Today, Explained - Animals catch Covid-19, too

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

In the fourth of our five-part series, “You, Me, and Covid-19,” a reminder that we’re not the only animals who got Covid-19 this year. Science writer David Quammen explains why our health and theirs are intertwined. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA.

BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Brian Resnick, you're a senior science reporter at Vox. We're wrapping up the year talking about how COVID-19 has changed our lives in our series,

You, Me, and COVID-19. But we've spent such little time talking about how COVID-19 affected the animal world. I thought we'd sneak in an episode for them. What do we know about animal infections, Brian? So yeah, we know like a wide array of animals can get infected with varying levels of illness. And we know some animals don't. And you know, that's good. But there's also a bigger picture here. And, you know, it's about how, like, this pandemic happened in the first place. And, like, the consequences of viruses that can jump between animals and humans.

And, you know, how they really cause long-term problems, both in the animal world and also, you know, in our human world. Well, let's talk about the dangers therein. And let's talk about the animals that can and cannot get it, starting with those who can't. Which are the super animals out there? Well, I don't know if they're super animals, but like they're lucky in this regard. And we're lucky in this regard too,

that some common barnyard agricultural animals don't get COVID, or at least scientists don't think they do, like chickens and pigs. And it doesn't seem like cattle are all that susceptible, although I'm told there needs to be some more research there. And that's really good news because, you know, these animals are kept in farms, are kept, you know, in varying conditions. Some are more closely packed together than others. Like, usually, like when there's not a coronavirus pandemic,

a lot of people worry about flus starting out on farms, starting in chickens or pigs and then jumping to humans. So that's one piece of good news that some of these common animals that are kept in agriculture are actually not going to be reservoirs of this disease. Let's talk about some of the animals that can get it. Tiger at the Bronx Zoo has tested positive for coronavirus. I mean, we heard about some tigers at the Bronx Zoo earlier this year. What actually happened there? Yeah, it's believed that the tigers got COVID from people, from, you know, their handlers and all that. And I think the Bronx Zoo reported some tigers with a little bit of a tiger cough.

A tiger cough? What about other animals that weren't at the Bronx Zoo? Well, cats. And dogs. There have been some survey work of cats and dogs that have come into veterinary clinics, and researchers have found that they have tested positive for antibodies that react with SARS-CoV-2, this virus that causes COVID-19. So, you know, it's not a lot of cats and dogs, I'm told, and like cats are more susceptible than dogs, but it does seem possible for a human to give one of their pets COVID. And then, you know, from there, like I was told, like, it's not the case that like pets are then giving COVID back to other humans. Like that does

not seem to be happening, but it's just like, you can infect your cat. And actually one veterinarian I was talking to was like, she really wants her colleagues in the field to know that if you're seeing a cat at a clinic, or if you're doing dental work on a cat, like you really need to wear PPE and have to put your mask on. You know, the cats, like there hasn't been a documented case of cat to human transmission, but it's not unthinkable. And dogs too. Was there some back and forth on dogs? I remember hearing that dogs couldn't get it and now you're saying they can. Yeah. So one veterinarian out of Tufts University has been running this survey work of when animals come into their veterinary clinic, they test them.

They test them for both active live virus and also for antibodies to see if the animal had been exposed. And what they're finding is like not a lot of dogs, it's like two, 3% of like all of the animals that come into the clinic will be seropositive, which means they have the antibodies, but not live virus. And he also said that it's not like a lot of people are bringing in cats and dogs and saying, oh, my cat is sick, you know, with COVID. Like they're bringing them in for like routine things or, you know, with COVID. Like, they're bringing them in for, like, routine things or, you know, just anything. And there's not a lot of evidence that, like, these animals are getting, you know, visibly sick. There has been some evidence of cats getting sick. Like, I saw something about,

like, at least one cat having, like, gastrointestinal issues because of COVID. But, like, very mild illness in cats. And, like, not a lot of, like, I don't think, I'm not even sure like illness has been documented in dogs. It's just been documented that dogs could potentially, you know, be infected a little bit without necessarily getting sick. So do we know if any dogs or cats have died from COVID-19? I certainly haven't seen a mortality count on, you know, domesticated animals. No, I don't think any cats or dogs have died of COVID-19. But, you know, there are animals that can get sick and even die from COVID-19.

And this is what happened with the mink farms in Denmark. It was like a wave passing through the stables. It began at one end with the animals sneezing and losing their appetite, and it kept spreading. And also, like, wherever mink are around the world, there have been outbreaks of coronavirus among them. Remind people who don't know the mink very well what a mink is. Yeah, so a mink is like this ferret-like creature.

