Hendra virus
Image: Courtesy Dr. Alex Hyatt, AAHL
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It started with Vic Rail's horses, in September 1994. First one, then another, they died horrible deaths, 13 horses in all over the span of just two weeks, frothing from their noses and mouths, thrashing in agonizing pain. Then Rail died too.
Weeks later Australian officials isolated a newly discovered virus they ultimately named Hendra, after the Brisbane suburb where Rail and his horses died. For 17 years, Hendra virus smoldered in its host population of fruit bats killing nearly 50 horses and claiming three more human lives.
Then in May, something happened.
It was as if Hendra virus awoke from a slumber and roared fully into life. There have been more outbreaks of Hendra in 2011 – 18 at last count – than in the 16 previous years.
Veterinary epidemiologists hunting the virus now know definitively that Australia's fruit bats (Pteropus sp.), also called flying foxes, spread the disease to horses, which then can infect humans. And while they don't know the exact cause of the huge escalation in outbreaks, they strongly suspect it has something to do with the heavy rainfall and big floods that drowned northeastern Australia from November 2010 to February 2011.
And that has them looking nervously at climate change.
"The interesting change was the big floods in January," said Raina Plowright, a disease ecologist at the Pennsylvania State University's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics. "Floods are expected more frequently with climate change – so, if they are linked, climate change may increase disease."
Hendra virus is just one of a number of newly emerged zoonotic diseases, so called because they have their origins in animals but somehow make the leap to humans, and in doing so, wreak enormous havoc. While zoonotic diseases may sound exotic, one of the most devastating is also one of the most familiar: AIDS, which made the jump from primates to humans sometime at the beginning of the 20th century, and now kills an estimated 2.7 million people a year. Hendra, far newer but fearsomely lethal, has claimed the lives of four of the seven people infected.
The alphabet soup of deadly and economically damaging zoonotic diseases is long and includes West Nile virus, avian influenza and SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – another disease thought to have jumped from bats to humans.
World health officials concluded in 2004 that more than three-quarters of new, emerging or re-emerging human diseases today are caused by pathogens originating from animals or animal products. Overall, between 1940 and 2004, scientists estimate there have been more than 300 emerging disease events around the globe – a number that will likely grow as population grows.
Increased food production and animal husbandry of waterfowl and pigs, which can harbor viruses like influenza, help explain the increasing emergence of these new, often virulent diseases, said Jan Slingenbergh, senior animal health officer and head of the emergency prevention system for the Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, a United Nations program working for food security.
Climate change adds yet another complicating factor, Slingenbergh said. It can expand the range of insects and arthropods that can transmit disease. Or, as may be the case with Hendra, it can cause ecological upheaval, adding to the likelihood that people will come into contact with virus-carrying animals. Animals on the wing – birds and bats – are like sick people on airplanes, he added: they can travel long distances with their viral burden.
"Whether it is about Hendra, Nipah or Ebola or some other bat-circulating virus or non-human primate virus, we know that sooner or later they are going to show up as novel infectious diseases in humans," Slingenbergh said.
It's not possible to make a blanket statement about how climate change will affect outbreaks of zoonotic diseases, scientists say. The interplay between temperatures, rainfall and shifting habitats is too multifaceted to boil down into one overarching trend. Closer contact of wild and domestic animals as well as advanced detection technologies further complicate the picture.
But Linfa Wang, a scientist working on the Hendra outbreak for Australia's Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO, said climate change clearly amplifies other factors contributing to the increase in zoonotic outbreaks. "None of these virus outbreaks would have been identified 50 years ago," he said.
The world community has responded to this ever-increasing onslaught of diseases by looking harder for them before they become full-blown pandemics.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention runs the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases; part of its mandate is to evaluate how climate change will affect the prevalence and spread of zoonotic diseases, such as Hanta virus in the American Southwest.
CDC efforts aside, though, many see zoonotic diseases as confined to steamy jungles or crowded third-world marketplaces teeming with live chickens and pigs. Hendra's emergence, Plowright said, shows we need to forget that stereotype.
