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Good article, but doesn't mention the other reason that covid-19 is never going completely away: animal reservoirs. We know that dogs, cats, hamsters, guinea p

• PartiallyTyped 5y ago
  How does covid transmit to wild animals like deer that have almost no interactions with humans ? The transmission chain must be very long. I'd appreciate any links or resources to read more. Perhaps we can learn to be more mindful of our interactions with other animals, wear masks in public spaces or public transport, and hopefully WFH becomes a permanent option. It seems that I stepped on many nerves, please, feel free to disagree or argue.
  • dahfizz 5y ago
    > How does covid transmit to wild animals like deer that have almost no interactions with humans ? I've been within a few feet of wild deer plenty of times in my life. Humans have a lot more interaction with wild animals than you would think once you move outside of urban areas.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
      There's literally a market in Brian Head Utah where a bull moose hangs out on the front porch most of the day. I'm sure there are plenty of "wild" animals with petting-zoo-like relationships with random people. This can't be the only one.
      • erhk 5y ago
        That sounds like an exciting video once it gets realized
  • mr_overalls 5y ago
    > how does covid transmit It seems likely that they were drinking sewage-contaminated water. Ingestion of contaminated water is the source of a staggering variety of illnesses for both humans and animals. Souce: I work in environmental monitoring.
    • MichaelZuo 5y ago
      Which towns in Canada are dumping untreated sewage into the water? As far as I'm aware every province has an environmental ministry that doesn't grant exemptions from sewage treatment. So if it's still ongoing...
      • eloff 5y ago
        I don't think that's perfectly done. I was hiking on the North Shore in Vancouver and there's a sign over a stream warning about untreated sewage. If it's a problem in the one of the biggest and wealthiest cities, I can easily see it being an issue in smaller towns. In very rural areas, especially on reservations, I believe water and sewage treatment is an ongoing issue.
      • steve_adams_86 5y ago
        In my city we JUST started treating our sewage: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-sewage-plant-1.5867582 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-sew...
        • MichaelZuo 5y ago
          Thanks for the info, that is genuinely surprising. And Victoria is not some poor town either. I guess there wasn't much incentive to improve given the consequences of inaction were dumped literally on someone else's doorstep.
      • voxic11 5y ago
        https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/many-cities-still-dump-raw-sewage/ https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/many-cities-still-dump-r... That's from 2009 but it seems unlikely to have been completely resolved since then given the scale of the issue (200 billion litres a year).
  • Miner49er 5y ago
    People interact with deer all the time. They are all over neighborhoods in certain areas, people hunt them, they often are hit by vehicles, etc.
  • q1w2 5y ago
    You are assuming that it was humans that infected the deer, while it could have easily been another wild animal. Wild animals are not commonly tested for covid-19, but those that have been have seen widespread infection. ...which means most populations of mammals and possibly birds are infected as well. ...so the deer could have caught it from any number of other animals in the wild - or more likely, from their droppings.
  • N1H1L 5y ago
    It could be simply from a human being to their dog, who chases a deer and passes it on.
  • tootie 5y ago
    Per CDC, "three out of every four new infectious diseases come from animals" https://gothamist.com/news/germs-spill-from-animals-to-humans-all-the-timeeven-in-new-york https://gothamist.com/news/germs-spill-from-animals-to-human... Think about it like online ads. Even though you've never clicked on one and don't know anyone who clicks on them, the market is worth hundreds of billions. There are so many novel pathogens floating around the world that if humans are exposed to 0.01% of them we'll still see regular epidemics and occasional pandemics.
  • rossdavidh 5y ago
    As to "how does covid transmit to wild animals...", I think it is an excellent question, but I don't think we have a definitive answer. Clearly there is something about the transmission we don't understand (which suggests why current measures to halt the spread such as lockdowns, masks, etc. don't seem to work well). As for the "stepped on many nerves", I think your comment was interpreted as meaning "we should stay at home and wear masks forever", whereas the general patience for such measures is wearing thin. My guess is that part of the reason for a rising rate of violent crime in the U.S. in the last twelve months is simply more people with rising frustration, such that they are more willing to resort to violence. By the way it appears that white-tailed deer in the US have now also been found to have antibodies likely indicating covid-19 exposure: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.29.454326v1.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.29.454326v1....