They're often raised in captivity for their fur. They're very soft. And on these farms, they were getting sick and also dying of COVID-19. And I think that's partially a good reason why this became big news, because authorities and farmers noticed these mink dying and then started to check and then noticed that this virus had infected them. And also there was potential, and I think a few instances, of the virus jumping from the mink back into humans. And there was some evidence that not only were the mink getting infected, but the mink in these farms in Denmark, they were also, the virus was mutating in them, which is a

scary word that doesn't necessarily mean, like, end of days is coming. Like, the virus changes all the time. But there were concerning changes in the virus that, like, maybe, perhaps, it could be counterproductive when it comes to a vaccination campaign that, like, maybe the virus has changed a little bit and, you know, a vaccine wouldn't be as effective. So that's why, in Denmark, authorities decided to cull the mink, like, a vaccine wouldn't be as effective. So that's why in Denmark, authorities

decided to cull the mink, like millions of them, to kill them. Denmark has announced it will eliminate the country's entire population of farmed minks after mutated coronavirus strains were reported among the animals. More than 15 million. They killed millions of mink? Yeah, they ordered the destruction, the death of millions of mink. Wow. Have other animal communities suffered like that from this virus? Not in as dramatic of ways. But, you know, mink aren't just in captivity.

They're wild mink. And actually, just recently, the USDA, they confirmed a case of COVID in a wild mink outside of a mink farm in Utah. Scientists have found the first case of COVID in wild animals. It happened here in Utah, too, Share Park. Nothing that we'd like to hear there. What's going on in the Breaking News Center? It's these mink. We've talked about them before. So the USDA was really clear and forceful in saying,

like, this is not necessarily indicative of, like, a larger outbreak necessarily indicative of a larger outbreak in wildlife or a larger outbreak in wild mink in Utah. But certainly not a good sign that perhaps this wild mink caught COVID from the farm, from wastewater or from runoff from the farm. Or maybe it's not even clear how this wild mink got infected, but, you know, got infected and then went back into its wildlife where authorities, I guess, picked it up and tested it and got a confirmed case. And, you know, this is kind of like the bigger picture fear and also like thing that veterinarians and scientists really want to be vigilant about. Because if the virus gets into wildlife, like, that's

how this pandemic began. That's how this pandemic started, from a rare event that actually scientists don't even still understand how exactly, like, they know originally this was a bat virus, but, you know, they don't know exactly how this got to humans, you know, the steps it took. And so whatever happened with the beginning of this pandemic was like a rare thing. But, you know, rare things can be devastating. After the break, a reminder that this all started with the animals. The other animals, not us, not cats, bats.

You know what I mean? More in a minute. It's Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family. And Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it.

You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday. And she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together

and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. checkout. That's A-U-R-A frames dot com promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays.

Terms and conditions do apply. My name is David Quammen. It's an Ellis Island version of a Norwegian name. And I am an author and journalist focused mostly, but not entirely, on science. David's had a very busy year, mostly because of a book he wrote almost a decade ago. I published a book back in 2012 called Spillover, Animal Infections and the next human pandemic. And in that, I predicted, thanks to scientists who were predicting, that the next big pandemic might well be caused by a coronavirus coming out of a wild animal such as a bat infecting a cluster of people in Wuhan, China.

We're going to begin here with the outbreak of a mystery virus in China that now has the World Health Organization on edge. At least four people have died and hundreds more are sick, though there are concerns five times as many people could be infected. I think it was January 13th when I got an email from a list server that I belong to and it said, oh, that abnormal pneumonia in Wuhan, China, it's caused by a novel coronavirus. The fears around this new virus is said to be a bit like pneumonia. They're calling it coronavirus and affecting China. As soon as I saw the word coronavirus,

I thought, hmm, this could be something big. This could be it. That could turn into a pandemic, a global disease catastrophe. After everything we've learned and everything we've been through, do we know without any doubt that this is actually what happened here, that some coronavirus jumped from animal to human?

Yes. This virus, as precisely identified from its genome, has never been seen in humans before. That's why it's a novel coronavirus. Everything comes from somewhere, and viruses come from cellular creatures, animals, plants, fungi, bacteria. Almost certainly it comes from an animal

because we're animals. The viruses that infect us mostly come from animals. What that animal was that was carrying it, we don't know with absolute certainty, but we know with a high, high, high degree of confidence because this virus closely matches viruses that have been found in bats. The World Health Organization says an animal is probably the source of this new virus. That's because a coronavirus found in bats shares 96% of its genetic sequence with COVID-19. So what we found is a cousin of the precursor to this virus.

