god fucking dammit I should not have laughed

My ashtray with a pile of smushed prerolls all with a half-inch+ of flower

Lol whoops...fixed now. No idea how that happened but I do fondly remember those cops getting their asses kicked.

True that it's not a virus but prions can mutate in the sense that they are just proteins like any other, produced according to their genes. The gene coding for the prion protein can mutate, producing a prion that is better at making, e.g., the human analog fold into a prion.

The maps of affected wild herds only shows a few states, but I've seen deer here in NJ as far back as a decade ago that very much looked like they were sick with CWD. I wouldn't doubt that it's more widespread than we are aware of.

Wait, that deer population has been known to have CWD and they were still like "hey, i guess these are good to eat"? tf is wrong with carnists?

plenty of CWD deer don't show symptoms yet

Putting it out of its misery and not wasting what could be good venison meat?

Sounds more merciful than shooting a young healthy animal.

But I don't know, I don't hunt.

It's a certain protein that got misfolded, if it comes in contact with more of the original protein it causes that to also get misfolded. It can spread kinda similarly to a virus, via bodily fluids, animal-animal contact, in contaminated food/water, and by eating tainted meat in this case. Even if the deer was asymptomatic they can still spread the disease. The way the protein is folded causes it to be resistant to degradation so it can lay dormant for years or maybe decades in the environment. It causes horrifying symptoms causing deer to almost turn into zombies as their bodies waste away.

It's a prion, aka a protein which has gone wrong

The worst part about CWD is that it can sit in soil for a decade so once an area gets CWD, it will pretty much keep CWD