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Corona Virus Now Spreading
- Thread starter Maria Bayote
- Start Date
I thought this was interesting and wanted to share: A tiger at the Bronx Zoo tests positive for coronavirus
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Absolutely. I do worry about the cats. Luckily I live with my bf. But if one of us gets it I expect the other to get it as well. We live in an apartment. I'm really hoping that between the two of us we can manage to keep the cats fed and litter cleaned even if we can't do much else. We're currently on a stay at home order until may but I'll have to make sure to make my usual raw cat food before I have to start going into work again. One of my cats get diarrhea if he's not on raw.
Good on ya. I live with roomies and they are very sweet -- I cat-sat their cat when he was with them (he passed a few years back) but they aren't me.
The tiger and the other cats who are presumed to have it, and the person who gave it to them, are all doing well and expected to recover. We need to get that out there loud and clear.
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I understand that. My bf has evolved into a pretty good cat dad. He even adopted one, she's our third. But I still feel uneasy when I leave them in his care for a few days when I travel for work. He just won't notice the little things like I do!
Well, yes. I just saw the article posted somewhere and how people were quick to spread misinformation and panic.
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Wearing a mask, even a simple one, gives the wearer some protection... but more important, all masks reduce the likelihood that the wearer will infect OTHER people. You might already have the virus, in which case you might be spreading it everywhere you go. A significant percentage of people who get the virus spread it without any symptoms. You can reduce your likelihood of spreading it to others by wearing a mask.
If people in the US can start to wear masks reliably, this will cut down significantly on transmission of virus. It may even be possible to start lifting shelter in place restrictions sooner, helping people to go back to work and helping our economy to recover! Mask wearing is important, and yes, you should do it!
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Okay, I guess I should start wearing one. I didn't know because there is so much information flying around, it's hard to catch what is correct.
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Even if you are not worried about your own health risk, it is still important to do your part to reduce your likelihood of spreading it to others. You may already have the virus, especially if you have been traveling, going to restaurants, and working at a large institution. By wearing a mask, you reduce the chance that you will unwittingly transmit virus to someone else... possibly someone older or with health conditions that put them at much greater risk.
There is a lot of misinformation out there and it IS very confusing! It's best to rely on information directly from a professional.
Here is a great thread on how and why to wear a mask (click "show this thread" to see the entire message):
Here is a great thread on a how well masks do for the general public in practice and why we need to keep their shortcomings in mind:
These are both doctors and I encourage everyone to take to heart what they have to say. They both emphasize that mask wearing helps but is drastically less effective than staying home. (The statistic that the masks we have access to let in 60-97% of viral particles is shocking.) It is not an alternative to social distancing and is not going to cut down on the numbers affected nearly as much as social distancing will.
If a person cannot wear a mask for whatever reason, I do not see this as some egregious moral failing. If you have the option, you should. But, someone who goes out once every 2 weeks to grocery shop and doesn't wear a mask is likely doing more to keep numbers down than someone who goes out every other day with a mask. Washing your hands and staying home are still the best methods to prevent spread.
If you are in the US and would like an ethical alternative to Instacart, I recommend checking out Dumpling. It connects you to personal shoppers in your area that are self-employed.
Here is a great thread on how and why to wear a mask (click "show this thread" to see the entire message):
Here is a great thread on a how well masks do for the general public in practice and why we need to keep their shortcomings in mind:
These are both doctors and I encourage everyone to take to heart what they have to say. They both emphasize that mask wearing helps but is drastically less effective than staying home. (The statistic that the masks we have access to let in 60-97% of viral particles is shocking.) It is not an alternative to social distancing and is not going to cut down on the numbers affected nearly as much as social distancing will.
If a person cannot wear a mask for whatever reason, I do not see this as some egregious moral failing. If you have the option, you should. But, someone who goes out once every 2 weeks to grocery shop and doesn't wear a mask is likely doing more to keep numbers down than someone who goes out every other day with a mask. Washing your hands and staying home are still the best methods to prevent spread.
If you are in the US and would like an ethical alternative to Instacart, I recommend checking out Dumpling. It connects you to personal shoppers in your area that are self-employed.
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That's why it's unfortunate that Trump made that statement about choosing not to wear a mask because he couldn't imagine himself wearing one... he really should try to be a better role model for other Americans!! We all need to start wearing masks when we go out in public, and not worrying about how we look wearing them.
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I also want to clarify something I hear a lot of people saying, which is, "They told us that wearing a mask works better to prevent you from spreading it to other people than it works from keeping you from getting it. Why? Isn't the same amount of virus going in and out?"
