> Cat's themselves are not very sanitary. Better than rats, sure, but they are a source of toxoplasmosis
Hyperbole and toxoplasmosis go well together.
In particular: it's a limited time window when an infected feline could transmit toxoplasmosis. It can be dangerous to pregnancies, or immuno-compromised individuals.
Most humans (and other beings) aren't pregnant or immunocompromised, but the drama of the topic gets clicks, so it's a meme of sorts, and it resurfaces every six months or so in the news as if a revelation.
You don't get toxoplasmosis from touching a cat. You get it from touching cat feces and then ingesting it. The most common avenue of infection (in the US at least) is consuming raw or undercooked meat. Considering when my wife was pregnant, she asked our Doctor about it. His recommendation was she should not be the one to clean the litter box. So yeah, avoid cat feces and if you can't wash your hands. We don't need to get rid of cats. Also make sure the meat you eat is cooked properly.
no one is being blase : we're immersed in a biological world teeming with such critters...and we exist through evolutionary adaptation to such. for fun, check out mites around eyelashes, for an innocuous example.
The solution isn't get rid of cats, it's don't lick your hands after changing the litter box. Especially since cat feces isn't the most common source. Under cooked meat is.
Well you wrote "Hyperbole and toxoplasmosis go well together". It's not "hyperbole" to care about others, however few they are, even though you yourself might not be at risk, right?
But I don't mean to be confrontational. I understand that it is probably annoying to hear toxoplasmosis talked about like it is black death.
A third of the entire human population is infected with toxoplasmosis, in some places nearly every human.
If you put humans in a sterile bubble you get a different set of diseases, to a considerably greater degree because your immune system evolved in an environment where you actually got infections.
> A third of the entire human population is infected with toxoplasmosis, in some places nearly every human.
So if it is often harmful to some extent in people who do not show severe symptoms, then it is a terrible disease that causes widespread harm. There is evidence it causes lesser, but possibly significant harm, in far more people than is generally recognised:
Without infections your immune system gets bored and starts attacking you. You need to have something for your immune system to do on a regular basis. Toxo is to a very large degree asymptomatic. You are full of and covered with organisms. Being paranoid about infection isn't helpful to anyone. Ok you don't like cats, that's fine, but are you as passionate about rare steak which is a much more common vector?
You will have plenty of exposure to microbes simply by existing outside of a sealed sterile chamber, and microbes != pathogens. There's no need to encourage exposure to and infection by pathogens, and this idea often results in increased risk or severity of disease. See: "chickenpox party" intentional exposure of children to varicella, putting them at risk of shingles as adults, with the risk increasing the younger they are at the time of infection.
Cats spend between 30-50% of their waling hours to grooming themselves. Cats are extremely clean. Pick one up and smell its fur. What do you smell? Nothing.
> In particular: it's a limited time window when an infected feline could transmit toxoplasmosis. It can be dangerous to pregnancies, or immuno-compromised individuals.
> Most humans (and other beings) aren't pregnant or immunocompromised, but the drama of the topic gets clicks, so it's a meme of sorts, and it resurfaces every six months or so in the news as if a revelation.
I already addressed this. It's one thing if you keep an cat in your home and can manage the risks. It's another thing entirely as some unknown variable in a cramped public store.
> Most humans (and other beings) aren't pregnant or immunocompromised
So we do not need to vaccinate against rubella either? most people are not disabled so we do not need wheelchair ramps? Most people are not sick at any given time so we do not need hospitals?
Hyperbole and toxoplasmosis go well together.
In particular: it's a limited time window when an infected feline could transmit toxoplasmosis. It can be dangerous to pregnancies, or immuno-compromised individuals.
Most humans (and other beings) aren't pregnant or immunocompromised, but the drama of the topic gets clicks, so it's a meme of sorts, and it resurfaces every six months or so in the news as if a revelation.