    • PartiallyTyped 5y ago
      The replies I received are mostly insufficient or very handwavey. Interactions with humans transmitting the Delta variant, in very extreme (NB shortest) cases need upwards of 50-60 seconds, where common transmissions need longer. Which suggests that people need quite long 1-1 interactions with multiple animals to spread it, which to me appears very unlikely. This belief is based on research that supported that covid was unlikely to happen until the first super-spreader event in the wet market. Furthermore, given the symptoms observed in humans, if we are to assume similar symptoms in the wild animals, then odds are these animals become easy(er) pray, which reduces odds of mass transmission. Finally, even if wild animals spend a lot of time in 'close proximity', they are constantly out-doors and in much larger distance than humans sitting in public transport, which suggests there are super-spreader "events" or viral-sources that dump virus particles on wild animals and allow the virus to enter the population. So I do agree that there may be something we are overlooking, perhaps related to waste-water, but this is why I am asking. Even if it doesn't matter anymore wrt covid, it matters for the future. As for the people that misinterpret the noun 'option' accompanied with the adjective 'permanent', they need to understand that the ability for those willing to WFH, will help deal with covid, reduce road congestion, gas emissions, time wasted in commute, and ease measurements. I am not advocating for permanent lockdowns or anything alike. But it is common knowledge that flu infections have reduced significantly, and masks can help deal with smog in cities, as is done in cities in Asia.
  • jandrese 5y ago
    It would only take a handful of transmissions to a community to have something like COVID spread like wildfire through the deer population. They may not interact with humans much, but only one carrier could infect several others and then that cascades to the entire population. Deer don't get vaccinated and don't wear masks. The good news is that even if COVID is running rampant through the deer populations they shouldn't pass them on to humans very often, so if humans are good at identifying and stopping isolated outbreaks then we can live with the risk.
    • nomel 5y ago
      > but only one carrier could infect several others and then that cascades to the entire population Which is exactly how we got here.
• uCantCauseUCant 5y ago
  Thats quite a nice way of putting it, that covid will lower the average life expectancy even of a vaccinated person by 20 years. Cause repeated tissue damage to lungs, heart and neural pathway tissue, accumulates and those 20 today will sound all like darth vadder in there sixties. I still think this is a problem, but hey, if your are already that old and on your way out, who cares. Same attitude as with global warming..
• h3cate 5y ago
  Unpopular opinion but as countries get majority vaccinated they have to learn to not be as scared of it.
  • gunshai 5y ago
    Why is this unpopular.
    • h3cate 5y ago
      Post it on twitter/reddit and see what response you get
      • bin_bash 5y ago
        Well that’s the case expressing any kind of opinion about COVID
        • h3cate 5y ago
          Unfortunately
      • BoxOfRain 5y ago
        To be fair, expecting reasonable responses from Twitter on any subject is a bit like panning for gold in an open sewer. The platform's whole premise is compressing things to the point it's the place on the internet nuance goes to die.
    • lp0_on_fire 5y ago
      Because there is a non-insignificant portion of the population that is thriving off corona hysteria.
      • SamPatt 5y ago
        And a not insignificant proportion of politicians more than happy to take advantage of the fear and expand their power.
• erhk 5y ago
  This is mostly irrelevant from my understanding. Of the few diseases that humanity has eradicated, one is found in wild animals. Animal resevoirs are simply not the problem.
  • q1w2 5y ago
    Airborne diseases with wild animal reservoirs cannot be eradicated, and never have been. It's unclear why you think a wild reservoir isn't a problem, nor which eradicated disease you're referring to.
    • nearbuy 5y ago
      > Airborne diseases with wild animal reservoirs cannot be eradicated, and never have been. Only two diseases have been eradicated: smallpox and rinderpest (a viral disease that infects cattle and various wild animals). The latter had both airborne transmission and wild animal reservoirs.