The reason they say that is because if you have the virus, you are definitely breathing out viral particles, but if you don't have the virus, you only might be breathing in viral particles. This point isn't really as important to emphasize now, because before we didn't realize that so many people were spreading it asymptomatically or presymptomatically. Now that we do, we should all assume we have the virus and are capable of spreading it.
The reason they say that is because if you have the virus, you are definitely breathing out viral particles, but if you don't have the virus, you only might be breathing in viral particles. This point isn't really as important to emphasize now, because before we didn't realize that so many people were spreading it asymptomatically or presymptomatically. Now that we do, we should all assume we have the virus and are capable of spreading it.
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Oh luckily my company is very proactive so we have been working from home 100% even before the city stay at home order. Been a month now. We stopped hanging out with friends once the restaurants closed for dine in. We don't have family in this state so if we get sick it'll just stay between the two of us.
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Pretty interesting account from a physician who survived the cytokine storm. Minus all the god references.
Edit: Oops forgot the link.
A survivor explains what COVID-19’s dreaded cytokine storm feels like
Edit: Oops forgot the link.
A survivor explains what COVID-19’s dreaded cytokine storm feels like
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Think about wearing a mask as keeping your cooties to yourself.
If everyone keeps their cooties to themselves, then the cooties are not out wandering about to infect other people.
If everyone keeps their cooties to themselves, then the cooties are not out wandering about to infect other people.
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Research on covid in animals. It says that the virus replicates poorly in dogs but quite well in cats.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.015347v1.full.pdf
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.015347v1.full.pdf
Along with the news that cats can get the virus, there's also a report that ivermectin kills the virus in vitro. Revolution (selamectin) is similar to ivermectin, so if your cat does well on Revolution, it's probably not a bad idea to keep them up to date on their dosing.
There are alarming statements of misinformation, misguidance, and over-simplification here that trivializes our individual role as a human being, of ethics, morality, action, and Truth, as well as underestimates or belittles our role as a viable host.
A brief caveat: I've worked and volunteered and studied in human and animal health, social service, welfare, research, conservation studies and programs, genetics, population health, pathobiology, infectious disease, an ongoing, evolving, ever-learning set of passions I pick up and analyze throughout my career and hobbies, hobby being what we do right here, promoting our pets and others, and educating, supporting, and holding one another accountable where we see glaring untruth, immoral action/inaction, or innocent mistake/error in judgement or chaotic circumstance. A GREAT support group, I value, and I've been privy to many, human and animal related.
Let us define "flatten the curve." #flattenthecurve The long and the short of it. Short: we must decrease the rate of newly infected, thus reducing the infected hospitalized being newly admitted, packing patients in like sardines where there is inadequate space, beds, providers, equipment, treatments, circulating air; once the number of individuals infected going IN is LESS THAN the number of individuals going OUT: recovered enough to discharge combined with deceased leaving the hospitals. That peak or crest reached, then our curve, our trend, starts to gradually go down. We thus, flatten that curve.
The peak of that upside-down U, or umbrella or parabola will be lower, a soft speed bump, elongating out months from now, rather than a high arch of massive infected humans at the top of the peak, bringing our hospitals to their knees as the weight, the volume, of human flesh in each facility is just. Too. Damn. Many. Bodies. We drop that arch down by limiting transmission. We limit transmission by staying home. That's it. So simple. Put aside all the other guides and interventions set forth by public health officials and government.
Focus: Just staying home, staying in place, staying put. COVID19 did NOT hop country borders, rivers, neighboring continents, little seas, giant oceans, because it is controlled by a mask, by spraying and wiping everywhere, or because "it just has to run its course and infect us all, then we are immune naturally," so we go about our daily lives, shopping, working, dining, socializing, traveling, and general economic spending to support our local economy, so focused on ensuring economy doesn't collapse; if there is little to no society to support the economy in a short time, those errors in judgement prioritizing economy over society, over public health, over human life, our humanity for one another and ourselves, will be sources of great regret, great tragedy, and a weight none of us want to bear.
Detailed: We, the people, Homo sapien, are a viable, stable host for a Deadly, Indiscriminatory coronavirus known for causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the 2nd of its kind in recent history, BUT is Not limited to Only causing this particular challenging, stripping, undignified, crippling disease process. A process which can lead to destruction of alveoli in the lungs, inability to exchange oxygen with carbon dioxide in our lung tissue, proteinated fluid oozing from our destroyed alveoli into the pleural space (bathing your lung lobes in fluid from within), fluid taking up the space air normally would, so we slowly "drown," entering respiratory failure.
