4.11.2020 All Danish mink to be slaughtered because of virus mutation.

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Wednesday 4th 45F, rather cloudy with a light SW wind. Early cloud cleared to overwhelmingly blue. It remained mostly sunny for the rest of the day.

Too early to say if I have recovered from my strange symptoms. [Possible agricultural toxins during an hour and half walk close to the fields.]  Headaches, dizziness, tiredness and a strange sense of being unable to inhale. My painful knee keeps coming and going without obvious cause. 

A walk to the lanes. Where a solitary pheasant spotted me too soon to capture a likeness. The gales had stripped many of the trees with a few, gorgeous exceptions.

I have been off the trike because of the weather. No cough but a few more aches and pains than usual. Probably due to domestic weight lifting. Handling lots of 10kg bags of fuel for the stove. Plus a new bath to be manhandled and plumbed in. When the last one rusted away after only 20 years. 

A heat pump would be nice to replace the stove but there is no incentive to do so from an economics point of view. The cost of the few wood briquettes we use is very low indeed. Our heating season is usually only a few short months thanks to global warming. Paying for heavily taxed electricity, on top of thousands for the heat pump, would be a financial burden we simply cannot afford. 

The government wants to phase out older wood stoves but has not taken direct action against their owners. Only when a house is sold must an older stove be replaced by law. Which means decades to replace most of them! There are serious health issues to wood burning. With many suffering and dying early from inhaling the dust particles.

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The arguments within the Danish coalition, over the target for numbers of "green" vehicles, continue. There is now talk of 700,000 electric cars by 2030. The electioneers promised 1 million eVs without doing the maths. Then downgraded the target to 500,000 being just about affordable to the taxpayer in subsidies and/or skewed vehicle taxation. I suspect more stick than carrot will follow if the numbers fall badly short of forecasts. The poorest owners, with their dirty old cars, will be penalised first. It was ever thus.

Now the token 2030 figure is pushed back up again but still depends on many factors. Like having truly affordable eVs for ordinary working people to buy. Not everybody needs a Tesla let alone can afford one. There is no existing market for secondhand electric cars. Which would have to form the vast bulk of all electric vehicle purchases.

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It has been confirmed that Danish mink have developed a mutated form of Coronavirus which has passed back to 12 people. The mutation increases the risk that any future vaccine could be made worthless by the mutation. This could affect the entire world if the mutated virus escaped into the genral population.

The government has decided that this is so serious a risk that every mink in Denmark is to be put down. They had already been putting down mink at infected farms. The virus had been spreading rapidly through the mink farms. Particularly in the north of Jutland, at first, but heading south and east. 

We must hope that no mink will be hidden by misguided mink farmers or by unregistered breeders. Some farmers were refusing to allow the police and government culling workers access. Mnay farms represent several generations of breeders. It seems unlikely that mink farming will be allowed again for quite possibly decades. The government has promised compensation for the mink farmer's losses.

There is already a scientific study into the wild birds which associate with mink farms. I have previously mentioned the vast flocks of gulls which collect around many [if not all] mink farms. 

They seem attracted at the morning feeding times. When great clouds of birds circle above the farms. Though whether there is close contact between the birds and animals I cannot say. It would be foolish for the mink farmers to waste valuable funds and profits on feeding the gulls accidentally. So why would so many gulls congregate there so often?  I have often taken photographs of the mink clouds and have called them "mink gulls" for years. The image shows a typical scene taken on a morning walk.

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