  • WillPostForFood 5y ago
    What disease are you talking about? Smallpox doesn't have an animal reserve, Rinderpest doesn't infect humans.
  • skohan 5y ago
    As far as I understand, MIRS is continuously reappearing in humans due to reservoirs in camel populations, and it's only able to be controlled du to vigilant monitoring in vulnerable areas.
  • mdp2021 5y ago
    In some Countries, one of the current common shouts is "vaccinate everything". It seems that in part, this is to relieve the hospitals, and in part, to reduce contagion as much as you can (the transmission rate in the vaccinated is lower or, in the exceptions emerged, resolves faster). Now, let us suppose that cats may be vehicles. "Vaccinate everyone" and "cats do not matter" is inconsistent.
• nikkinana 5y ago
  You're full of shit.
• Scoundreller 5y ago
  Add ferrets to the list of natural reservoirs. Thankfully birds and pigs seem to be immune, which could have had a huge impact on food supply and transmission. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6494/1016 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6494/1016
  • rossdavidh 5y ago
    I seem to recall them walking back the conclusion that dogs do not transmit well, but don't have the reference at hand. I wonder if they were actually mistaken at first, or if the virus has simply evolved in the direction of being better transmitted by dogs? I wouldn't be surprised if they end up concluding that pigs can catch and transmit as well, eventually. Birds does seem to be more likely to hold true, as I don't know of any non-mammals that have been found susceptible yet.
    • verall 5y ago
      I dunno what you're on about, dogs do not realistically transmit covid. Their respiratory system is more different to humans than a cat's. Ferrets and other animals with extremely similar respiratory systems are known reservoirs and have already been culled in some countries.
• mrkramer 5y ago
  >Good article, but doesn't mention the other reason that covid-19 is never going completely away: animal reservoirs. You realize there are thousands and thousands of viruses that are circulating every day for billions of years. New epidemic or pandemic can happen anytime anywhere. You can only mitigate it not prevent it. >It is implausible that it will ever cease to have an animal reservoir, especially given the finding in Canada of 30% of white-tailed deer having it. >Of diseases that get as widespread as this, with animal reservoirs, I don't believe there is any case of eliminating it. Exactly >But, like vaccines can teach the immune system how to respond more intelligently (and less self-destructively) to covid-19, hopefully society can learn to respond more intelligently, and less self-destructively, to the fact that it's always in circulation. For example society and in particular Institutes of Virology should take extra security precautions when experimenting with gain of function viruses.
• SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  >We know that dogs, cats, hamsters, guinea pigs, mink, white-tailed deer, a gorilla, and a tiger have been found to have been infected with covid-19. And at least one papaya, apparently. https://globalnews.ca/news/6910821/coronavirus-papaya-goat-tanzania/ https://globalnews.ca/news/6910821/coronavirus-papaya-goat-t...
• heavyset_go 5y ago
  Animal reservoirs are also responsible for helping to breed illnesses that are able to evade our attempts to stop their proliferation, like with antibiotics, antivirals, and vaccines.
• alex77456 5y ago
  It's not the society that we need to worry about. In the beginning a good chunk of society was ringing alarms to close borders, but the economy was too important to protect.
• akira2501 5y ago
  > We know that dogs, cats, hamsters, guinea pigs, mink, white-tailed deer, a gorilla, and a tiger have been found to have been infected with covid-19. How do we know this? PCR test? At what threshold? Or, antigen test? Is there a guinea pig antigen test for COVID? I'm suspicious of this reasoning due to the apparently complicated and necessary natural pathway this virus used to become infectious to humans in the first place. This apparently doesn't apply anymore? > Of diseases that get as widespread as this, with animal reservoirs The contact with those reservoirs needed to be much more than casual in order for infections to pass. I'm not sure this logic applies to a SARS virus.
  • rossdavidh 5y ago
    Well, the virus got from (presumably) humans to all of these other species, so it seems not too hard to imagine that it can go back the other way. In the case of mink in Denmark, they were convinced that new variants that emerged first in the mink had made it back into the human population.