It's the jumping back and forth between animals and humans that becomes a problem. We don't want the virus to find a lot of hosts and to keep replicating and mutating.
We've been trying to get the virus controlled among humans via vaccination and other measures and it's been an uphill climb.
I think the thing that's worrisome is that the human version jumped to a wild animal and then immediately started circulating among the deer population. We have no way to deal with disease in that population. They won't wear masks and socially distance.
quote:
The fact that SARS-CoV-2 can infect animals is not new. The virus probably originated in an animal species and then jumped to humans, a process that scientists call spillover. Since the pandemic began, there have been documented cases of many animals getting the virus, with various degrees of illness.
Infections have turned up in cats, dogs, lions, tigers, pumas, ferrets, mink, certain rodents, snow leopards, and others. The CDC even has guidelines to protect pets from Covid-19. When a virus jumps from animals to humans and then back to animals, scientists call that spillback.
Most of these infections in animals appeared to be self-contained. An infected house cat presumably stays in the house when infected — it doesn’t start a chain of transmission. “They were all isolated cases,” Suresh Kuchipudi, a Penn State infectious disease researcher who collaborated with Kapur, says of known cases in animals.
The deer infections were different. “This is first time that a completely free-living animal species in the wild has been found to be infected, and that infection is widespread,” Kuchipudi says.
--------------------------------
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
Jodi