This SARS coronavirus has done this to children, to young, fit, gym-going, clean-living 30 yr olds, to well-controlled diabetics and kidney disease patients, to active seniors, engaged in their community, enjoying retirement, as they deserve, finally. To geriatrics, that soulful, rife-with-oral-history generation we cannot, CANNOT, undervalue or lose to oblivion, to a curse, an enigma, a plague we can Absolutely limit and enable these most high risk, VALUED members of our society to receive the close, quality, dedicated care and nursing needed to survive this challenge.
This coronavirus had the wherewithal, the intelligence, to adapt and mutate itself to jump from one animal, to another species, to YET another species, Humans. SARS-CoV-2 (specific virus causing COVID19) will continue to adapt and morph...it isn't a boring, predictable, species-specific virus. It now has adapted as its 2003 SARS cousin did, from human hosts, to approximately 15% of a population of Wuhan cats studied and antibody tested, indoor owned, as well as stray/shelter cats, to ferrets, with severe effect, as they tend to enter liver failure after respiratory failure with SARS, and very rarely, to 2 dogs.
"To look at transmission, they also placed 3 uninfected cats in adjacent cages. Virus was detected by PCR in 1 of 3 cats and all three developed antibodies against the virus. It was concluded that the virus was transmitted to all three cats, presumably as a result of respiratory droplets moving over a short distance from one cage to the other (just like in people).
Testing was then repeated with younger cats (70 to 100-days-old). The results in the preliminary report are sparse, but they said younger cats were more permissive to infection, with “massive lesions in the nasal and tracheal mucosa epitheliums, and lungs of both cats”. No obvious illness was mentioned, though." "These data suggest that dogs are susceptible to infection but that susceptibility is low and there is less risk of transmission from an infected dog to another dog (or person) compared to ferrets or cats. The researchers did similar studies with pigs, chickens and ducks. None became infected. Pigs are the noteworthy species here since there was some concern about their susceptibility based on genetic analysis of the virus’ receptors. It’s a small study that needs to be replicated but that aspect was encouraging." Food animal populations are being carefully observed and randomly tested through pockets of the population in Wuhan and Hong Kong. Our "One Health" team of veterinary and human health researchers and medical professionals around the world ARE screening samples of a variety of animal populations with antibody tests, monitoring "herd health" closely, and reassure us that, once again in its similarities to SARS coronavirus-1 of 2003-4, only cats and ferrets have been found to be viable hosts, dogs are poor hosts, and other animals are not viable hosts at all, until studies and research yield something new. Dr. Scott Weese DVM, DACVIM, DVSc, is our zoonotic public health expert, a professor of U. of Guelph at Ontario's Veterinary College, consultant for the FDA, and internist and microbiologist sharing most of these findings on a zoonosis public health blog he writes with Dr. Maureen Anderson, DACVIM, DVSc.
SARS-CoV-2 will move through the world population, with unknown long-term aftershocks the Chinese researchers and medical teams are just beginning to understand; permanent lung damage, longer term recovery for months or years to manage dehydration-induced kidney disease and GI inflammation, susceptibility greater to future respiratory infections and pneumonia, compromised immunity, and negative effect on liver and biliary tree from prolonged inappetance and nausea/vomiting. In other words Survival does not equal Cured. Recovering is no the same as Healed. And Respiratory Failure, when we are intubated as our lungs are glass and brick inorganic walls in our chest now, means Death is coming, is irreversible.
Even if we are "just an infected without any symptoms" or asymptomatic infected individual, our health being spared is not our only concern. As we go about our daily lives, our mucous membranes and exhaled air we breathe out are saturated with viral load, millions upon millions of virions shedding and transmitting from our "seemingly healthy appearing, normal" mucous whenever we touch our eyes, nose, mouth, and in respiratory exhalations, 4 to 6 L volume of exhaled air with every breath out, filled, brimming with infectious coronavirus virions.
It lives in those puffs and clouds of our exhaled air for 3 hours. Anyone coming into that "cloud" is at risk of contracting our shed viral load, our virions. Anyone touching the bannister we absently dragged our fingers on after touching our itchy eye, sitting in our chair we just vacated, touched the seat edges or arm rests after reapplying our chapstick, touched a button on an elevator we touched and vacated hours or 2 days ago, could now be infected with OUR shed and transmitted virions. We are responsible for limiting this potential spread, transmission, contagion, by not going to stores daily or even 3x weekly; by not walking into and through public spaces daily, by keeping our hands to ourselves after we surgical scrub wash them before leaving home, clasp them in front of us or in our pockets, to keep ourselves from mucous membrane contact with our face, until we get to our very necessary, absolutely essential goal, such as our pharmacy for life-sustaining/moderating medication; protein source as we've eating everything in the pantry that was a shelf stable staple item.
