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In some gov circles, the scenario often postulated is that a bird flu variant would be globally spread by Hajj pilgrims leaving Mecca to return to their various

In some gov circles, the scenario often postulated is that a bird flu variant would be globally spread by Hajj pilgrims leaving Mecca to return to their various homes. The average yearly Hajj partipation is about 2.5 million people. It's estimated by some that 500 million migratory birds pass through Saudi Arabia.

rcohngru 4y ago
Couldn't the same be said for any major area that attracts millions of visitors each year? Before covid ~30 million people were visiting Paris each year from all over the world.
- christkv 4y ago
  I think the concern is how packed people are during the pilgrimage making it a perfect caldron of potential infection. Like a packed concert but with millions.
- onion2k 4y ago
  I would guess that the combination of migratory birds and temporary visitors is what's important. Paris doesn't have much in the way of migratory birds.
- MengerSponge 4y ago
  The temporal distribution matters. Hajj is 2-3 million people over something like 5 days. The next largest global event I can imagine is the World Cup, which is estimated to be 1.5 million people distributed across several venues later this year.
  - CommanderData 4y ago
    World Cup has copious amount of hookup culture (just look through Tinder when the season plays in your city), Grindr and general clubbing in these areas. I've been a visitor during a World Cup and its not just the football people go for. There's even a term for it: World Cup fever, not just isolated to world cups, many other sporting events have the same problem of being super spreading events for STIs https://sexualhealthbucks.nhs.uk/latest/world-cup-fever/ https://sexualhealthbucks.nhs.uk/latest/world-cup-fever/ I'd also say prolonged contact and mingling is worse then a short one like above, plenty of time to pub and club crawl, sleep with multiple partners, allowing disease to expell after its normal 5-6day incubation period.
- pvg 4y ago
  No because the Hajj is time-specific. It also brings together many people who might not otherwise travel.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Chinese New Year celebrations and US Thanksgiving holidays are similar potentially large superspreading events, though they're decentralised. Airports themselves may serve as hubs. College Spring Break, with congregations in Florida, Las Vegas, and Mexican resorts are also as concern. Florida spring-breakers featured early in the US Covid outbreak. US spring-break revelers vacationing in Mexico were an early phase of the 2009 swine flu outbreak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_Mex...
- deleted 4y ago
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Afforess 4y ago
This just reads like straight racism against Middle Easterners & Islam. There are billions of migratory birds in the USA and much greater freedom of travel in the USA than Saudi Arabia. Millions of tourists, business persons, and visitors come to the US every day. And the US also has much higher numbers and density of factory poultry farms. There is no reason to make a complicated argument that the Bird Flu will start in Saudi Arabia due to Islam. It will probably start in the good ol' USA. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/09/more-4-billion-birds-stream-overhead-during-fall-migration https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/09/more-4-billion-bird...
- wincy 4y ago
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    “Wuhan is crowded and it could spread quickly there” isn’t racist. “And that’s why I won’t go to SF’s Chinatown for lunch” was, as is the racist harassment detailed in your link.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  I agree and disagree in some sense. We've seen countless superspreader events in the US, and animal husbandry in the US entails concentration camp-like conditions, which are the perfect storm for disease development, rapid spread and zoonosis. Our agricultural practices end up getting spread to other markets so that they can remain competitive, which means those perfect storms are spread all over the planet. However, there's no reason to pick on the Middle East in particular. Pilgrimages tend to get a lot of people from disparate areas to convene in a small centralized area at the same time. Research has shown pilgrimages in Europe were responsible for spreading leprosy in the Middle Ages, for example. Research has also shown that pilgrimages in modernity act also as disease vectors, although not with leprosy, with research studying the Hajj in particular, showing a 78x increase in the spread of meningitis[1]. Similarly, there's been research on COVID cases stemming from the Sturgis Rally in the US, suggesting that it was responsible for hundreds of thousands of cases of the disease[2]. [1] https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-022-07234-4 https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128... [2] https://docs.iza.org/dp13670.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp13670.pdf
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rcohngru 4y ago

Couldn't the same be said for any major area that attracts millions of visitors each year? Before covid ~30 million people were visiting Paris each year from all over the world.

christkv 4y ago
I think the concern is how packed people are during the pilgrimage making it a perfect caldron of potential infection. Like a packed concert but with millions.
onion2k 4y ago
I would guess that the combination of migratory birds and temporary visitors is what's important. Paris doesn't have much in the way of migratory birds.
MengerSponge 4y ago
The temporal distribution matters. Hajj is 2-3 million people over something like 5 days. The next largest global event I can imagine is the World Cup, which is estimated to be 1.5 million people distributed across several venues later this year.
- CommanderData 4y ago
  World Cup has copious amount of hookup culture (just look through Tinder when the season plays in your city), Grindr and general clubbing in these areas. I've been a visitor during a World Cup and its not just the football people go for. There's even a term for it: World Cup fever, not just isolated to world cups, many other sporting events have the same problem of being super spreading events for STIs https://sexualhealthbucks.nhs.uk/latest/world-cup-fever/ https://sexualhealthbucks.nhs.uk/latest/world-cup-fever/ I'd also say prolonged contact and mingling is worse then a short one like above, plenty of time to pub and club crawl, sleep with multiple partners, allowing disease to expell after its normal 5-6day incubation period.
pvg 4y ago
No because the Hajj is time-specific. It also brings together many people who might not otherwise travel.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Chinese New Year celebrations and US Thanksgiving holidays are similar potentially large superspreading events, though they're decentralised. Airports themselves may serve as hubs. College Spring Break, with congregations in Florida, Las Vegas, and Mexican resorts are also as concern. Florida spring-breakers featured early in the US Covid outbreak. US spring-break revelers vacationing in Mexico were an early phase of the 2009 swine flu outbreak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_Mex...
deleted 4y ago
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Afforess 4y ago

This just reads like straight racism against Middle Easterners & Islam. There are billions of migratory birds in the USA and much greater freedom of travel in the USA than Saudi Arabia. Millions of tourists, business persons, and visitors come to the US every day. And the US also has much higher numbers and density of factory poultry farms. There is no reason to make a complicated argument that the Bird Flu will start in Saudi Arabia due to Islam. It will probably start in the good ol' USA. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/09/more-4-billion-birds-stream-overhead-during-fall-migration https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/09/more-4-billion-bird...

wincy 4y ago
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  “Wuhan is crowded and it could spread quickly there” isn’t racist. “And that’s why I won’t go to SF’s Chinatown for lunch” was, as is the racist harassment detailed in your link.
heavyset_go 4y ago
I agree and disagree in some sense. We've seen countless superspreader events in the US, and animal husbandry in the US entails concentration camp-like conditions, which are the perfect storm for disease development, rapid spread and zoonosis. Our agricultural practices end up getting spread to other markets so that they can remain competitive, which means those perfect storms are spread all over the planet. However, there's no reason to pick on the Middle East in particular. Pilgrimages tend to get a lot of people from disparate areas to convene in a small centralized area at the same time. Research has shown pilgrimages in Europe were responsible for spreading leprosy in the Middle Ages, for example. Research has also shown that pilgrimages in modernity act also as disease vectors, although not with leprosy, with research studying the Hajj in particular, showing a 78x increase in the spread of meningitis[1]. Similarly, there's been research on COVID cases stemming from the Sturgis Rally in the US, suggesting that it was responsible for hundreds of thousands of cases of the disease[2]. [1] https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-022-07234-4 https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128... [2] https://docs.iza.org/dp13670.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp13670.pdf

deleted 4y ago

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