Elderly Man From Remote Wilderness Area Dies from Rare ‘Alaskapox’ Infection
Alaskapox is a recently identified viral pathogen. The man was a cancer patient, compromising his immune system, which contributed to the fatal outcome.
Alaska health officials reported the state’s first fatal case of Alaskapox, which is a recently discovered virus-caused disease.
An elderly man who lived on his own in rural Alaska is the first casualty of ‘Alaskapox’ – a rare disease identified only nine years ago.
The unidentified, immunocompromised man died in late January weeks after he became the seventh person to ever contract the virus while living in Kenai Peninsula.
As of Sunday, it’s still unclear how he contracted it – though the fact that he did confirms it has spread beyond local wildlife populations and into local communities.
Already a cancer patient, the man first reported signs of infection in September, citing a tender lesion that appeared near his armpit. The infection worsened, and after six weeks of emergency visits from state officials, he was hospitalized locally.
The Alaskapox virus was discovered less than 10 years ago. Infections are rare, and cases of the disease are usually mild.
The Alaskapox virus was first identified in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 2015, according to the Alaska Department of Health. Since then, there have been only seven cases reported in the state, according to the state health department.
…”Alaskapox remains rare,” Dr. Joe McLaughlin, state epidemiologist and chief of the Alaska Division of Public Health Section of Epidemiology, told ABC News. “For the vast majority of people who may come in contact with this virus, the clinical course will likely be mild.”
The virus typically occurs in small animals, commonly identified in voles and shrews, according to the Alaska State Department of Health. There have been no reports of human-to-human spread, according to the state health agency.
“There’s no evidence so far [of] person-to-person transmission for the cases that have been identified,” Julia Rogers, Ph.D., epidemic intelligence service officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention embedded with the Alaska Department of Health, told ABC News.
There are suspicions that he was infected via a cat scratch.
He notably lived alone with “no recent travel and no close contacts with recent travel, illness, or similar lesions.” He cared for a stray cat that had scratched him, he told officials. ”
The route of exposure in this case remains unclear, although scratches from the stray cat represent a possible source of inoculation through fomite transmission,” health officials have shared. “SOE is working with the University of Alaska Museum and CDC to test small mammals for AKPV outside of the Interior region.”
Veterinarians are using the news of this infection to remind cat owners of the risks of allowing their pets to roam outside.
Dr Cuevas told DailyMail.com owners should not allow cats to lick them or encourage cats to bite or scratch them.
Additionally, keeping your cat current on flea and tick preventative measures and vaccines is vital.
She said: ‘Keep up to date with your cat’s vaccination and deworming schedules, and ensure your cat gets a complete health check at least once a year. Ensure your cat is free from external parasites like fleas or ticks, which can be vectors of several diseases that can infect not only your cat but also you if you get bitten.’
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Kill every stray cat you see. They decimate wildlife and now kill people it seems
How about stray cranks?
Don’t even know if it’s the cat.
6 times he was visited as a medical emergency?
Seems like his healthcare system was lacking, should have been taken to hospital long before
In the New World Order the democrats are establishing the elderly aren’t worth the expense of emergency hospital care so medical treatment is withheld regardless of the seriousness of the illness.
So when does Pfizer announce their development of a new modRNA serum that will protect people from the AlaskaPox that will most certainly spread to the continental United States to become a major health emergency right before the November 2024 presidential election.
Disease X-49.
Pretty soon AI will validate that decision.
Wait, what? Elderly person dies? Stop the presses! In Oregon a 106 yo woman who was WuFlu positive for 75 days was ruled as dying from it. That is reality stretched into a parallel dimension. Medical science died in March 2020, and it is never coming back.
Ted Nugent sang about this in 1977.
Cat Scratch Fever?
Bingo!
Plague, now Alaskapox… I smell a coordinated smear campaign by the Biden Administration against cats.
we must lock the entire country down.. we must cancel inperson voting.. only votes by drop boxes
allowed …;
The hyperventilator’s will grab this bogus story and run with it, give it huge legs to run on and panic people.
If I caught my cat dating a Vole or a Shrew… Let’s just say it would be Catastrophic.
And just a PSA… please keep the cats out of your armpits!
Full disclosure, My Bride is a veterinarian who handles national “outbreaks”…we’ll leave it at that)…this is much ado about not a whole lot. Cat Scratch Fever is real, but rare. This may or may not be novel, but first blush view is it’s all the usual suspects giving asinine advice. Not the yearly/3 year typical vax schedule, but the “Don’t let your cats outside” bravo sierra. That is bogus, and any rural property owner who has barn cats to keep critter populations in check would scoff at that statement. A mouse is a Meal Ready to Eat complete food source package, even if supplemented by a good free choice food.
This elderly man was severely susceptible for any new illness, and if the cat actually did scratch him (speculation at this point in order for the article “journalist”, CDC, State dude, etc, to make this more than it is) then that is not the cause of his death in total, just one more thing his weak system had to deal with…which it couldn’t.
I despise the Media (MSM as well as Social platforms) for their push to get the story at all cost, then sensationalize it for ratings, only to panic the unsuspecting pet owner (Covid anyone? Same deal.)
I think fomite is the improper term for a cat scratch inoculation. Fomite is used to refer to an inanimate object and a cat claw is definitely not such an object.
(This is in a quote from a ‘health official’ so not Leslie’s fault)
The key word is immunocompromised. 99.9% of the people probably see a small bump/pustule which then goes away after a few days and they move on. I know as a slightly older person now that things which used to go unnoticed are now more frequently present, and I believe that my specialist calls it “aging.”
So the funny part of the pandemic mentality is all the millenials with perfectly fine immune systems who are walking around masked in public (possibly in private too) while us geezers go about our days maskless. Maybe we should call them Gen-G for gullible.
Spot on. When the covidiocy first reared its pustulent ugly head I had to laugh at all the stupid worse than useless theatrics that were first suggested, then recommended, then mandated. The stupid mug nappies not only are physically incapable of capturing any airborne virus, they bring with them multiple significant health issues when one wears them. Ever read the protocol for mask use for medical personnel in an operating theatre? Half hour maximum use in one go, then remove,sanitise, take a break from wearing it for fifteen or twenty minutes, resanitise, fit NEW mask, lather rinse repeat. Yet everyone I knew who actuallly USED the diablical devices snagged it off the dash or centre junk box in their car, slapped it on, leaking everywhere because NO ONE ever was trained HOW to fit them properly, then wear it nonstop for he whole work day, breaking fr lunch then slapping the same filthy pathogen-saturated rag back on for their nest session of work.