanding will be needed to pin it down to a cause, adding that it’s unknown when they will have a more detailed explanation for the public.
He maintained that it was likely continuing investigations would give them the cause in a week, or it was possible it would give them the cause in a year.
And it wouldn’t be a surprise if they didn’t blame it on the AstraZeneca vaccine, but somehow, somewhere, someone will eventually say it’s down to the AstraZeneca vaccine – quick perhaps Canada should be locked down, and will these scare tactics never end?
Blame it on Brexit, well, let’s face it, everything else has!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 