Two Cats Are First US Pets To Test Positive For Coronavirus 149
The first pets in the United States, two cats from New York State, have tested positive for the virus that is causing the worldwide pandemic, the Agriculture Department and the Centers for Disease Control announced Wednesday. The New York Times reports: The cats, from different parts of the state, are showing only mild symptoms and are expected to be fine. Testing positive does not mean the cats have the same illness that people have. Nor does it mean that the cats can pass on the illness to people. And tests for pets are not the same as those for people, so no humans missed out on testing because the cats were tested.
Veterinarians took samples from both cats that were tested at a private lab. The test results were then confirmed at a national veterinary lab. The owners brought both cats to veterinarians because they showed symptoms of a respiratory infection. One owner had tested positive for the virus. No human in the other cat's household tested positive. The Agriculture Department and the C.D.C. emphasized that "there is no evidence that pets play a role in spreading the virus in the United States." Other experts agree that people should not start looking at their cats with suspicion. If anything, it's the other way around. The CDC recommends keeping cats indoors. And for people who become sick with COVID-19, they recommend isolating from pets as much as possible, treating them as you would a human being.
"Dogs are less susceptible to infection with the virus," the report notes. "Although there is some evidence that they may have low-level infections, they haven't shown any symptoms. Nonetheless, the C.D.C. recommends that you put dogs on a six-foot leash when walking them, keep them away from other animals and avoid contact as much as possible with any pets if you are sick."
Veterinarians took samples from both cats that were tested at a private lab. The test results were then confirmed at a national veterinary lab. The owners brought both cats to veterinarians because they showed symptoms of a respiratory infection. One owner had tested positive for the virus. No human in the other cat's household tested positive. The Agriculture Department and the C.D.C. emphasized that "there is no evidence that pets play a role in spreading the virus in the United States." Other experts agree that people should not start looking at their cats with suspicion. If anything, it's the other way around. The CDC recommends keeping cats indoors. And for people who become sick with COVID-19, they recommend isolating from pets as much as possible, treating them as you would a human being.
"Dogs are less susceptible to infection with the virus," the report notes. "Although there is some evidence that they may have low-level infections, they haven't shown any symptoms. Nonetheless, the C.D.C. recommends that you put dogs on a six-foot leash when walking them, keep them away from other animals and avoid contact as much as possible with any pets if you are sick."
And so it begins... (Score:5, Funny)
"there is no evidence that pets play a role in spreading the virus in the United States."
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
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And yet, people usually don't call an exterminator, when none of their fod is gnawed on, no rat droppings are found and no scratching is heard on the walls... somehow, most people don't die of the plague rats using this behaviour.
Re:And so it begins... (Score:4, Informative)
Rats Didn’t Spread the Black Death—It Was Humans [history.com]
In most of the cities, the model that focused on fleas and ticks on humans was the most accurate model for explaining the spread of the disease.Though it may come as a surprise to most readers, previous studies have backed up these findings. The consensus seems to be that the plague spread too fast for rats to be the culprit carriers.
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Iceland was devastated by the plague despite having no rats.
Plague without Rats in 15th Century Icelnd [sciencedirect.com]
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Yes, because rats and mice know to hide. Those that hide well can remain hidden for years - you don't know it until you tear the walls down during a renovation and find a pile of rat skeletons in between the walls.
Most people have colonies near their house - just that since they do
I hate that saying, because it's mostly false (Score:2)
That saying is catchy, so I liked it at first. Then I found it's most often used in contexts where it's false.
Where one would expect X to leave evidence, absence of the expected evidence is evidence that X is not true. For example, suppose I say that last week my cousin robbed a bank, holding all of the customers hostage. If there are no news stories about the robbery, that would be evidence that I'm full of it - no such robbery occurred.
The catchy saying is right only regarding things that would be expect
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Correlation does not imply causation is also catchy, and precisely the opposite of the truth.
A rule of thumb is what someone smarter than you tells you to get you to stop pestering them.
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Correlation does not imply causation is also catchy, and precisely the opposite of the truth.
Except the fact that the hallmark of a poorly conducted study is that it makes this very error. That's one of the primary causes of the replication crisis: Psychologists with a poor understanding of statistics fishing for correlations in datasets.
Causation implies correlation, correlation does not imply causation. I believe the error you're making is using the word "imply" in a colloquial sense ("to suggest") rather than how it is used in logic, meaning, "to follow from" or "a necessary consequence of" or "
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That's the insidiousness of that catchy phase. It's so catchy you believe it's true.