Or a risky venture out to check on a lone friend or family member quarantined and very ill, taking longer than 3 weeks to recover, cycling back to more bad days than good, wetting themselves they're too weak to rise from bed, dehydration and muscle spasms destroying their appetite and their will to get better. But, they are still less ill than the current patients being admitted into the ICU/ED so they must wait, here, alone, trying to improve, avoiding the ED if at all possible, a war zone of too few nurses and doctors, as they've succumbed, by majority, to their own illness or fatigue. If we all don't slow the rate of infected daily, our hospitals cannot gain some footing, focus on those already hospitalized, make better gains in the improvement, faster. Focus on dedicated nursing, i.e. a caretaker stays with their patient, intensively nursing adequately to keep up with progression of symptoms, easing pain, monitoring vitals and labwork closely, body cooling measures, topical analgesia for painful back, chest/ribs, and legs, sponge bathing, monitoring fluids, intake, output closely.
"A recent paper in Nature Medicine (Leung et al. 2020) showed that surgical masks significantly reduced detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in aerosols from exhaled breath of infected people (see graph below). There wasn’t a significant reduction in virus from larger droplets, which is a bit counter-intuitive, since masks should be better at retaining larger particles." Again, masks mainly help protect others when the wearer is (either knowingly or unknowingly) infected. Those known to be infected of course should not be in the clinic at all, but the concern is there may be more and more people who are unknowingly infected and not showing any signs. Wearing a mask may make such a person less likely to infect others. For people like me who are frequent face-touchers (my own face… not others… just to be clear), there might be some additional personal protection. So, there are some valid reasons to have a mask use policy for situations where people have to get close, BUT masks should never be used as a crutch or a substitute for physical distancing whenever feasible, or proper attention to hand hygiene.
Absolutely, stay home. Only for absolute necessities do we venture out. If not crowded outside, we can still enjoy healthy walks and other outdoor activities, separated by at least 6 feet from others. Most doctors' appointments can be done via telemedicine. If your doctor indicates he wants to see you in office, ask s/he utilize digital technology to visualize you and talk with you, (or your child/baby) instead. Many are uncomfortable at first, if the medical professional has never used it. Trust me, it is a good substitute for waiting in a lobby, entering a small exam room, when most appointments involve talking, not palpating or looking at the patients.
Keep our pets at home rather than get someone else to care for them while we stress, suspect the worst, or learn more of zoonosis with COVID19, even when we suspect we have symptoms or came into contact with a postive COVID19 individual; they need us and we need them now, more than ever. So, love your kitty, and boop its nose.
A brief caveat: I've worked and volunteered and studied in human and animal health, social service, welfare, research, conservation studies and programs, genetics, population health, pathobiology, infectious disease, an ongoing, evolving, ever-learning set of passions I pick up and analyze throughout my career and hobbies, hobby being what we do right here, promoting our pets and others, and educating, supporting, and holding one another accountable where we see glaring untruth, immoral action/inaction, or innocent mistake/error in judgement or chaotic circumstance. A GREAT support group, I value, and I've been privy to many, human and animal related.
Let us define "flatten the curve." #flattenthecurve The long and the short of it. Short: we must decrease the rate of newly infected, thus reducing the infected hospitalized being newly admitted, packing patients in like sardines where there is inadequate space, beds, providers, equipment, treatments, circulating air; once the number of individuals infected going IN is LESS THAN the number of individuals going OUT: recovered enough to discharge combined with deceased leaving the hospitals. That peak or crest reached, then our curve, our trend, starts to gradually go down. We thus, flatten that curve.
The peak of that upside-down U, or umbrella or parabola will be lower, a soft speed bump, elongating out months from now, rather than a high arch of massive infected humans at the top of the peak, bringing our hospitals to their knees as the weight, the volume, of human flesh in each facility is just. Too. Damn. Many. Bodies. We drop that arch down by limiting transmission. We limit transmission by staying home. That's it. So simple. Put aside all the other guides and interventions set forth by public health officials and government.
