Patterico's Pontifications

4/28/2020

More Animals Infected With New Coronavirus

Filed under: General — Dana @ 11:46 am



[guest post by Dana]

Minks in the Netherlands:

Two mink farms in the Netherlands have been put into quarantine after animals were found to be infected with the new coronavirus, the agriculture ministry said on Sunday, urging people to report any other likely cases in the animals.

The mink, which were tested after showing signs of having trouble breathing, were believed to have been infected by employees who had the virus, the ministry said in a statement.

The possibility that they could further spread the virus to humans or other animals on the farms was “minimal”, the ministry said, citing advice from national health authorities.

However movement of the ferret-like mammals and their manure was banned and the ministry said it was studying the outbreak carefully, including testing the air and soil.

A family’s dog in the U.S.:

The family was involved in a study at Duke in which the mother, father and son tested positive for COVID-19. During this study, the family had their pets tested and found out their pug, Winston, had coronavirus.

Dr. Chris Woods, the principal investigator of the Duke study, said, “The virus that causes COVID-19 was detected,” and he believes it’s the first known positive case in a dog in the United States.

The family’s mother, Heather McLean, is a pediatrician at Duke. She said their dog was experiencing mild symptoms. “Pugs are a little unusual in that they cough and sneeze in a very strange way. So it almost seems like he was gagging, and there was one day when he didn’t want to eat his breakfast, and if you know pugs you know they love to eat, so that seemed very unusual,” she said.

Note (and, eew…):

“(The dog) licks all of our dinner plates and sleeps in my mom’s bed, and we’re the ones who put our faces into his face. So, it makes sense that he got (coronavirus),” said McLean’s son, Ben.

Last week, Smithsonian Magazine published a report which questioned why the virus behind the disease affects only certain animals:

In just a few months, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has put billions of humans at risk. But as researchers work around the clock to understand SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the disease, some have begun to worry that countless others may be at stake: animals who could catch the germ from their distant Homo sapiens cousins.

Recent reports of SARS-CoV-2 infecting creatures such as monkeys, dogs, ferrets, domestic cats and even a tiger have raised the possibility that the pathogen could plague other species—including, perhaps, ones already imperiled by other, non-infectious threats.

…[H]umans remain the virus’ most vulnerable victims, as well as the hosts most likely to spread the disease from place to place. There is also no evidence that animals are passing the pathogen to people, says Jane Sykes, a veterinarian and animal virus researcher at the University of California, Davis. However, studying the creatures this stealthy virus has affected so far could help scientists understand what makes some species—but not others—susceptible.

Specifics detailed at the link.

–Dana

25 Responses to “More Animals Infected With New Coronavirus”

  1. I had difficulty with the Smithsonian site because it kept gettig hung up on the ads. Hopefully you won’t have the same trouble.

    Dana (0feb77)

  2. I once saw a family that let their dogs lick their dinner plates. A nice way to describe them would be ‘rustic’.

    I had no idea the next instance made known to me would be the family of a Duke Univ. pediatrician.
    _

    harkin (485617)

  3. I’ve known a few people who let their dogs lick the plates. But only after the humans have finished feeding, and the next step is putting them in the sink to be wsshed.

    Kishnevi (17be14)

  4. Oh boy, here we go again.

    Yesterday: Animals can’t possibly be infected with coronavirus.
    Today: The chances of animals being infected with coronavirus are minimal.
    Tomorrow: Animals and humans have approximately equivalent probabilities of infection when they are exposed.

    This is another one of those instances when the “scientific experts” have gotten way over their skiis and have damaged their credibility.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  5. I’m starting to wonder what the risk is that this becomes endemic in some non-human population where it can serve as a reservoir for future human reinfection.

    aphrael (7962af)

  6. Mike Pence has heard our prayers, and thinks that Trump getting the ‘Rona is worth the risk of his health. So he’s at the Mayo Clinic Covid wing…sans basic safety precautions. After Boris, he has to know the likelihood of him getting it and transferring it to Donnie.

    Mike Pence, patriotically taking one for the team…or he’s an idiot. There can be only one answer.