Correlation implies causation. What it doesn't tell you is the *type* of causation. If two variables, A and B, are correlated, there are three possibilities:
1. A causes B
2. B causes A
3. A third factor, C causes both A and B.
Note that all of those possibilities can have intermediate steps, eg. A causes D causes B.
Correlation *does* imply causation. The error is the assumption that correlation between A and B implies one of th
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On 3.
C causing A and B isn't understood as a form of causation between A and B or B and A.
And there's also coincidence, which doesn't imply causation.
I throw a dice 6 times and get 1,4,2,2,6,6
My friend throws 6 times also 1,4,2,2,6,6
An example of perfect correlation without any causation.
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What is this "friend" thing of which you speak?
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"What is this "friend" thing of which you speak?"
Just a rhetorical device.
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Number of people who drowned by falling into a pool and Films Nicolas Cage appeared in (r =
Per capita cheese consumption and Number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bedsheets (r =.947)
Divorce rate in Maine and Per capita consumption of margarine (r =
Age of Miss America and Murders by steam, hot vapors, and hot objects (r =
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You would expect to find evidence, but what if that evidence is easily overlooked? Most people they really don't know where they picked it up. They can find some connections where people were together, but they really can't trace things very well, especially with so many infected. So if a pet picks it up and makes its owner sick, and that owner was at a grocery store, and someone else that was at the store was also infected, they just assumed he picked it up from that other person. I'm not saying to panic a
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> We kind of saw the same thing with masks. We were told there was no reason to wear mask because there was no evidence that would help. Then fast forward a month, and suddenly everyone should wear masks. Wait, I though there was no evidence.
We were talking told "you don't need a mask; leave the masks for the doctors and nurses who need them most in order for them to be protected".
If a mask wouldn't help prevent the spread, doctors and nurses wouldn't "need them most" to protect them from covid.
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Hey, I get it. If it's in short supply, leave them to the doctors. I totally understand, but that wasn't my point. We were told there was no evidence that masks were necessary, and suddenly now it's necessary. Of course it's because we now have more evidence. My point was entirely in regards the previous claim by you that the "absences of evidence" thing is generally used in situations where it's false. I was merely saying that you can't argue that in a developing situation. We're being continually barraged
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My point is I don't know that anyone was seriously arguing "there is no evidence masks are effective" WHILE saying that doctors and nurses need the masks because they are effective. I think the real statement was "you don't need it as much as they do".
There is also the fact that a mask *alone* won't protect you - hand washing is the big key.
Re:And so it begins... (Score:4, Funny)
I dunno, I watched Cats and felt a bit ill afterwards.
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Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Absence of evidence is not PROOF of absence, but it is evidence of absence.
If pet-to-human transmission was happening, the tracking algorithms would have likely found infection clusters among dog groomers and people visiting dog parks. They haven't. That is evidence that pet-to-human transmission is not happening or at least is rare.
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"there is no evidence that dragons play a role in spreading the virus in the United States."
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
FTFY.
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"there is no evidence that pets play a role in spreading the virus in the United States."
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Actually, in probability theory, absence of evidence is always evidence of absence. In Bayesian terms, if the observation of evidence increases the probability of the hypothesis (that is, P(H | E) > P(H)), then the absence of evidence decreases the probability of the hypothesis (that is, P(H | ~E) < P(H)). The probability of the hypothesis, mathematically, is a weighted mix of the probability of the hypothesis given the evidence and the probability of the hypothesis given no evidence, so lies betwee
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We need to eat the pussies!
What's new? (Score:5, Funny)
Other experts agree that people should not start looking at their cats with suspicion. If anything, it's the other way around.
Isn't that already the case?
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Other experts agree that people should not start looking at their cats with suspicion. If anything, it's the other way around.
Isn't that already the case?
I think those critters are up to something . . .
Does your cat look like Adolf Hitler? Do you wake up in a cold sweat every night wondering if he's going to up and invade Poland? Does he keep putting his right paw in the air while making a noise that sounds suspiciously like "Sieg Miaow"? If so, this is the website for you:
Cats That Look Like Hitler! [catsthatlo...hitler.com]
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (Score:3)
Source WIKI:
"North America – 1991: Following a pandemic from a space-borne disease that wiped out all dogs and cats in 1983, the government has become a series of police states that took apes as pets before establishing a culture based on ape slave labor."
