Sniffles got you down? You need Flu Buddy!
Posted on 10/07/2014 12:26:58 PM PDT by sunmars
The Spanish nurse who became the first outside of Africa to become infected with Ebola has been named along with her husband.
Teresa Romero Ramos and Javier Limon Romero are being held in quarantine in separate rooms at the same hospital in the Spanish capital.
Ms Romero Ramos, 44, from Galicia in northwest Spain, who is one of the medical team that treated two repatriated Spanish priests who died from Ebola, was diagnosed with the killer disease yesterday.
Their identities came out after Mr Romero asked a Spanish animal charity to start a social media campaign to stop health officials putting his dog down.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Sniffles got you down? You need Flu Buddy!
Jerk !
.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ebola+virus+antibody+prevalence+in+dogs+and+human+risk.-a0131127452
“Ebola virus antibody prevalence in dogs and human risk.”
Nah, not fun. And you are right, I definitely misread some of the info at articles I posted and in the original article.
Mea culpa. K?
As if airlines didn't have a reason to support a travel ban to West Africa. They should just halt service on their own.
Someone would need to pay for quarantine and care for the dog until it can be tested to be clean. That would be on the owner of the dog.
Thanks for the link.
The *smart* thing to do would be to quarantine the dog and observe it for 21 days. But the health official wants to look like he’s doing something useful so he wants to kill the dog. The thing is, as I understand it, they can’t kill the dog and then examine it for Ebola, like you would kill an animal and then examine its brain for rabies. The Ebola will not show up in the bloodstream (I think) until it’s symptomatic, so killing it before symptoms appear will tell you nothing about whether or not Ebola can be transmitted easily between humans and dogs. (Which we really do need to know.)
You do realize that pigs really are a problem, right? Unlike humans, Zaire ebolavirus does infect pig upper (and lower) respiratory cells, which means they are capable of spreading the virus through the air much more effectively than humans.
not one single instance of Ebola being caught from a dog has ever been documented.
Not one single instance of Ebola being caught from a bat has ever been PROVEN either. It's been claimed, and speculated, but never shown definitively. The hard evidence for both bats and dogs is similar-- both appear in areas where people get infected, both are asymptotic (no sick/dead bats or dogs), both have specific antibodies to Zaire Ebolavirus. With bats it is as high as 4% with positive antibodies based on a recent study, but no one has done a comparable study on bats or other potential hosts. The difference COULD be circumstantial, the first outbreaks had a common denominator of visits to a fruit bat cave, but after looking very hard, they never found ebolavirus in the guano, or a live virus in the bats. Since then, they have looked very hard at bats, but to date only one group has looked at dogs and that fairly recently. My point is, there are more unknowns than knowns here, and in those cases you have to assess all the available facts and make a conservative hypothesis. The hypothesis that dogs can spread the virus is reasonable, because of the risk, until proven otherwise. We don't understand the mechanism of ebola infection in dogs, so even tests could be misleading- what if the virus cycles from dormant to active? Then you might get a false positive. If ebola comes here in force, I shelter in place and my dog stays with me. If she goes out, I go with her to the fenced yard and that's it.
According to the husband, the poor dog is still inside the house. So, by itself with no one to feed and water or pick up the poo. Hate to say it but the dog would be better off euthanized than come down with Ebola or infect neighborhood dogs and kids and whomever would be taking care of it.
Agreed.
I know that you love your dogs, and don’t think its serious. But even if the dog cannot be infected and spread the virus to humans, he was in contact with the infected nurse. It can be on his fur, face, tongue, paws, etc. and hitchhike to other surfaces, hands, and faces.
If there is any possibility that the dog could transmit the virus then it should be put down, sorry to say. The dog is innocent, yes it is a shame. But careless would be letting it live to infect another dozen victims. It’s basically the same carelessness as “no we are not going to ban flights carrying people who have been in a country suffering an ebola epidemic”.
Also, we know that there is no history of a dog being infected. But they can certainly pass it on by carrying it around on their bodies. Ebola has never been this bad, it’s in at least 3 or 4 continents right now. It doesn’t get better from here. It’s starting to get worse. I personally would rather have the dog put down, then risk it passing it around. This is not the time to put a dogs life above a humans, in fact the rest of the globe. Each victim there is increases the chance of the virus mutating to something even worse and more virulent. Around a 50% fatality rate now. What if it jumped to 75%, and became airborne?
In Reston the strain was airborne. But did not transfer to humans. If it becomes airborne then God help us all. Worrying about a dog when at least half of humanity is at stake is way more dangerous than advocating for the death of said dog.
So, they can’t kill her but will kill her dog.
I do love my dogs, but on the contrary, I think it's very serious. Go-gooder know-nothings are going to panic and start killing them because they don't have a clue.