That's what we know. Everything else is things that we're learning now or speculation. Do we know how exactly a virus that may have existed in this bat for millions of years found itself to some wet market in China, which is, you know, the scene we've heard over and over of where this virus originated. No, we do not know that. And furthermore, Sean, we now recognize that this spillover, that's when the virus passes from its non-human animal host into its first human victim, that almost certainly did not occur in the Wannan seafood wholesale market

because re-examining the early data of the 41 earliest cases that were recognized in Wuhan, China, people noticed that not all of those cases were associated with the Wannan market. And the very earliest case, a person who was hospitalized for what proved to be COVID on December 1st, that person had no known exposure to the Huanan market. And what that implies strongly is that this virus was circulating in the city of Wuhan from person to person in November or earlier of last year, of 2019, and then probably a human and not a wild animal carried it into the Wanan market. And because the Wanan market is crowded and the aisles are narrow, that became a super spreader event. So it spread from one human, probably,

to many humans in that market. But where that first human got infected, we don't know. Will we ever know when that spillover event happened? Who patient zero was? The frustrating fact is that we may not. There's a very good chance. We will never know the details of the spillover and the identity and the circumstances of patient zero. But we don't know that about HIV. We never

know that about most of the serious influenzas. We have no guarantee that with whatever amount of effort is put into scientific investigation in central and southern China, we have no guarantee we'll ever find that out. But we'd like to. You know, maybe there was a man in southern China who was shoveling up guano in a cave to put on his vegetable garden. And while he was shoveling up guano in the province of Yunnan somewhere, he inhaled powdered bat guano that contained this virus. And he became patient zero. And then he spread it to his wife and she spread it to her sister and that person spread it to someone, oh, who happened to be traveling up to the city of Wuhan in Hubei province. That is a possibility. But that's just a scenario I've made up. We don't know.

Do we need to know that piece of information to move on not not only scientifically, but even emotionally from this year we've had. It would be very important if we could know. Why? The main reason is because it will help us to protect ourselves from other spillovers of this virus again, or of other viruses similar to this that may not be susceptible to the vaccines that we're creating right now. There are many other coronaviruses living in bats around the world, including in southern China. To understand the spillover moment, what sort of an interaction occurred, will help us take precautions against that happening

again with a new virus that we have to deal with all over. Would it change much? I know it could be useful for science, but it isn't like we're going to have some sort of eureka moment and humans are going to stop interacting with animals or shoveling up bat guano or heading into, you know, forested areas and maybe deforesting areas where there's tons of wildlife. Like, it isn't going to change human behavior, it feels like. Well, it's changed human behavior in the last year. Our behavior is very different. And the question is whether there are any permanent changes that we can make in our behavior. This is not something that just happened to us. This is something that resulted from things that we humans

do. And it's not just somebody digging guano in China or capturing a bat and taking it to a market. It's everything that we humans are doing that draws resources from the natural world at an unprecedented scope and pace. It causes disruption. And while bringing resources to us brings viruses, new viruses to us. There are other places where people are doing things that are not necessary for survival and for subsistence. Can we change those things? Yeah, China has already changed the regulations governing wet markets, wild animals coming to wet markets. They've changed the regulations protecting pangolins, who are somewhat implicated as a possible bit player in this story. They've made changes in their traditional Chinese medicine encyclopedia.

We can make changes. We can make individual changes and we can make collective changes of governance. And what should we take away from this year about our relationship with animals? Well, the biggest thing that has been driven home is something that's obvious and goes back 150 years to Charles Darwin publishing On the Origin of Species and

delivering to us a number of scary, wonderful truths, the darkest of which was that we humans are animals. We're not separate from nature. We're not above it. We're part of nature. That is something that everybody sort of knows, but most people forget about and ignore. But now that we have a disease, that's an animal disease that's killing millions of people,

it's a salubrious reminder of the unity of nature and the fact that we're just one part of it. As long as we live drastically out of balance with nature, there will be events that knock our civilization for a loop. That'll happen. It'll continue to happen. David Quammen's 2012 book that ended up being about 2020 is called Spillover, Animal Infections, and the Next Human Pandemic.

I'm Sean Ramos-Verm. This one's called Today Explained. The team includes Will Reed, Amina Alsadi, Halima Shah, Muj Zaydi, and Noam Hassenfeld, who drops a beat here and there. The rest of our beats come from the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Extra help this week from Bird Pinkerton, Lauren Katz, Christina Aminashan, Paul Mounsey, and Cecilia Lay, who's also our fact checker.

Afim Shapiro is the show's engineer. Golda Arthur is our supervising producer. And Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts. You can get in touch with the show on Twitter. We're at today underscore explained. I'm at ramasfirm. Email works too. We're todayexplained at vox.com.

You can find out more about our You, Me, and COVID-19 series at vox.com slash you, me, COVID-19. Today Explained is part slash you, me, COVID19. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Dave, I think that was all I have. Thank you so much. The only thing I'd add is that the world would be a better place if we had more Tamil chefs around the world so that we could all be vegetarians. I'm a vegetarian tomorrow if I have a Tamil chef.

The question is, you know, do you have access to the spices? Yeah, you're right. In Bozeman, Montana, not easily. I want to be like Paul McCartney and have a personal chef, but I want him or her to be Tamil. Well, I can't argue with the fact that the world would be better if we all had Paul McCartney level personal chefs who were Tamil. No arguments there, Dave.