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827)

  7. Gryph (08c844) — 4/28/2020 @ 11:48 am

    Thank you for that link, Gryph. I find it most telling that the Journalists in this video are being combative with the M.D.s; interupting, arguing, and challenging their statements rather than simply allowing them to present the data. This is not reporting, it is cross-examination in bad faith.

    The this brand of journalism is a problem because it has ceased to report, and has started to narrate.

    felipe (023cc9)

  8. >Animals and humans have approximately equivalent probabilities of infection when they are exposed.

    that seems unlikely to be true.

    in general, rna viruses are not universally transmissible. rats do not get infected with ebola. deer do not get infected with hantavirus. birds do not get infected with nipah. dogs do not get infected with HIV. etc.

    there are a huge number of viruses which exist in the population of specific animals which do not transfer to other animals except under extremely rare circumstances.

    sometimes viruses jump into humans from other animals, but this almost always requires a significant mutation of some sort.

    but there are exceptions. influenza (for example) transmits freely between birds, pigs, and primates.

    for coronaviruses the default expectation would be that it’s transmissible to (and probably from) other primates and to felines.

    if *this* turns out to be easily transmissible to other animals, that would be extraordinarily surprising and inconsistent with the behavior of other coronaviruses. (SARS-COV-1, for example, wasn’t generally transmissible to animals).

    aphrael (7962af)

  9. if *this* turns out to be easily transmissible to other animals, that would be extraordinarily surprising and inconsistent with the behavior of other coronaviruses. (SARS-COV-1, for example, wasn’t generally transmissible to animals).

    Yeah, I wasn’t really intending my comment as an evaluation of the science of the spread of COVID-19. I really just meant to highlight the ever-shifting message of whether or not animals can carry and transmit the disease as yet another instance where the medical “experts” find themselves backtracking on one of their earlier pronouncements, similar to the changing message on the efficacy of wearing masks in public. My point isn’t to deny that we should be listening to scientists and doctors regarding this pandemic; it’s more to emphasize that scientists and doctors — and, frankly, more importantly the media who reports on the statements of scientists and doctors — should be a little more circumspect and forthright in understanding that there is a whole hell of a lot that we don’t know about the disease. It would be nice to hear them, for example, preface a statement with something like “The scientific and medical community’s best guess at this point is. . . ” rather than to keep treating these utterances as having emanated from Mount Olympus.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  10. I sure wish we knew now what we’re going to know in two months, four months etc.

    The amount of conflicting information coupled with the media’s desire to sensationalize/politicize everything about it is too much.
    _

    “This brand of journalism is a problem because it has ceased to report, and has started to narrate.”

    Going on a few decades but yeah and this pandemic just puts that form of narration on nitrous-fueled steroids.

    harkin (8f4a6f)

  11. I sure wish we knew now what we’re going to know in two months, four months etc.

    Good point.

    It’s going to get worse. The haves and have nots are farther apart than ever. It’s an election year. The economic damage is severe. The blame game will be really hard to resist joining.

    Dustin (e5f6c3)

  12. On the one hand, JVW, I hear you. On the other hand, we know full well that if they hedged in that way there would be a bunch of people, most of whom had insufficient information to make the decision intelligently, who decided to ignore the best advice available at the time because the experts were hedging.

    So it’s a really tough balancing act — project enough confidence and certainty to dissuade the idiots while keeping in mind the real limits on our knowledge and the overall uncertainty.

    This isn’t something most research scientists are good at, because if they were most of them would have gone into public relations or marketing.

    aphrael (7962af)

  13. Our cats will lick dinner plates, if they can get away with it. “If they can get away with it” seems to be embedded in the cat genome.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  14. The haves and have nots are farther apart than ever.

    And last time it gave us Trump. Populism is a VERY blunt instrument.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  15. The blame game will be really hard to resist joining.

    So what happens if this thing turns out to have come from that Wuhan biolab, and we find out the Chinese knew it all along?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  16. 17. What would you suggest?

    Ragspierre (d9bec9)

  17. Hmm…interesting.

    Gryph (08c844) — 4/28/2020 @ 11:48 am

    No, not very interesting, lies (I’m shocked that you’d be posting this)

    They’ve used methods that are ludicrous to get results that are completely implausible,” Bergstrom said.

    Still, the early media coverage of the doctors’ announcement went viral (digitally, that is) over the weekend. The press conference video garnered more than 5 million views before YouTube removed it on Monday for violating community guidelines.