Think of it this way: Ebola, West Nile, Nipah, and now Hendra. If this list of virulent, deadly infectious agents were an SAT question that asked you to identify the one different from the others, what would be the answer? All four are named for locales where the "patient zero" case was isolated. All four are recently emerged zoonotic viruses.
But get out your atlas and look: Ebola is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, West Nile is in East Africa, Nipah is in Malaysia – all but Hendra are named for places in underdeveloped countries. Hendra virus "is going on in a country just like America," Plowright said. "This is just like the prequel to Contagion."
Veterinarians believe one of the key causes of the Hendra virus outbreaks is environmental stress. Fruit bats naturally harbor the virus, but it doesn't make them physically ill. Instead, Plowright and others have found that when the bats are stressed, the percentage infected with Hendra rises dramatically, possibly making it easier for them to spread the disease to horses.
Explaining what stresses bats isn't straightforward, however. Normal environmental stress, such as giving birth or winter scarcity of food, stresses them. Environmental change – the big floods in January, which destroyed food sources – also stresses them.
There are also paradoxical stresses, such as habitat encroachment, which send bats off on a hunt for new food sources. This brings them closer to people, because humans tend to plant fruit trees. Biologists have found that bats in some urban and suburban areas of Australia are abandoning their migratory behavior and becoming sedentary because neighborhood fruit trees are available. This sedentary behavior on the part of some animals has led populations to fragment, which may be another important reason behind the outbreaks.
Big populations of migratory bats mingle with one another, which epidemiologists believe allows the bats to share a low level of Hendra infection – conferring on the population as a whole something called herd immunity. But when normally migrating bats become sedentary, Hendra virus immunity may wane. "Our models predict that Hendra virus used to be like a slow burning fire with very little kindling, because it was everywhere," Plowright said. But now, it has "changed to a few big fires."
The call that really put veterinarians and public health officials on high alert came in July, when Dusty the dog, who had been living on a property in Mount Alford where three horses were infected with Hendra, also was found to have the disease. While the dog did not seem to be contagious, the finding opened another, more troubling route for human infections.
The virus also can lie dormant – Mark Preston, who helped perform an autopsy on a dead horse, died from the virus a year after he did the autopsy. And while Hendra is not now contagious in humans, when humans contract the disease, it has a lethality of close to 60 percent. Ebola, for comparison, has a fatality rate of 68 percent.
The outbreaks have also become part of the political landscape: There have been calls to remove Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and Agriculture Minister Tim Mulherin.
One thing is certain, health experts say: As the planet grows hotter and more crowded, the range and severity of zoonotic outbreaks will increase. Hendra, so far, has exacted a minor human toll. H5N1 avian flu, in contrast, required the culling of hundreds of millions of chickens, and cost Asia's farmers $10 billion.
World health officials, reading this trend, are trying to get ahead of it. They've issued a call to arms – "One Health," a global endeavor led by the FAO, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the World Organisation for Animal Health and the United Nations Development Programme. More than 600 scientists and public health doctors are involved, pursuing the idea that the health of humans, animals and the environment are inextricably linked.
The current tack - where doctors treat people, veterinarians handle animals, and biologists focus on plants - doesn't work, said the FAO's Slingenbergh. "The microbes ... do not recognize our compartmentalized approach."
"An interdisciplinary approach is the only possible answer to stop this continuous generation of novel diseases."
This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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35 Comments
Add CommentJust another Externality of fossil fuel use that we have to add into it's price per ton of CO2 for the Free Market to function effectively. Warmer air holds more water vapor and is more prone to downpours when it does rain. I don't know how this is so hard to understand. If this warming isn't caused by mankind, then what IS causing it? Remember, you can't just spread doubt. If you want to prove that mankind isn't jacking around with the climate, then you HAVE to present a counterargument that explains the data BETTER than Man-Made Climate Change Theory!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's a flood and it's automatically climate change? I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure there were floods prior to man's utilization of fossil fuel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. while they don't know the exact cause of the huge escalation in outbreaks, they strongly suspect it has something to do with the heavy rainfall and big floods
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2. Floods are expected more frequently with climate change – so, if they are linked, climate change may increase disease.
