Posted on 11/06/2021 8:28:37 PM PDT by lightman
Steve Mohr, a longtime Lancaster County sportsman, recalled taking a call earlier this season — a fellow hunter was on the line, concerned about recent reports that white-tailed deer had tested positive for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
“He wanted to know what to do,” Mohr said Thursday, explaining the hunter was unsure if he should go out and attempt to bag a buck this year.
The story, Mohr said, illustrates the confusion that exists in the county's hunting community following recent news that a favorite local game species may carry the virus.
“Right now the hunters are having the time of their lives. They wait for this period of time to come up every year,” Mohr said, describing excitement for the state’s hunting seasons. “They don’t want to be worried about outside influence.”
But by now, many of them likely have seen the results of a recent Penn State study of deer in Iowa. According to the study, it’s likely that humans are spreading the virus, Sars-CoV-2, to wild deer before it’s then spread from animal to animal.
It’s not clear how the virus would spread from humans to deer, but the results are worrisome, according to one of the study’s leaders Suresh Kuchipudi, associate director of Penn State University's Animal Diagnostic Lab and professor of virology.
That’s because there is a chance that transmission among deer could cause the virus to mutate, potentially into a vaccine-resistant variant that could be spread back to humans, Kuchipudi said.
“That is the biggest concern,” he said, adding that virus mutations are much harder to track in wild animals than they are in sick humans who seek out care at institutions where experts can monitor symptoms and take samples for analysis. “We have no idea about what’s happening in the deer.”
However, he stressed there is currently no evidence that deer are able to transmit the virus back to humans. How the study was conducted
In studying the coronavirus’ transmission in the animals, Kuchipudi said he and a number of colleagues examined samples taken from about 300 deer in Iowa, where researchers had existing relationships with wildlife officials.
The samples were taken from a combination of deer that had been killed in traffic crashes and those harvested by hunters from April 2020 to January 2021, he said. About a third of those samples showed signs of SARS-CoV-2.
Because of their biological makeup, it had previously been believed that the deer would likely be susceptible to the virus and capable of transmission — a hunch that was later confirmed in controlled lab-based studies, according to Kuchipudi.
But prior to the Iowa study, it was unclear if that also was true in the wild.
“Our study showed for the first time that white-tailed deer in the natural setting are getting infected,” he said, explaining that he believes the virus had previously only been detected in captive animals.
And through further analysis, researchers said they were able to scrutinize the positive samples to learn that virus strains found in the deer matched those infecting humans at the same time in Iowa, signalling a likelihood that people transmitted the illness to the animals.
“The fact that we found several different SARS-CoV-2 lineages circulating within geographically confined herds across the state suggests the occurrence of multiple independent spillover events from humans to deer, followed by local deer-to-deer transmission,” reads a statement by Vivek Kapur, professor of microbiology and infectious diseases, published by Penn State.
“This also raises the possibility of the spillback from deer back to humans, especially in exurban areas with high deer densities,” Kapur continued.
On Thursday, Kuchipudi also spoke about that possibility — humans potentially catching the coronavirus from infected deer.
“Theoretically, it can happen,” he said. “We just don’t have evidence that it’s happened thus far.”
If anything is certain, Kuchipudi said it’s the growing need for people to get vaccinated and to follow other health guidelines in an effort to curb the virus’s spread before it has a chance to mutate to a potentially more dangerous or vaccine-resistant strain.
“We have, in a way, a window of opportunity to stop it,” he said.
Recommendations for hunters
It’s expected that deer sampled in other states would show similar results, and there is potential that other animals, including rodents such as mice, could also be susceptible, Kuchipudi said.
Back in August, officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that an analysis of sampled deer had turned up results for Sars-CoV-2 antibodies in multiple states, including Pennsylvania.
“Antibodies are the result of an immune response to infection with a pathogen, and their presence does not necessarily suggest a current infection,” officials said, explaining the results.
Still, USDA officials issued a set of recommendations for hunters, urging them to keep pets and hunting dogs away from wildlife, to avoid harvesting animals that appear sick and to wear disposable gloves when processing animals.
That’s in addition to thoroughly cleaning equipment and surfaces that come in contact with game meat and cooking the meat to a temperature of 165 degrees, among other recommendations.
“There is no evidence that people can get COVID-19 by preparing or eating meat from an animal infected with SARS-CoV-2, including wild game meat hunted in the United States,” officials said. “However, hunters can get infected with many other diseases when processing or eating game.”
Officials at the Pennsylvania Game Commission also issued a news release, assuring hunters that no evidence exists to show that deer can spread the virus to humans.
“There’s nothing to suggest deer hunters or other Pennsylvanians are at risk of contracting COVID from exposure to deer,” Commission Executive Director Bryan Burhans said in a statement. “By taking ordinary precautions when hunting and handling deer, hunters help to reduce any disease risk.”
No rule changes for captive deer farms
In Pennsylvania, a total of 435,180 deer were harvested in the 2020-21 season. A Game Commission spokesman did not answer a request for estimated, statewide white-tail deer population numbers.
The state also permits captive deer farms, including several dozen in Lancaster County, which are regulated by the state Department of Agriculture. On Thursday, a department spokeswoman said officials are aware of the Penn State report, and applaud researchers for the study.
