Good WNS News from New York

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Re: Good WNS News from New York

Postby John Lovaas » Apr 27, 2012 10:23 am

Peter-

Thanks so much for the context of the assumed "ground zero"- makes for a pretty Rube Goldbergian human-bat infection path. Not that anyone knows who Rube Goldberg was.
imbecile sheepherder.
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Re: Good WNS News from New York

Postby LukeM » Apr 27, 2012 10:27 am

That was some pretty good reporting. In general I think the upstate NY news coverage of WNS has been more thorough and well researched than most of what we see around the country. Thanks for posting it Peter.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Howe have ventilation fans that pull air inward from the quarry side toward the commercialized section? This would make it seem even more unlikely that a foreign tourist could have brought spores that then ended up on bats. If that's the case the situation at Howe actually appears to be specifically non-conducive to human transmission of Gd to bats.

Also, I definitely know who Rube Goldberg was John. :) Good analogy.
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Re: Good WNS News from New York

Postby PYoungbaer » Apr 27, 2012 12:09 pm

Luke,

I'm pretty sure the ventilation system does exactly the opposite of what you describe. It was installed following a tragic accident where blasting dust from the quarry was sucked far into the cave and caused two tour guides who were doing their daily morning check before opening to be overcome and die. The fans were part of several managerial and regulatory responses to help prevent anything similar from happening again.
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Re: Good WNS News from New York

Postby BrianC » Apr 27, 2012 3:48 pm

PYoungbaer wrote:Luke,

I'm pretty sure the ventilation system does exactly the opposite of what you describe. It was installed following a tragic accident where blasting dust from the quarry was sucked far into the cave and caused two tour guides who were doing their daily morning check before opening to be overcome and die. The fans were part of several managerial and regulatory responses to help prevent anything similar from happening again.


In any event, We all know how WNS transmits, and that the tourist scenario is all but an all out alien invasion by green men theory. I said theory, because that is what it is. Why can't the USFWS call it what it is. The spores transmit by direct contact and they know it, but they continue to elude to humans as a horrible creatures. What a croc adile!
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Re: Good WNS News from New York

Postby LukeM » Apr 28, 2012 12:51 pm

Peter, that reasoning sounds familiar to me but I came across an article here (granted it's from 1987) that discusses the concerns of air being drawn from the quarry into the cave by the fans. Perhaps the situation has changed since then or the article simply has it wrong.
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Re: Good WNS News from New York

Postby PYoungbaer » Apr 30, 2012 10:58 am

Luke,

I was intrigued by that clipping and checked with the Caverns. In fact, the fans can blow both ways. Mostly, they are off, but when outside temperatures go above 75F, they turn them on and draw colder air in and up the elevator shaft, cooling the gift shop. The only time they reverse the flow is when they paint the boats each year in January to rid the cave of fumes.

Given this information, the published research that could not confirm aerosolized transmission of WNS, and the lake and then wading stream passage, I find it incredibly difficult to believe that the hypothesis of a tourist or caver who travels internationally without cleaning is the source of the epicenter of WNS.
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Re: Good WNS News from New York

Postby shibumi » Apr 30, 2012 11:12 am

What has constantly amazed me is the consistent lack of recognition by officials that bats hitch rides on all sorts of modern transport systems as the Occam's Razor explanation of the most likely way it jumped from Europe to North America.

Buckner Cave in Indiana only this year saw bats with WNS symptoms, a year after it was discovered in nearby caves with large hibernating colonies, yet in 2007 cavers were known to have gone from caves in Virginia that had confirmed WNS later that winter, to Buckner within a week of having been in those caves in Virginia. And Buckner is a very high traffic cave and has been for many decades. The irony there is that the first caves in Indiana to have WNS confirmed (even though it was being actively looked for in numerous locations around the state) were in caves the IDNR had closed for several years, and some caves that have bat populations yet have remained well traveled still have not had it found (and it's been looked for).
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Re: Good WNS News from New York

Postby BrianC » May 1, 2012 11:16 am

shibumi wrote:What has constantly amazed me is the consistent lack of recognition by officials that bats hitch rides on all sorts of modern transport systems as the Occam's Razor explanation of the most likely way it jumped from Europe to North America.

Buckner Cave in Indiana only this year saw bats with WNS symptoms, a year after it was discovered in nearby caves with large hibernating colonies, yet in 2007 cavers were known to have gone from caves in Virginia that had confirmed WNS later that winter, to Buckner within a week of having been in those caves in Virginia. And Buckner is a very high traffic cave and has been for many decades. The irony there is that the first caves in Indiana to have WNS confirmed (even though it was being actively looked for in numerous locations around the state) were in caves the IDNR had closed for several years, and some caves that have bat populations yet have remained well traveled still have not had it found (and it's been looked for).


I'm sure that your concern is real, even though you have not stated your concern! It is fairly obvious though, no one want's to simply state the obvious.
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