Focus: Just staying home, staying in place, staying put. COVID19 did NOT hop country borders, rivers, neighboring continents, little seas, giant oceans, because it is controlled by a mask, by spraying and wiping everywhere, or because "it just has to run its course and infect us all, then we are immune naturally," so we go about our daily lives, shopping, working, dining, socializing, traveling, and general economic spending to support our local economy, so focused on ensuring economy doesn't collapse; if there is little to no society to support the economy in a short time, those errors in judgement prioritizing economy over society, over public health, over human life, our humanity for one another and ourselves, will be sources of great regret, great tragedy, and a weight none of us want to bear.
Detailed: We, the people, Homo sapien, are a viable, stable host for a Deadly, Indiscriminatory coronavirus known for causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the 2nd of its kind in recent history, BUT is Not limited to Only causing this particular challenging, stripping, undignified, crippling disease process. A process which can lead to destruction of alveoli in the lungs, inability to exchange oxygen with carbon dioxide in our lung tissue, proteinated fluid oozing from our destroyed alveoli into the pleural space (bathing your lung lobes in fluid from within), fluid taking up the space air normally would, so we slowly "drown," entering respiratory failure.
This SARS coronavirus has done this to children, to young, fit, gym-going, clean-living 30 yr olds, to well-controlled diabetics and kidney disease patients, to active seniors, engaged in their community, enjoying retirement, as they deserve, finally. To geriatrics, that soulful, rife-with-oral-history generation we cannot, CANNOT, undervalue or lose to oblivion, to a curse, an enigma, a plague we can Absolutely limit and enable these most high risk, VALUED members of our society to receive the close, quality, dedicated care and nursing needed to survive this challenge.
This coronavirus had the wherewithal, the intelligence, to adapt and mutate itself to jump from one animal, to another species, to YET another species, Humans. SARS-CoV-2 (specific virus causing COVID19) will continue to adapt and morph...it isn't a boring, predictable, species-specific virus. It now has adapted as its 2003 SARS cousin did, from human hosts, to approximately 15% of a population of Wuhan cats studied and antibody tested, indoor owned, as well as stray/shelter cats, to ferrets, with severe effect, as they tend to enter liver failure after respiratory failure with SARS, and very rarely, to 2 dogs.
"To look at transmission, they also placed 3 uninfected cats in adjacent cages. Virus was detected by PCR in 1 of 3 cats and all three developed antibodies against the virus. It was concluded that the virus was transmitted to all three cats, presumably as a result of respiratory droplets moving over a short distance from one cage to the other (just like in people).
Testing was then repeated with younger cats (70 to 100-days-old). The results in the preliminary report are sparse, but they said younger cats were more permissive to infection, with “massive lesions in the nasal and tracheal mucosa epitheliums, and lungs of both cats”. No obvious illness was mentioned, though." "These data suggest that dogs are susceptible to infection but that susceptibility is low and there is less risk of transmission from an infected dog to another dog (or person) compared to ferrets or cats. The researchers did similar studies with pigs, chickens and ducks. None became infected. Pigs are the noteworthy species here since there was some concern about their susceptibility based on genetic analysis of the virus’ receptors. It’s a small study that needs to be replicated but that aspect was encouraging." Food animal populations are being carefully observed and randomly tested through pockets of the population in Wuhan and Hong Kong. Our "One Health" team of veterinary and human health researchers and medical professionals around the world ARE screening samples of a variety of animal populations with antibody tests, monitoring "herd health" closely, and reassure us that, once again in its similarities to SARS coronavirus-1 of 2003-4, only cats and ferrets have been found to be viable hosts, dogs are poor hosts, and other animals are not viable hosts at all, until studies and research yield something new. Dr. Scott Weese DVM, DACVIM, DVSc, is our zoonotic public health expert, a professor of U. of Guelph at Ontario's Veterinary College, consultant for the FDA, and internist and microbiologist sharing most of these findings on a zoonosis public health blog he writes with Dr. Maureen Anderson, DACVIM, DVSc.
SARS-CoV-2 will move through the world population, with unknown long-term aftershocks the Chinese researchers and medical teams are just beginning to understand; permanent lung damage, longer term recovery for months or years to manage dehydration-induced kidney disease and GI inflammation, susceptibility greater to future respiratory infections and pneumonia, compromised immunity, and negative effect on liver and biliary tree from prolonged inappetance and nausea/vomiting. In other words Survival does not equal Cured. Recovering is no the same as Healed. And Respiratory Failure, when we are intubated as our lungs are glass and brick inorganic walls in our chest now, means Death is coming, is irreversible.
