For thousands of years people have anecdotally had cause for concern that bats carry diseases or sickness. A bite from a bat or a rat might mean death or illness. With the advent of medicine, veterinary science over the last 100 or so years we have teased apart myth information from what is mostly going on. What professionals in the medical and veterinary fields do not want the public to know is that experiments are still going on into the unknown.
Hendra virus has recently come to the attention of people where the transfer of the virus has occurred, they think so far, from bat to horse to people, bat to people possibly bat to dog to people, bat to other species and if it has led to the death of a possum out in the bush no one yet knows that’s been going on for thousands of years.
Vaccination is about the only way to deal with viral infections other than screen, cull and quarantine hoping to restrict spread of the virus like small pox dying out. Development of a vaccine is expensive and across a small animal population such as horses recovery of developmental costs is expensive per horse. The horse owner is expected to foot the bill for a vaccine program (s)he had no consultation about. People love their horses and are assumed to have bottomless pockets to keep them to the standards non horse owners expect. The bat lovers in the environmental movement of our governments made the call the horse owners pay the cost, not relocation of fig trees where bats proliferate and defecate to the point of enhancing contract with people and their domestic animals.
Bat lovers within government ranks have made the judgement call Australian people are guest of the bats and the fig trees the farmers and city planners planted not anticipating the proliferation of bats that shed viruses because their immune system is prone to the carrier state where viruses are harboured by bats and shed by bats otherwise apparently healthy. The immune system of other mammals deals with some bat viruses differently or not at all. As the medical and veterinary professions get to know bats no one can remove from their environment around their houses and domestic animals because of preservation orders placed on them (the bats and fig trees) from people way off in Canberra or Brisbane horse, dog, guinea pig owners are part of the big experiment paying for vaccines developed on their behalf without their consultation for $300+ per horse for ID, vet attendance, scanning, screening, quarantining, monitoring extorted for wanting to attend local agricultural shows including the EKKA.
Now boffins in export nations have concerns if they want to buy Australian horses they want to exclude diseases and bat viruses from their country and cannot tell the difference between a horse exposed to the virus is in a carrier sub clinical state or is part of a vaccination program or both. Horse owners and vets are in the early days of understanding Hendra and who knows how many other versions of the virus or other viruses bats carry across Australia.
There are about 79 species of bats in Australia and some have significant mobility and distribution. These distributions might change as people plant more fig trees on their farms. Life stylers encourage back the rainforest in their farms and suburbs irrespective of whether rainforest was there in the last 40 million years or never there previously. Then there are our globe trotting bureaucrats and boffins how many viruses are they translocating internationally for our bats to acquire and translocate and modify to achieve cross species infection in Australia. We need cough free airport lounges. Ban air conditioning, recycling virus aerosols in aeroplanes and public buildings, high rise offices.
The Hendra vaccination program has been another bureaucrat and boffin driven problem solving approach using horse owners to fund their experiments where relocating bats and fig trees to reduce exposure has been blindly dismissed as a cost effective option entirely or as part of this program to address bat virus transfer.
Can every horse owner in Australia be expected to foot the bill when we have a very anti horse bureaucracy in government departments insular and very prone to tunnel vision in problem solving to a formula. If horse owners vaccinate against Hendra and exclude any EKKA winners from export as breeding stock or performance horses in the Olympics or semen ova or embryos excluded from international trade, then what about the other battery of viruses bats carry. Will this generate future funding streams to deal with virus 78HY, ZWQ, WHYS, IQDOT……… and the list goes on because we are being politically correct. Bats and fig trees have been in Australia for 55M years for bats and about 85M years or less for fig trees. People have been in Australia for about 60000 years, dogs 3500 years, horses 200 years and before environmentalism spread like a virus through universities over the last 100 years, vaccination became routine for less than 50 years.
If you buy a tetanus vaccine for a sheep or cow, it costs 36 cents a shot X2 vaccinations and for horses might cost $40 each course with full veterinary attendance might go to $100 for the kids pony. Now if you want to prepare your horse to attend the EKKA as a stud horse breeder then there is selection, breeding stallion mare raised for several years, then raise the progeny to 1,2,3,5,10 years feed vaccination housing training so people can pay the EKKA society to come and see your horse that might be worth $50000+ in wages time and feed to show condition. You the horse owner might be lucky to achieve a photo opportunity and a $10 ribbon for your trouble and $70 entry fee per class. Basically the medical and veterinary professions and Australian government bureaucracy has used the concerns over Hendra Virus to close down livestock production and ownership and the Brisbane EKKA.
It is clear injecting our footballers with horse anabolic steroids amino acids and experimenting with our children is far more viable than conducting an agricultural show maintaining rare breeds of megafauna rendered uneconomical, unviable and unaffordable for even the richest people in Australia, busy paying taxes which then are diverted to wages for bureaucrats rather than programs of national good such as community health and safety, biosecurity of community and their domestic animals, strategic astute management of native species. Back to bust the farmer the horse owner user pays once, twice, 3 times or more. Rates on the farm, income tax, carbon tax on the fuel and electricity, GST, DPI, HECS on the veterinary medical education……. Town planner telling us if our stables are up to standard, fire proof, water proof, animal rights proof.
The question remains why do horse owners in Queensland and Northern NSW have to pay fully for the Hendra virus vaccination experiment when all other options of dealing with the dilemma have been excluded by unaffected people on our behalf. Why use the EKKA to justify the program shoehorning people into the experiment? Who is going to convince our export customers for example that this expensive vaccination program is not going to mask the carrier state for Hendra or other bat viruses not yet identified. This could turn into an industry if there are any horses survive the purge of horse raising in Australia from Brumby massacres inland to only the Billionares on the coast able to raise horses near a bat fig. Don’t worry about giving a ribbon out to the EKKA line up of horses in future, post out the ribbon to the only horse owner left standing after all these regulations and extortion rackets are taken to their full conclusion. Put a picture of the last horse on the internet with an IUCN rating as extinct.
EKKA has had its centenary and can now entre the history books with circuses and what people used to do before they gave up ‘exploiting animals.’ Consigning them to oblivion of the antisocial vegan world. Soon the Australians that used to remember the excitement of the circus coming to town, the EKKA, cracker night will all be dead. Killed by the politically correct boffins and bureaucrats. Pallid vegan press button kids will be the new look Australia not game to venture out side because of the crocodiles, bats, dingo, fig trees have been given voting rights. Horses, mastodon, mammoth, giant wombats are just things you might stumble across on the internet.
Are there bats in the belfry or the bunker? Will only vaccinated spectators be allowed into the EKKA to protect our horses from potentially little known about viruses brought in on the clothing, feet and body fluids of international and interstate travellers. Who are the bats in parliament and government departments?
Queensland horse owners want all visitors to the EKKA to be self contained and vaccinated so they do not pose a risk to their horses. Considered highest risk are boffins and bureaucrats frequent international travellers and bushwalkers in rainforest wilderness areas self confessed politically correct people of vegan tendencies putting bats rights ahead of horses or people. Australia has not gone mad it just appears that way some days.
For the last two years of the EKKA in Brisbane bat classes will replace horses. Riders are having difficulty training bats to use the show jumping arena.