>>2774948>>2775090well, there are things that can be done, but you are not going to like them:
Prions like this are communitive, but they are a product of a subtle genetic defect that very rarely happens at any given time, but over time becomes inevitable.
This kind of infection spread has probably been happening every few thousand years for the last hundred thousand, spontaneously generating is some random deer then burning across the continent wiping out the vast majority of the population then burning out leaving small surviving populations to breed out again.
first option that you will not like: lean it to it. Find as many uninfected deer of every breed and isolate them in places where they can be kept biologically isolated and exterminate the wild populations.
Then after the deer have been gone for a given number of years, carefully start rewilding the offspring of the containment deer and growing the population back over years.
Be ready to do it again.
The other one you won't like: Super science. Use tools like "RFdiffusion" and "alphafold" to either find a way to patch the genetic defect so the individual protein can't change, or create a gene that produces an antibody that breaks up the prion clumps. Germline modify deer embryos and create and release a permanently genetically modified population that survives the plage.