Conclusion: Climate Change Boosts Lethal Hendra Virus
Bookmark moved to Tabloids folder.
Yeah, and likewise, I'm pretty sure that there was CO2 in the atmosphere prior to the industrial revolution. What's your point?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt isn't just that warm air holds more moisture; Hadley cells expand in a warmer climate, and that forces the narrowing of the rain bands outside the equatorial one. More precipitation, less area; you figure out if the incidence of flood events will increase.
Climate zones are shifting, and this provides opportunities for invasive species, including viruses.
"An interdisciplinary approach is the only possible answer to stop this continuous generation of novel diseases."
I don't see what difference that will make because I don't see how you can control diseases prior to knowing what their vectors are. And, you won't know that until they've already moved into a new one.
Ahhh, is that next Wednesday at 5pm, or is it a week from next Tuesday during lunch?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm so glad you know exactly what this pretend being's plans are and when they will occur... are you a god as well?
It is mankind (through a similar ignorance to the one evidenced in your post) that has caused these climate changes, and it is mankind that, through science, can better understand it and hopefully take the necessary steps to clean up our mess and/or help us through the changes.
Spouting fairy tales (regardless of the level of love in your heart, although I'm all for love) will not change the facts on the ground. And giving up on the situation because you think the rapture is approaching doesn't sound like a good plan either.
More absolute garbage. If it is temperature & rain related, why is it not rampant in Australian areas nearer the tropics that measure their annual rainfall in metres, also having very large flying fox colonies & horses?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps no indication of a Sentient Being in charge, but certainly not of random phenomena either. What we see is a tightly knit causal evolution of global and local nonlinear phenomena (which is basically, all phenomena). Nature seeks equilibrium, and if the route to it is not through a local minimum after a disturbance, then through deterministic chaos that will allow more global minima to be sought. And as Humanity keeps being the disturbing agency without let up, we're starting to drive the system into a chaos that will find its rest through erasing the noisy tenants from the building.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHuman ego pushes us to limits of exploitation of our planet and our fellow far beyond what is necessary, or even required for basic comfort. The resulting chaotic eruptions that are evolving in both the socio-economic and natural spheres must not continue to be treated as isolated cases lest we reach the bursting of the damn upon us. Not to say that we should ignore these, but like all else there needs balance. That is, in addition to the approach of Western medicine of targeted diagnosis and treatment of symptom, we need the Eastern approach of more vague but statistically more long-sighted holistic focus on health.
We need to start with the human condition itself. Its balance requires individual introspection concerning our mutual dependence and the separation of real needs -- including basic creature comforts -- and just plain consumerist hype. From there, its the institution of grass-roots education towards inculcating a sense of mutual responsibility and guarantee. From this start, I believe that we will discover a more gentle Nature, that will reveal more of its own harmonious secrets to us as though a parent and ally. Personify this in religion, or rationalize it in mathematical causality. But understand that empirically it will prove true.
Sure there have been floods, but climate change and increasing temperatures cannot be said to "cause" flooding. That is not what the science says. Climate change science says that extremes of weather, floods and heat waves, will become more frequent. That is, climate change causes change in the probabilities; it cannot be said to cause the events themselves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is the problem, it seems, with simple physics education. Under highly controlled experiments, scientists can talk of cause and effect. But in nature, there is rarely such a thing as simple cause and effect.
Hindu or Buddist?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is from a hindu: Live in harmony with nature, says Pachauri
TNN Mar 14, 2011, 03.38am ISTCOIMBATORE: Given that human actions are increasingly interfering with the delicate balance of nature, natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes and tsunamis will occur more frequently, said Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, director general of TERI, and the chief of the inter-governmental panel on Climate Change.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-14/coimbatore/28687815_1_harmony-green-drive-renewable-energy-sources
I think that what the article and posters are missing is how much more mobile we are now and how much faster nasty "bugs" can spread....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not necessary to cast blame or to deny cause. The danger of disease spreading is real.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat religious zealots have to realize is that there IS such a thing as objective reality in the here and now, and that their egoistic ideas about their individual significance within a cosmos containing an infinite number of galaxies is probably diagnostic of a hitherto unrecognized form of insanity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFar better that these funny people devote a little energy to convincing their Governmental reps at Durban to renew and reinforce a more binding agreement concerning a crying need for a rapid downturn in the release of CO2 and methane before it is literally too late and the globe will warm catastrophically. ( two degrees C or more by 2050),( only 39 years hence).