But even if the dog cannot be infected and spread the virus to humans, he was in contact with the infected nurse. It can be on his fur, face, tongue, paws, etc. and hitchhike to other surfaces, hands, and faces.
What do you think a virus is, radiation? It lives for a certain period of time outside of a host and then dies. If this is the standard by golly you'd better burn down the house and plow up the yard and sidewalk.
If there is any possibility that the dog could transmit the virus then it should be put down, sorry to say.
Well, it would be useful to first know that the virus is present, now wouldn't it? Go back and read the topic of the thread and get back to me.
The dog is innocent, yes it is a shame. But careless would be letting it live to infect another dozen victims. It’s basically the same carelessness as “no we are not going to ban flights carrying people who have been in a country suffering an ebola epidemic”.
There is no documented evidence whatsoever of any human being infected by a dog, period. Even in Africa. Allowing infected people to come streaming in to this country with no precaution combined with freaking out over something that has never infected anyone is maximizing the pain inflicted and does no good in stopping the spread of contagion.
Also, we know that there is no history of a dog being infected.
You haven't read a thing on this and are just winging it, otherwise you would not have written this.
But they can certainly pass it on by carrying it around on their bodies.
Again (and again), there is no documented evidence whatsoever of a human being infected with Ebola by a dog. Not here, not in Spain, not even in Africa. And what's this about carrying it on their bodies?
Ebola has never been this bad, it’s in at least 3 or 4 continents right now. It doesn’t get better from here.
To our knowledge it hasn't and it does not look good, but hope springs eternal.
I personally would rather have the dog put down, then risk it passing it around.
And again, there is no documented evidence whatsoever of a human being contracting Ebola from a dog, not even in Africa.
I have difficulty taking anyone seriously who does not know the difference between "then" and "than," and so my reply to you ends here.
You have a lot to learn before commenting again upon this topic, let alone recommending the killing of dogs out of ignorance.
Londoners killed dogs during the plague in the 1600s — they thought they were the primary hosts for the disease. Too bad, too — many of the dogs were good ratters...
It’s unbelievable that after 400 years, we haven’t advanced our knowledge enough to be able to determine for sure how dogs factor into this plague, or if they do at all.
People just don’t change. Get them scared of something and they go looking for scapegoats. Facts have nothing to do with it.
Behind this all is the fact that Obama is still hungry for a dog dinner, Indonesian style.
On the CDC website: Ebola Virus Antibody Prevalence in Dogs and Human Risk (2005). From the paper:
During the 2001–2002 outbreak in Gabon, we observed that several dogs were highly exposed to Ebola virus by eating infected dead animals. To examine whether these animals became infected with Ebola virus, we sam-pled 439 dogs and screened them by Ebola virus–specific immunoglobulin (Ig) G assay, antigen detection, and viral polymerase chain reaction amplification. Seven (8.9%) of 79 samples from the 2 main towns, 15 (15.2%) of 99 samples from Mekambo, and 40 (25.2%) of 159 samples from villages in the Ebola virus–epidemic area had detectable Ebola virus–IgG, compared to only 2 (2%) of 102 samples from France.
...
We observed that some dogs ate fresh remains of Ebola virus–infected dead animals brought back to the villages, and that others licked vomit from Ebola virus–infected patients.
...
Together, these findings strongly suggest that dogs can be infected by Ebola virus, and that some pet dogs living in affected villages were infected during the 2001–2002 human Ebola virus out- break. No circulating Ebola antigens or viral DNA sequences (tested by PCR) were detected in either positive or negative serum specimens, and attempts to isolate virus from these samples failed. These findings indicate either old, transient Ebola infection of the tested dogs, or anti-genic stimulation.Symptoms did not develop in any of these highly exposed animals during the outbreak, a finding that tends to support antigenic stimulation, asymptomatic, or very mild Ebola virus infection. Wild animals, especially gorillas and chimpanzees, can also be infected by Ebola virus, but the infection is highly lethal and causes huge outbreaks and massive population declines (5,14). Other animals such as guinea pigs (15), goats (16), and horses (17) remain asymptomatic or develop mild symptoms after experimental infection, but Ebola virus infection has never been observed in these species in the wild. Thus, dogs appear to be the first animal species shown to be naturally and asymptomatically infected by Ebola virus. Asymptomatic Ebola infection in humans has also been observed during outbreaks (18) but is very rare. Although dogs can be asymptomatically infected, they may excrete infectious viral particles in urine, feces, and saliva for a short period before virus clearance, as observed experimentally in other animals.
...
Asymptomatically infected dogs could be a potential source of human Ebola outbreaks and of virus spread during human outbreaks, which could explain some epidemiologically unrelated human cases.
So, the takeaway is, dogs can be infected, but don't get sick (at least not very). And, after being infected, they can pass the disease to humans, at least until "virus clearance". It would be interesting to know how long until virus clearance in dogs.
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