June 30, 2022

There's already enough paranoia about bugging out and hunkering down — must we add prions?!

I'm reading this advice about "go bags" and "stay bins" in The New York Times:
No matter where you live, every home should have a “go bag” and a “stay bin.” The go bag is what you grab when you have to leave the house in a hurry, whether to get to the emergency room or to evacuate because of a fire or a hurricane. The stay bin is a two-week stash of essentials to be used in case you have to hunker down at home without power, water or heat. In the event that you need to stay put instead of flee, keep a stay bin in your home. Use a large plastic bin or a similar container to set aside the essential items for a two-week prion....
Prion?!
Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein.... It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold, but the abnormal three-dimensional structure is suspected of conferring infectious properties, collapsing nearby protein molecules into the same shape.... The hypothesized role of a protein as an infectious agent stands in contrast to all other known infectious agents such as viroids, viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites, all of which contain nucleic acids (DNA, RNA, or both). Prion isoforms of the prion protein (PrP), whose specific function is uncertain, are hypothesized as the cause of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs),[7] including scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle (commonly known as "mad cow disease") and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. All known prion diseases in mammals affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue; all are progressive, have no known effective treatment, and are always fatal.
That's horrifying. I don't know what kind of "two-week prion" the NYT author has in mind, but I can't imagine anything I could put in a bin that would help. I'd mellowed out from the anxiety of the summer of 2020, when thoughts of bugging out or hunkering down loomed large, and I could have calmly contemplated go bags and stay bins, but then I confront a word that's been disturbing me lately: PRION.

What did she mean to write? Prison?

Anyway, prions have been disturbing me lately, ever since someone on our neighborhood email list said he had 25 pounds of venison that had tested positive for chronic wasting disease. He didn't want to eat it, but he thought someone might want it to feed to their dog. Is that a good idea?

33 comments:

gilbar said...

????

Michael The Magnificent said...

No, do not feed it to your dog. Google Mad Cow Disease.

Kate said...

Any woman's purse is a go-bag. So the author is only addressing men. How misogynist!

Bob Boyd said...

Green tea and suction cups are both really good for prion transmission and you don't need a huge bin.

Owen said...

England has had periodic scares about scrapie and BSE. A few cases are diagnosed and then the computer modelers tell the bureaucrats to order the precautionary massacre of millions of animals. Humans who have eaten beef in the previous six months (or more?) are barred from blood donation.

Whether there are effective diagnostics is IMHO an open question but since the modelers only get paid if they predict trouble, and bureaucrats only stop getting paid if they fail to do something dramatically onerous, this pattern of “public health policy” is unavoidable.

Cappy said...

I have to stay. My county has outlawed plastic bags, so I can't use the ones I have and won't buy any hippie hemp based salmonella petri dish tote.

DUSTER said...

If it all goes to hell in a hand basket the idea of living out of a bin in your basement is a placebo to make yourself feel better. If were willing to fight each other now for a can of gas imagine you're hungry and want that last box of twinkle's. If your idea is to jump into the family truckster and head for the woods, well you may not get the warmest welcome, everyone will be holding there own and not inclined to entertain guest's.The thought that this could never happen here is rooted in the thinking of, because its never happened before it won't.
No recorded cases of CWD being transferred to a canine, or a human I believe, chances are if you eat a lot of venison you have been exposed and you did just fine.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Prius? everyone needs a Prius.

Carol said...

Why is it so hard for people to throw their nasty crap away instead of offering it up all around. Jesus

Temujin said...

NO. He should discard or burn the meat with chronic wasting disease.

Here in South Florida we have our 'hurricane boxes'. One serves as our bug-out bag, if needed, and the other ones are our hunker-down supply source when needed. 'Tis the season down here.

Howard said...

Prions explain Joe Rogan podcast who recommended desantis for potus.

Bob Boyd said...

If there's another pandemic, the first thing we should do is put Anthony Fauci in a bin and leave him there until it's over.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Joe Rogan is interesting, smart and influential. That is he is rejecting the corruptocrats is great news.
The corrupt left will do all they can to cancel and destroy.

Mark said...