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New Versiion Of Joke (Score:2)
How Do You Know if You Have Coronavirus? Just Cough in a Rich Person^B^B^B^B^B Cat's Face and Wait for the Results to Come Back.âoe
Big cats too (Score:4, Informative)
Five tigers and three lions in the Bronx Zoo have tested positive [thecut.com].
If humans got coronavirus by eating bats, how exactly did lions and tigers get it?
Re:Big cats too (Score:5, Funny)
Five tigers and three lions in the Bronx Zoo have tested positive [thecut.com].
If humans got coronavirus by eating bats, how exactly did lions and tigers get it?
By eating humans.
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Glad to see that we think alike :)
Fuck'n Carole Baskin (Score:2)
I'm sure China would welcome her with open arms as yet another scapegoat.
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Five tigers and three lions in the Bronx Zoo have tested positive [thecut.com].
If humans got coronavirus by eating bats, how exactly did lions and tigers get it?
By eating humans.
Uh, oh! Has anyone seen Carole Baskin's current husband recently?
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Where do you get your information that humans got it by eating bats?
The problem appears to have been a live animal market, where the animals are sold alive and then slaughtered on the spot (not the most hygenic thing to do, you know?). Some of them were bats.
People likely contracted the virus in the market and not at home at dinner time.
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Scientists say it is highly likely that the virus came from bats but first passed through an intermediary animal in the same way that another coronavirus – the 2002 Sars outbreak – moved from horseshoe bats to cat-like civets before infecting humans.
It’s likely Covid-19 originated in bats, scientists say. But did it then spread to pangolins and humans? [theguardian.com]
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Actually probably feral dogs ate the bats, the virus shows too much change for it to be directly from bats to humans. (Link also posted above.)
https://medicalxpress.com/news... [medicalxpress.com]
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Humans didn't get it from eating bats. The Chinese don't eat bat soup it seems. That is all based on one video where an Asian looking woman is eating bat soup. In fact, she was visiting a Pacific Island, and making a video about their food and culture, and ate the bat soup there.
Yes, bats are the natural reservoir species [wikipedia.org] for some coronaviruses, just like cows, cats, and dogs for other bacteria and viruses. They do not transmi
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The video of a Chinese woman having bat soup was from the Pacific Island of Palau [france24.com] (also here [foreignpolicy.com]). She was sampling local food there, not in China.
It seems that my info is outdated. There is a scholarly book [springer.com] that says four species of bats are eaten in China, and four used for traditional medicine (just like rhino horn and pangolin scales).
Either way, it was not a direct jump from bat to humans. There is an intermediate animal (or a few, probably a Malay pangolin [nature.com]) involved, and wet markets are a disaster for rec
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Even before the blood, the dozens of species are in small cages sneezing, coughing, urinating and defecating on each other. Any animal that caught a harmless (to it) virus could spread it to a different species
You can't isolate from your pet (Score:3)
They need to be looked after and how do you ask them to leave the room to fill their food bowl or clear out their litter tray? Honestly, some "experts" really do need to come down out of their academic ivory tower occasionally and come say hello to the real world now and then.
Re: You can't isolate from your pet (Score:2)
Right? This is seriously a "we're all in this together" thing, not a "get away from me, you have diseases" thing.
Next, they'll tell you to stop coming into contact with your children.
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Just Grandma? So you don't have any coworkers or neighbors who are over 50? No one you know has asthma or has had pneumonia or bronchitis in the last year or two? No one who is recovering from cancer, who has HIV, or is otherwise immune-compromised? No one at any of the stores you go to is over 50, not even other customers? What a sheltered life you must lead.
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Whoosh.....
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They need to be looked after and how do you ask them to leave the room to fill their food bowl or clear out their litter tray?
You clearly don't have a cat. You can leave them by themselves for a week at a time, just come in once a week, clean out the poop and re-fill the autofeeder. "Isolation" from pets that are being talked about by experts (not sure why you used quotes there) is not having them sit on your lap licking your face.
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This is slashdot where scientists and experts are never wrong. And when they are we just down mod you for pointing it out. Easy as that.
So don't isolate from your pet. Infect it with covid19. That will surely teach those scientists a lesson.
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You seem to think pets are dying from it. Get back to us when you have a clue.
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Have you ever had a cat or dog? How exactly do you plan to isolate them? Are you going to lock them up in a cage and push food at then with a stick? Maybe the bathroom so if they figure out the toilet and sink faucet you'll only have to slide food under the door for a few weeks.
Do you even read what threads you're on?
The concept of isolating from your pet is completely stupid and impossible.
Maybe if you actually had any friends or family they could help you to figure it out...