Even if we are "just an infected without any symptoms" or asymptomatic infected individual, our health being spared is not our only concern. As we go about our daily lives, our mucous membranes and exhaled air we breathe out are saturated with viral load, millions upon millions of virions shedding and transmitting from our "seemingly healthy appearing, normal" mucous whenever we touch our eyes, nose, mouth, and in respiratory exhalations, 4 to 6 L volume of exhaled air with every breath out, filled, brimming with infectious coronavirus virions.
It lives in those puffs and clouds of our exhaled air for 3 hours. Anyone coming into that "cloud" is at risk of contracting our shed viral load, our virions. Anyone touching the bannister we absently dragged our fingers on after touching our itchy eye, sitting in our chair we just vacated, touched the seat edges or arm rests after reapplying our chapstick, touched a button on an elevator we touched and vacated hours or 2 days ago, could now be infected with OUR shed and transmitted virions. We are responsible for limiting this potential spread, transmission, contagion, by not going to stores daily or even 3x weekly; by not walking into and through public spaces daily, by keeping our hands to ourselves after we surgical scrub wash them before leaving home, clasp them in front of us or in our pockets, to keep ourselves from mucous membrane contact with our face, until we get to our very necessary, absolutely essential goal, such as our pharmacy for life-sustaining/moderating medication; protein source as we've eating everything in the pantry that was a shelf stable staple item.
Or a risky venture out to check on a lone friend or family member quarantined and very ill, taking longer than 3 weeks to recover, cycling back to more bad days than good, wetting themselves they're too weak to rise from bed, dehydration and muscle spasms destroying their appetite and their will to get better. But, they are still less ill than the current patients being admitted into the ICU/ED so they must wait, here, alone, trying to improve, avoiding the ED if at all possible, a war zone of too few nurses and doctors, as they've succumbed, by majority, to their own illness or fatigue. If we all don't slow the rate of infected daily, our hospitals cannot gain some footing, focus on those already hospitalized, make better gains in the improvement, faster. Focus on dedicated nursing, i.e. a caretaker stays with their patient, intensively nursing adequately to keep up with progression of symptoms, easing pain, monitoring vitals and labwork closely, body cooling measures, topical analgesia for painful back, chest/ribs, and legs, sponge bathing, monitoring fluids, intake, output closely.
"A recent paper in Nature Medicine (Leung et al. 2020) showed that surgical masks significantly reduced detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in aerosols from exhaled breath of infected people (see graph below). There wasn’t a significant reduction in virus from larger droplets, which is a bit counter-intuitive, since masks should be better at retaining larger particles." Again, masks mainly help protect others when the wearer is (either knowingly or unknowingly) infected. Those known to be infected of course should not be in the clinic at all, but the concern is there may be more and more people who are unknowingly infected and not showing any signs. Wearing a mask may make such a person less likely to infect others. For people like me who are frequent face-touchers (my own face… not others… just to be clear), there might be some additional personal protection. So, there are some valid reasons to have a mask use policy for situations where people have to get close, BUT masks should never be used as a crutch or a substitute for physical distancing whenever feasible, or proper attention to hand hygiene.
Absolutely, stay home. Only for absolute necessities do we venture out. If not crowded outside, we can still enjoy healthy walks and other outdoor activities, separated by at least 6 feet from others. Most doctors' appointments can be done via telemedicine. If your doctor indicates he wants to see you in office, ask s/he utilize digital technology to visualize you and talk with you, (or your child/baby) instead. Many are uncomfortable at first, if the medical professional has never used it. Trust me, it is a good substitute for waiting in a lobby, entering a small exam room, when most appointments involve talking, not palpating or looking at the patients.
Keep our pets at home rather than get someone else to care for them while we stress, suspect the worst, or learn more of zoonosis with COVID19, even when we suspect we have symptoms or came into contact with a postive COVID19 individual; they need us and we need them now, more than ever. So, love your kitty, and boop its nose.
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I just wonder, now that the tigers have been tested for COVID 19 although they are recovering, how do those of us who care for feral cat colonies proceed? In my area there are 10 different colonies in a one mile radius due to that hoarding situation I mentioned in my post in the feral forums here. I know these cats eat the smorgasboard and visit the other colonies calling only one place their home base. Could I be carrying the virus and the cats are carrying it to another caretaker. It's hard to not pet the cats when they are tamed (but Mom is deathly allergic) and used to a year of pets and hugs to all of a sudden stop that. Not feasible for everyone (like in my case) to bring the ferals inside.