I highly recommend a Go Bag in case you need to run to the hospital for some medical crisis, like a prion disease for example. Said bag to consist of a laptop computer with power cord, an extension cord that allows you to keep laptop and phone plugged in on your hospital bed, travel toiletries, wet wipes, sanitizer, throat lozenges, writing paper, pens, sleep mask, knit cap, information on person with power of attorney and other personal contacts, socks, underwear, pajama bottoms, hoodie jacket for when you're not hooked up to an IV, book, Bible, spare reading glasses, ear buds, and music player, in addition to the cell phone and power cord you bring with you.

Bob Boyd said...

I have a guy who can get your prions looking like Obama's trouser legs in no time by singing to them. That's no shit. It's some kinda grating Native American stuff, but it works. How'd the Natives know about prions? Do you ever think about that? Anyway, this guy said he threw his suction cups away after he learned these songs. I'm not going to go that far. Like I said, it's not a huge bin.

Michael K said...

Howard said...

Prions explain Joe Rogan podcast who recommended desantis for potus.


Howard is getting an early start on 2024. Prions are the Boogoloo Boys' weapon. Don't eat that beef ! Better to be a vegan like Howard.

Joe Smith said...

We had go-bags in Tokyo.

Handy where you have a lot of earthquakes and typhoons.

Fortunately we didn't need to use them...

gilbar said...

aside the essential items for a two-week period ....

but i STILL don't see How you get your spell checker to come up with prion??
I'll leave alone, the question of how do You, AND your Editor miss that too?

gilbar said...

I've LITERALLY spent the last two hours working on that

n.n said...

The spike protein is a known pathogen. How you get infected, and its persistence, matters.

R C Belaire said...

@ Mark 9:07 AM : Good list, but a pistol/ammo of some sort wouldn't be out of place, either.

Tina Trent said...

Go bags: very good idea. Don't obsess. Straws that single filter creek water, some dry packed food, rice and lentils, a light pot, a good, huge knife, wood saw, matches, flint, and a gun. And coffee.

Prions: very bad. There have been many cases among people in U.S. and Britain.

I stopped eating deer. No more Bambi Bolognese. But not a huge sacrifice. It's dry. Bacon doesn't have prions. So far, so good.

Yancey Ward said...

What words follow "prion" in the excerpt?

Anthony said...

Any of several small petrels (genus Pachyptila of the family Procellariidae) of the southern hemisphere that are bluish gray above and white below?

Robert Cook said...

"The corrupt left will do all they can to cancel and destroy."

The corrupt right, too.

Michael K said...

Blogger Robert Cook said...

"The corrupt left will do all they can to cancel and destroy."

The corrupt right, too.


Yes. Absolutely. That's what Trump was about. Sort of like "Shane" if the bad guys had won.

Ted said...

It's weird to see a major typo in such a short article, but the economics of today's newspapers don't allow for too many human copy-editors. I agree that she meant to write "two-week period." I'm guessing she mistyped the word -- maybe something like "priod" -- and the automated spellcheck did the rest.

effinayright said...

To Mark's list I would add earplugs, to stifle those annoying ding! alarms that seem to go off ever fifteen minutes in a hospital.

(I was briefly in an ER a month ago, and I could hear the blood pressure machine next to my cot dinging! away. Maddening.)

One item NOT to bring---at least if you're going into a hospital where you are already an established patient: your medications. THEY will want to control everything you put into your body, so THEY will dole out your meds (at grotesquely over-inflation prices, of course.)

But at the least you should keep and bring a current list of your meds.

Mark said...

Good list, but a pistol/ammo of some sort wouldn't be out of place, either.

Why would you need a gun lying in your hospital bed with an IV in you? You think Sollozzo is going to come try to finish the job?

Ann Althouse said...

“ What words follow "prion" in the excerpt?”

“ In the event that you need to stay put instead of flee, keep a stay bin in your home. Use a large plastic bin or a similar container to set aside the essential items for a two-week prion. The stay bins should contain bottled water, nonperishable food, pet food, toilet paper and personal hygiene supplies. Flashlights, lanterns, candles, lighters and firewood are important to have on hand, too. A battery-powered or hand-crank weather radio, as well as a solar charger, will help you cope with power outages. Extra blankets are useful, as are duct tape, a multipurpose tool, trash bags, hand wipes and sanitizer. If your prescription plan allows it, order an extra supply of your medications to have in case of an emergency.”

Ann Althouse said...

The intended word is probably “period.”

Mark said...

The stay bins should contain...

...what an emergency preparedness kit should contain.

Ann Althouse said...

The typo is still there!