Currently, it has not influenced department rules or regulations, she said.
“There are no new regulations for deer farmers tied to COVID-19. Based on the available information to date, the risk of animals spreading COVID-19 to people is considered to be low,” she said. “There continues to be no evidence that animals, including deer, are playing a significant role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to people. Further studies are needed to better understand the exact method by which human to-deer transmission is occurring, but this study further illustrates that human and animal health are inextricably linked.” Archery season underway
This year, archery season is already underway, and Troy Bair, a local deer processor, said Thursday that more than 300 animals had already been brought to his shop, Bair's Deer Processing, in West Donegal Township.
So far, Bair said he hasn’t interacted with a single hunter who’s mentioned anything about deer possibly infected with the coronavirus.
“I have not heard about it from anybody, to be honest with you. I’m a little skeptical about it.
I’d really need to see some real evidence,” he said, expecting hunting season to continue as usual. “I really don’t see anything changing here at all. I anticipate a busy year.”
In northwestern Lancaster County, Mohr, a Conoy Township supervisor and former member of the Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners, remained skeptical, too.
“It’s sort of like politics because if you don’t have the time to dig into it, you only know what's being told to you,” he said, guessing the issue won’t discourage hunters from killing deer.
“Why would you try to ruin somebody's fun by even mentioning COVID at this time,” Mohr said. “I would tell hunters to have a great time, don't worry about things you can’t control. Go out, have fun and most of all come home safe.”
...and start the theory/lie that “Covid” can be transmitted from humans to animals
I don’t know how they could have caught it from people. In our neighborhood, the deer have been very strict in there social distancing from people.
Now my cat does sometimes mingle with them...
That must be it People->Cats out killing birds and chipmunks->Deer. Those poor deer never had a chance!
Science!
I have a solution. The only way we can end this is the Mandate every forest creature get a Covid vaccine and booster. Then, and only then can we get back to normal.
It’s a simple process where we just spend $17 trillion to develop a vaccine, and higher a fully vaccinated federal workforce of thousands of employees to go through the woods and track down every field mouse, deer, mountain lion, etc. And jab them. If some of these people get mauled by a black bear and killed, will just simply blame it on Covid and put the death down as a Covid death And blame the unvaccinated for it.
My advise to the Lancaster County hunter worried about deer having COIVD and what to do about it.
Well, here’s my advise: “Don’t approach it from the rear” also known as the Peter Buttigieg approach to hunting.
Can you say, “gain of function”?
Major auto insurers would love to have a massive culling of the deer herd.
They allegedly introduced coyotes into the NE US...
Deer Season = Redneck Ramadan
Looks like Tricksy took the idea of a petting zoo a bit too far.
How exactly did humans infect deer?
A deer has enough brains to tan its own hide.
This can be solved simply. Mandate masks for all deer. And boosters.
They allegedly introduced coyotes into the NE US...<<<
its not “allegedly”..they did in Maine...it was considered a “study” and I met some of the college kids that were tracking a pair of them via telemetry collars as “work study” back in the mid 70s ..Now Maine is over run by them...but you wont find that minor “study” anywhere nowadays...it was “discontinued”....
No cows (they fart and make methane, a greenhouse gas), no pigs or chickens (they also produce methane), no fish or shrimp (we are pillaging the seas), no farmed freshwater fish (they use grain needed for biodiesel), no hunting because deer and mink have the coronavirus, but hey, we can eat roaches because they can propagate on human feces!
Oh, but “elites” can still get a prime steak because they paid their carbon offsets with our tax dollars.
.... Any chance that COVID will now be passed to Livestock on our farms and ranches???? ..... Nawwww that would way be too far fetched .....
“He wanted to know what to do,” Mohr said Thursday, explaining the hunter was unsure if he should go out and attempt to bag a buck this year.
Something about this narrative doesn’t pass the smell test.
It sounds just a little too convenient and fabricated.
It sounds like one of those leftist daydream scenarios where everyone is asking the authorities what to do and for permission to do it.
It’s just too convenient, too neat and tidy.
It's pretty unclear to me, too. They are supposed to be shooting deer - not hugging them.
No, that’s CWD, which is actually terrifying.
Re: 31 - I’d want to see that study.
Coyotes were moving into the NE United States in the early 1900s, largely as a result of land use changes and apex predators such as wolves being depopulated.
Absurd. Research indicates that the chances of Covid transmission from random contact outside is virtually zero.
"...as Dr. Muge Cevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews, said. In truth, the share of transmission that has occurred outdoors seems to be below 1 percent and may be below 0.1 percent, multiple epidemiologists told me. The rare outdoor transmission that has happened almost all seems to have involved crowded places or close conversation. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/briefing/outdoor-covid-transmission-cdc-number.html
A (Oct 29, 2020) Massachusetts report on clusters found that household transmission was at the center of the vast majority (almost 94 percent[83]
Thus the likely explanation for virus spreading from humans to deer is that this is due to hunters engaging in close conversation with deer, likely in crowded places. /sar
So we hunters need to stop getting within 6 feet of deer I guess. Oh and wear a n95 mask to ensure we don’t give it to the deer. For an aerosolized virus, one likely spread purposefully on the world, let it destroy every single vestige of freedom and sense of enjoyment.
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