There Goes My Mink Coat

Hot Air posted an article today about a problem Denmark is having with minks. The problem is serious. As a result of this problem, the country is about to exterminate around 17 million minks–every mink in the country. So what is going on?

The article reports:

As if you didn’t have enough to worry about already, right? This startling bit of news comes to us from Denmark, home to the world’s largest center of mink farming. But they’ll be losing that title shortly, at least for a while. Scientists there have found that the farm population of minks has become infected with a mutated version of the novel coronavirus. What’s worse is that this strain is probably resistant to any vaccines currently in development. And to top it all off, the mutated virus has already made the jump to at least a dozen human beings. As a result, they’re about to exterminate every mink in the country, numbering around 17 million of them.

…The medical community is trying to help keep people calm as they sort this out. Doctors in Denmark are saying that this mutation “hits all the scary buttons” but it’s not as terrible as it may sound. Okay, but it’s still pretty bad. Let’s consider that the virus didn’t show up there until a little more than eight months ago, it’s already made the jump from people to minks, mutated, and jumped back again. And the new mutation appears to be at least as contagious as the previous editions, if not more so. Add to that the belief that the vaccines we’re all waiting for probably won’t provide much protection and that sounds an awful lot like a bad situation.

Another pothole in the road that is 2020.