Idiots (Score:2, Troll)
And tests for pets are not the same as those for people, so no humans missed out on testing because the cats were tested
It's sad that some people are big enough idiots that this has to be explained to them.
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You're modded troll, but it IS sad and that mod must be one of the idiots?
Everyone are so quick to forget (Score:2)
Re:Everyone are so quick to forget (Score:5, Interesting)
"No human in the other cat's household" (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Dear CDC (Score:3)
"The CDC recommends keeping cats indoors. "
If I tried to keep my cat indoors it would send me to the hospital quicker than you can say "Nice Kitty".
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You should keep them indoors because they're significant songbird predators.
Re:Dear CDC (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as they go after mockingbirds I'm cool with it.
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>"As long as they go after mockingbirds I'm cool with it."
I hate to admit it, but mockingbirds drive me insane and I have no love of them. First, the population in my neighborhood over the last 25 years has probably quadrupled for some reason. Next, they are just INSANELY LOUD. They sound like stupid car alarms that scream out random patterns, but for hours-on-end. Why they have to be so loud, I don't know- they mock the song but triple the volume. Next, they have to do this while I am trying to sle
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The Royal Society needs to visit my neighborhood. When owls and hawks started making nests in my neighborhood the cat population crashed and the bird population soared. We watched one of them get eaten in the Douglas fir across the street, after I had already warned its owner.
Does anybody really know anything? (Score:2)
Good luck (Score:2)
Good luck implementing a lockdown on all cats
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Just increase the coyote population, and the free roaming cat problem goes away!
Bats and Cats (Score:2)
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Indeed. Wild bats attack cats, thus infecting them with coronavirus. Then cats come back home.
6 feet? (Score:2)
put dogs on a six-foot leash when walking them, keep them away from other animals
Something tells me that a 6-foot leash will make this hard to accomplish outside.
But they missed the 5G connection... (Score:2, Funny)
1) Cats can be vectors for COVID-19 infection
2) Cat videos are the reason for the Internet's existence
3) 5G Towers transmit data for the Internet
4) Therefore 5G Towers transmit cat videos
5) Cats in the videos can be infected with COVID-19
Therefore, 5G Towers transmit coronavirus! Pitchforks at the ready!
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Sounds logical to me.
SARS-CoV-2, now you've gone TOO FAR! (Score:2)
teh intarwebs will have you scoured from the face of the Earth by this afternoon.
Well, to the level of confidence about the same as your typical Reddit lynch mob.
so, its ok for dogs (Score:5, Funny)
WHO has said that dogs cannot get the virus.
so, dogs are not quarantined anymore.
in other words, WHO let the dogs out
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Funny. But just for the record, dogs can get the virus [archive.org].
6-foot leash (Score:2)
The reason for the recommendation for 6-foot leashes is so that other people can pet the doggos.
"There is no evidence" (Score:2)
Gee that sounds familiar...
"No evidence of human to human transmission."
"Closing your borders is racist."
"Hug a Chinese tourist."
I think I'll stick to the precautionary principle, thanks.
Alright, now I'm pissed... (Score:2)
So even pussy can make us sick?
Enough already. This virus is getting seriously annoying.
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If Slashdot summary English is too hard for you, please read the ADCD release from the second link. It is written in a style that is easier to understand and should make clear all the things you appear to be confused about.
Re:Words in combination dont make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
The Agriculture Department and the C.D.C. emphasized that "there is no evidence that pets play a role in spreading the virus in the United States." Other experts agree that people should not start looking at their cats with suspicion. If anything, it's the other way around.
For instance here, they say there is no evidence that cats play a role in spreading the virus.
Then they say that if anything, its the other way around.
The other way around is that there is evidence that cats dont play a role in spreading the virus. Why didnt they just say that? Because its not true, of course. A bunch of non-committals and double-speak here.
They talk about how you should even avoid your dog if you are sick .. yet they arent saying that you should avoid your dog if its sick.
Meanwhile the prevalent theory is that the virus came from animals. You cant make this stuff up.
The other way around is people spreading it to cats ya dummy. The cats should be looking at you with suspicion.
Re: Words in combination dont make sense (Score:2)
That's a better reading than virii spreading pets. (Score:2)
The other way around is cats looking at people, obviously.
That's a better reading than "... the virus playing a role in spreading pets."