My Canadian Government is derelict and has been dysfunctional in this regard.
It is not too late, but the time for a serious change in direction is NOW ! no matter how the big oil and gas lobbyists scream and whimper.
At the very least, place a price on carbon and make the largest polluters pay through the nose.
No, the zealots say, cuddle up to the crucifix, or the statue of Mary, crawl under the altar itself and assume the foetal position. Don't dare to use what little logic you have left after a life of wishful thinking.
Pitiful to see creatures who are supposedly observant and literate acting like idiots.
And it is these same people who advocate for war. Truly they are necrophiliacs, lovers of death and not of life.
I would encourage them all to drop their subscription to any scientific journal as they have not the capacity to even begin to understand what is being written.
They probably only subscribe in order to appear knowledeable with scientific jargon and use that to further confuse the younger generation in Sunday school.
The article decribing zoonotic disease and its multifactorial nature, and it's staggering implications for any nation who has the slightest concern for the health of it's citizens, cannot be ignored.
Prayer is not what we need. We need action by our governments in Durban, this week and not next week. We have dilly-dallyed long enough, been diverted long enough, listened to obfuscators and zealots long enough. What we need now is rational thought and deliberate action by scientists and ethicists on behalf of a nearly poisoned planet and on behalf of all the living creatures we see around us who are threatened by the greedy predator called humankind.
Evolution at work. It isn't good or bad it just is. Maybe it is climate change, maybe it is related to man's increased presence in the world(i.e. population). This gives us more oportunity to contract or interact with "nature". Is there really a delicate balance to nature? Humans are a part of nature. You cannot seperate us from it. These are complex systems and I wish I could hang around long enough to see how it plays out. Nature will be fine with or with out us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"God is preparing the faithful for the Final Hour ..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll pencil it in, thanks.
"It is not too late, but the time for a serious change in direction is NOW ..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, the time for serious change was several years ago, but who's counting? With the world only slowly recovering from the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis, and Europe about to enter a recession, I doubt that anything will come from Durban.
"Prayer is not what we need ..."
If that'll get progress at Durban, I'm all for it. Stop worrying about the theists.
well, judging by the comments, and knowing what i know, and what i don't... i'm extremely hopeful that science will find our way out, as a planet filled with life. however, i'm deeply afraid that we're fu@ked. thanks to attitudes like our very own soccerdad. that's why i will not have children, sad as it is, because i think it quite irresponsible to procreate when such times are ahead. and to subject a child to the horrors of religious mis-thought is as bad as any cruelty out there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou do not even seem to understand that you are a religious deciple of AGW.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow come the article only claims climate change MAY HAVE been to blame yet all the warmists immediately jump to the conclusion that it IS to blame. Must be nice to be part of a herd.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, the Hendra virus only jumps from horses that have been infected by bats, to humans that have direct contact with the infected horse. Do not let facts get in the way of a good AGW scare story during the Durban love fest.
Have you ever thought that you are a religious diciple of climate change denialism?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Have you ever thought that you are a religious diciple of climate change denialism?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf what value towards a response to the problem is an ad hominem attack?
Why don't you address that question to Carlyle? S/he is a veritable fountain of ad hominem attacks, but they never stop to realize that those same attacks can be directed right back at them. I think it's a Freudian Slip when the deniers accuse people who ACTUALLY listen to the science on Climate Change as "religious zealots" or whatever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRemember, one side has the evidence and the other side just has a bunch of doubt manufactured by the fossil fuel industry.
Souldn't there be a question mark(?)after Virus in the title?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do to receive additional grant money to research a new virus?
And while they don't know the exact cause of the huge escalation in outbreaks, they strongly suspect it has something to do with the heavy rainfall and big floods that drowned northeastern Australia from November 2010 to February 2011.
