CWD: The Full Experience

Chronic Wasting Disease
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia at en.wikipedia.org

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is an infectious disease affecting deer, elk and other select Cervine species

This will include bad symptoms, such as extreme weight loss, mood swings, excessive drooling, a lack of fear of humans and eventually death. (It is always 100% fatal.)

The infected deer can be hard to pick out from a distance, however can quickly be detected up close due to erratic movement or excess salivation

Image; the symptom of CWD found on a deer buck:

Contents:
Section 1: Cause
Section 2: Infected Areas Globally
Section 3: Zombie Deer Disease
Section 4: Treatment
Section 5: Preventing Spread

Section 1: Cause
The cause of Chronic Wasting Disease is something known as a prion. Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their shape onto other proteins of the shame shape. For this reason, prions are, similarly to viruses, completely incurable by things such as anti-biotics or bacteriophages.

Section 2: Infected Areas Globally
Globally the disease has only been found in North America. The disease is most commonly found in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, Kansas, South Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Alberta and Saskatchewan, with minor numbers found in other US States and Canadian provinces.

Section 3: Zombie Deer Disease
Chronic Wasting Disease is also known by the much more common pseudonym of Zombie Deer Disease. Zombie Deer Disease, a name spread by Journalists, is named so due to the zombie like symptoms of CWD. The disease however does not actually raise the dead, and those infected with the disease don't actually show any heightened aggression. The disease is also not known to affect humans, but due to the nature of Prions, it might happen one day in the distant future. (Probably when someone makes raw deer soup, I mean come on.)

Section 4: Treatment
There is no way to treat CWD, as due to the nature of prions it is completely incurable. It is also always 100% fatal. The only known treatment is to put the infected out of their misery and kill them. This follows into section 5;

Section 5: Preventing Spread
Prions can remain infectious even years after the infected individual has already passed, so the only way to prevent the spread of the disease is to euthanize those infected and move the body far away from other deer populations so they do not catch it. The disease can be hard to catch and prevent. Due to the infected Deer displaying such extreme inability to travel, constantly stumbling and become extremely weak, they are thankfully usually abandoned by the rest of the Deer in their herds.

This is good for preventing the spread and leads to them being easy to track down, especially when coupled with the fact that they do not fear humans, however, it is unknown if the disease spreads even without symptoms being shown.

The best way to prevent spread is to kill those infected before they can spread it.