But things like that wouldn't be unheard of, especially in the case of cats. Toxoplasma gondii, a primarily cat-borne parasite, causes behavioral changes in other animals (including people) that it infects. This seems to benefit the parasite by, when it ends up in a mouse, making the mouse more prone to be eaten by a cat and the parasite's offspring infecting the cat. Bu
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I know this is hard to understand, but what they say is exactly right.
human1 -scv2> human2 -scv2> cat1 seems to be possible, (but rare).
-scv2> is for infecting someone with SARS-COV-2.
If the cat played a role in spreading the virus we would have a scenario like this:
human1 -scv2 > human2 -scv2 > cat1 -scvX> cat2 -scvX> human3 -scvY> human4
We would need a infection of cat1 with SARS-COV-2.
Then the virus would needs to be transmissible in between cats.
Then the resulting virus w
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The origin may have been feral dogs eating dead bats.
https://medicalxpress.com/news... [medicalxpress.com]
Scientists have been looking for an intermediate animal host between bats, which are known to harbor many coronaviruses, and the first introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into humans.
Many animals, beginning with snakes and most recently, pangolins, have all been put forth as the likely intermediate, but the viruses isolated from them are too divergent from SARS-CoV-2, suggesting a common ancestor too far back in time—-living
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Other experts agree that people should not start looking at their cats with suspicion.
Cats should always be viewed with suspicion.
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Not sure if you're just a bit simple, of if English is a second language, but the idiom "other way around" is meant to swap two nouns around and invert the verb. E.g.:
You shouldn't be looking at your cat with suspicion. The "other way around" is that your cat SHOULD be looking at YOU with suspicion.
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Don't they always?
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I thought it was more like contempt.
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WRONG ... https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/the+other+way+around [thefreedictionary.com], also the Merriam-Webster website
It means swapping the nouns, nothing else.
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They talk about how you should even avoid your dog if you are sick
No matter how susceptible to illness your dog is, it can still transmit the virus passively. Cough on your dog, virus on the dog, someone else touches the dog, gets infected. If you are sick, you should probably avoid touching anything other people may touch without protection, including dogs.
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If my cats showed symptoms I'd give them cuddles and help them through a period of feeling shite.
Which is exactly what I did when they showed symptoms back in February, just as I was recovering from severe symptoms myself.
No tests though, so could've just been any of the normal winter viruses.
Cat - The other white meat (Score:2)
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Now we get to see who the CHINCOM sick puppet/quislings are here, in the rest of the comments.
No they are all scared of how manly you are.
Careful you don't get ground up into a paste they can take to make their wangs hard though. Sleep tight.
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Your social score might have just crept up a bit though, well done groveller !
With all your anti-China virtue signaling, yours probably wen't up even higher!
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That bat was probably an aphrodisiac. China has an obsession with animal parts in that regard. Rhino horn, bear gall bladder, frogs, snakes, scorpions, you name it.
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You forgot to post your racist screed as Anonymous Coward.
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Indeed. So far I've only seen one 6xxxxx user ID that posted anything worth reading in the last month or two that I've been watching. (although that one was really interesting.)
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Yep, left an X off.
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Then you're old enough to know better. Shame on you.
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"They" being the rightwingnuts who know less about epidemiology than they do orbital mechanics.
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No, it probably came through feral dogs eating dead rats, at least according to the genetic evidence, which I tend to trust more than a random YouTube guy.
https://medicalxpress.com/news... [medicalxpress.com]
"Our observations have allowed the formation of a new hypothesis for the origin and initial transmission of SARS-CoV-2," said Xia. "The ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 and its nearest relative, a bat coronavirus, infected the intestine of canids, most likely resulting in a rapid evolution of the virus in canids and its jump into hu
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No way, I am moving to Canada with my two cats.
In China (Score:2)
So it begins. let's kill all the cats to save ourselves.
I've heard reports that, during the big lockdown in Wuhan, the Chinese branch of an animal-rights organization with a "people shouldn't have pets" agenda spread the rumor that pet dogs were a vector.
The result was that some police went apartment to apartment and threw any pet dogs they found out of upper story windows, to smash on the sidewalk below.
(Seems to me that if the dog was actually infected this would be a very effective way to spread the dise
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answered in the summary, you retard. The tests for felines have nothing to do with either resources or personnel for humans.
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Let's imagine that you're sapient, and capable of counting higher than, oh, six.
So, we need millions of tests for the coronavirus, to deal with the number of people who may have it (actually, we need more than a billion, just for the USA).
Now, even if the cats were using human tests, they'd take maybe a dozen, out of the billion needed, tests. So, the 0.000001% of the tests being used on cats would be completely meaningless....
Never mind that cats don't