Because in that part of AUS the virus has not "yet" crossed over to horses and then humans. But stay tuned, film at 11 I'm sure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy do you not answer the question?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Of what value towards a response to the problem is an ad hominem attack?"
It seems like a simple enough question. Is there something about your ad hominem attack on Carlyle that is justified? In what way does it improve or advance the AGW debate?
An inconvenient truth is that all the leading climate scientists - alarmists in Australia for years warned that Australia was drying out; the cities were running out of water, no point building new dams, even when it rained there would not be enough to run the rivers. State governments heeded the warnings & started building multi billion desalination plants. Then the rains started. Brisbane’s Wivenhoe Dam built decades ago to protect the city was nearly full. A new weather system developed but partly through fear of running out of water, the floodgates were kept closed until too late to provide the buffer needed. In the end the floodgates had to be opened to save the dam itself so the city in fact suffered a double flood. One from the massive rainfall & on top of it the man made flood from the dam. This approaching wet season, the dam level has been lowered. Too late for the billions of dollars & lives lost last season.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are no cities in this huge island continent suffering a serious water shortage & the age old cycle of dry years followed by wet years continues. The desalination plants an embarrassing record of alarmism & dam building back on the agenda, still against the wishes of the greens though.
The AGW crowd in Australia see no irony in their change from warning of no more flooding rains to run the rivers & fill the dams to now predicting more frequent floods. That they have any credibility left is incomprehensible. Nor do they take responsibility for the disaster they caused. They continue to object to fuel reduction burn off in the cooler months, resulting in devestating losses in the high fire danger season. Following the Green mantra has harmfull consequences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk, you don't understand what I'm trying to say. Carlyle is throwing around the ad hominem that people who actually listen to the science on climate change are religious zealots, for some reason. I agree, ad hominems aren't useful in advancig the debate, but if the deniers would look in the mirror before throwing around these insults, we would be able to have a much more constructive debate. I'm trying to stop ad hominems as much as you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Ok, you don't understand what I'm trying to say ..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause I disagree with what you say does not mean I do not understand what you say.
"... Carlyle is throwing around the ad hominem that people who actually listen to the science on climate change are religious zealots, for some reason ..."
While Carlyle may be mistaken in believing that to be true, that mistake is not itself an ad hominem argument. Ad Hominem" means "against the man", or to use a politically correct term, "against the person."
"... I agree, ad hominems aren't useful in advancig the debate ..."
Good. Stop using them; they do not advance the goal of reducing AGW, as supported by Science.
"... , but if the deniers would look in the mirror before throwing around these insults, we would be able to have a much more constructive debate ... "
While attempting to engage the unpersuaded can be exasperating, setting a good example helps the effort.
"... I'm trying to stop ad hominems as much as you."
Good. Stick to the Science - that will do the job.
Carlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The AGW crowd in Australia see no irony in their change from warning of no more flooding rains to run the rivers & fill the dams to now predicting more frequent floods ..."
John Keynes, the economist, was once asked why he changed his mind about economics issues occasionally. He replied, "That is what I do when I get sufficient additional information." He then asked his questioner a pertinent question, "What do you do under those circumstances?"
"... That they have any credibility left is incomprehensible ..."
That depends on who is trying to do the understanding.
"... Nor do they take responsibility for the disaster they caused ..."
I trust you have some evidence you can share to warrant that claim?
"... They continue to object to fuel reduction burn off in the cooler months, resulting in devestating losses in the high fire danger season. Following the Green mantra has harmfull consequences."
I seriously doubt that climate scientists are weighing in on a debate about forestry management techniques.
You may find it useful to brush up on AGW before making too many more assumptions about its relationship with "the Green mantra".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
http://www.floodcommission.qld.gov.au/publications/interim-report
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe inquiry & press reports into this matter were encyclopaedic. You would also have to research back to what lead to this situation. Even though you might not wish to accept the opinions expressed by a blogger, the links back up his assertions. Tim Flannery is the Australian governments chief climate science adviser. Even the conservative side of politics swallowed the alarmism & argued that the dam level should not be lowered.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/queensland_scraps_the_desl_plant_that_tim_flannery_sold_as_essential
I expect anything I post will be dismissed on this site by the usual suspects. Anyone genuinely interested could research it for themselves. Naturally, particularly in light of possible litigation, much was glossed over.
Carlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The inquiry & press reports into this matter were encyclopaedic ..."
I'm pleased to learn that. Now it is up to you to use this encyclopedia to substantiate your claim.
"... You would also have to research back to what lead to this situation ..."
Neither I nor anyone else need research anything at all. You made the claims, you back them up.
"... I expect anything I post will be dismissed on this site by the usual suspects ..."
While that may or may not be true, do not assume that anyone who, like me, requests evidence from you has "dismissed" your posts.
"... Anyone genuinely interested could research it for themselves ..."
Perhaps so, but as you made the claim, you - and no one else - need substantiate it.
"... Naturally, particularly in light of possible litigation, much was glossed over."
This is starting to sound as if the substantiation will not be forthcoming.
Let me be specific. You claimed, and I quote "... Nor do they take responsibility for the disaster they caused ...", where 'they' are 'The AGW crowd in Australia', and 'the disaster' is flooding.
Please provide evidence to substantiate your claim that the AGW crowd in Australia is responsible for the flooding.
You also claimed, and again I quote "... They continue to object to fuel reduction burn off in the cooler months ...", where 'they' are 'The AGW crowd in Australia'.
Please provide evidence to substantiate your claim that the AGW crowd in Australia objects to fuel reduction burn off in the cooler months. Anthropogenic Global Warming is, at least in my mind (although I think I am not unusual in holding this POV), a distinct intellectual discipline from forestry management. The practitioners of the first are not often also practitioners of the second in the U.S., but I have little knowledge of the particulars in eastern Australia, so feel free to inform me with links to facts corroborating your claim.
What I stated is factual. Whether you chose to believe it or not is up to you. You can disbelieve it or go looking for the evidence you seek yourself. I care not. You might have unlimited time. I do not. You, nor anyone else will tell me what to do. Who do you think you are? You might have the power of inquisition in your own little world but it does not extend to me I can assure you. I really could not care less what you think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"What I stated is factual ..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm sure you believe so,
"... Whether you chose to believe it or not is up to you ..."
You are correct about that.
"... You can disbelieve it or go looking for the evidence you seek yourself ..."
As I did not make the claims, why would I look for the evidence?
"...I care not ..."
As you cared enough to make the claims, why do you not care enough to back them up with evidence?
"... You might have unlimited time. I do not ..."
You have no more time than do I.
"... .You, nor anyone else will tell me what to do ..."
Are you getting upset about someone asking you to substantiate your claims because you cannot do so?
"...Who do you think you are?..."
Someone who has read wild, unsubstantiated claims in the past.
"...You might have the power of inquisition in your own little world but it does not extend to me I can assure you ..."
Congratulations.
"... I really could not care less what you think."
As you are unable to back up your claims with facts, I think your claims are unwarranted.
I gave you links. You responded in about 30 minutes, obviously without checking them as there is hours of reading involved. You made no comments on those links. I know when I am wasting my time. Your mind is made up. Find someone else to pester.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I gave you links ..."
So what? Without integrating the data with your hypothesis, the effort is wasted.
"... You responded in about 30 minutes, obviously without checking them as there is hours of reading involved ..."
You gave me no reason to follow the links. You did not explain the reason you provided the links. You did not identify any portion of the links as justifying your claims. Do you really think anyone will wade through the "hours of reading involved" (your words, not mine) for fun? How silly!
"... You made no comments on those links ..."
Neither did you. At no time did you associate the links with the thrust of your argument. You've invested little to no effort in justifying your claims.
"... I know when I am wasting my time ..."
Congratulations again.
"... Your mind is made up . . "
So you've concluded that my mind is made up because I question your claims? That's somewhat unintuitive - almost a non sequitur, but I hasten to add that it is your conclusion to make.
"... Find someone else to pester."
I'm confident this topic will soon provide another poster who, like you, makes unwarranted claims.