    But already, the Bakersfield doctors — who tout their support of President Donald Trump and refuse to wear masks in public — have become heroes on social platforms and conservative media outlets, with some commenters calling them “brave.” Others who support continuing to shelter in place described the doctors as self-promoters whose chain of urgent care centers would benefit from reopening. Non-COVID medical visits have plummeted during the pandemic, they note, endangering the practices of many doctors.

    “As struggling business owners, their economic frustration is understandable. But it can’t be mistaken for science. People trust doctors,” Michigan emergency room doctor Rob Davidson wrote on Twitter. “When they tell Fox viewers to ignore recommendations from real experts, many will believe them…The impact of rejecting science-proven recommendations in exchange for these erroneous ideas would overwhelm health systems and cost lives. While re-opening the economy might be good for their Urgent Care Centers (sic), it would kill medical personnel on the actual front lines.”

    And

    The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) jointly and emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.

    COVID-19 misinformation is widespread and dangerous. Members of ACEP and AAEM are first-hand witnesses to the human toll that COVID-19 is taking on our communities. ACEP and AAEM strongly advise against using any statements of Drs. Erickson and Massihi as a basis for policy and decision making.

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827)

  18. “In the debate over freedom versus control of the internet, China was largely correct and the US was wrong… Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet… and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the Internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values.”

    —- Jack Goldsmith & Andrew Keane Woods, 4/25/2020 the Atlantic

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  19. More like our leaders’ norms, values and interests. What’s now considered normal apparently has mutated overnight and all of a sudden we are being told we must accept things that were completely unimaginable just a few short months ago.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  20. Democracy Dies in Dystopia

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  21. Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/28/2020 @ 5:24 pm

    Not interesting to you? I can believe that. Lies? Please elaborate. The two links you provided failed to persuade me as much as DRs Dan and Artin, who, in the face of a hostile press, acquited themselves well.

    They took the time to go explain why they held their position. The two articles you provided failed to explain any of the alleged errors or substantiate any of their own claims.

    But public health experts were quick to debunk the doctors’ findings as misguided and riddled with statistical errors — and an example of the kind of misleading information they are forced to waste precious time disputing.

    This is said without any substantiation whatsoever in the article. Who are these experts? We are expected to just accept this? Please.

    The doctors should never have assumed that the patients they tested — who came for walk-in COVID-19 tests or who sought urgent care for symptoms they experienced in the middle of a pandemic — are representative of the general population, said Dr. Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington biologist who specializes in infectious disease modeling.*

    A strawman argument. The two doctors made no such claim. The data, in fact included public records which the CDC and other world authorities provided, and are easily verified by anyone. [*My bolded text] Bergstrom gives his agenda away by revealing his affiliation with the “academics” as differentiated from the “practicing” Drs. His behavior is that of a natural enemy.

    He likened their extrapolations to “estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court.” And most credible studies of COVID-19 death rates are far higher than the ones the doctors presented.

    “They’ve used methods that are ludicrous to get results that are completely implausible,” Bergstrom said.

    Here Bergstrom does everyone a disservice by creating the most ludicrous simile himself, summing up this nonsense by making , yet, another unsubstantiated claim. How can he possibly say this after explaining that their data is not “peer-reviewed?” Apparently he doesn’t need to review the data in order to find it implausibe.

    Yeah, you’re backing a winner, there, Klink. Congratulations. Getting your assent is too easy.

    felipe (023cc9)

  22. Bergstrom gives his agenda away by revealing his affiliation with the “academics”

    Should be:

    Bergstrom’s agenda was given away when his affiliation with the “academics” was revealed.

    I did not intend to put those words in his mouth, when it was the act of the Author.

    felipe (023cc9)

  23. Again

    The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) jointly and emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.

    COVID-19 misinformation is widespread and dangerous. Members of ACEP and AAEM are first-hand witnesses to the human toll that COVID-19 is taking on our communities. ACEP and AAEM strongly advise against using any statements of Drs. Erickson and Massihi as a basis for policy and decision making.

    If you decide you’re going to believe two scammers, where their entire industry is explaining why they’re quacksalvers, that’s a you problem.

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827)


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