CORONA VIRUS PANDEMIC EDITION
These days of myriad, progressing and conflicting COVID-19 articles, blog posts and news releases should be the stuff on which a curation business thrives. The AHD team will do our best to provide factual SARS-CoV-2 material that supports our objective to focus on sharing actionable information in the context of how animal health pros live, work and contribute to society.
The posts in this Bulletin edition all deal with challenges of meeting a pandemic head-on and outpacing its ability to replicate and spread. Animal health pros remain in a unique position to lead during this time. Why? Because, collectively we have experience proactively managing diseases. Our careers encompass prevention: one individual animal or location at a time or recovering from a prevention failure.
Been there. Stepped in it. Wiped it up.
For most of five decades I have been involved with animal diseases on the loose, sometimes firsthand. Those of my generation remember the days of rapidly spreading parvovirus in dogs, distemper being its predecessor. Veterinarians, some whose careers were made managing hog cholera, came to the aid of our canine companions with geographic separation and population medicine tenets in the 1970’s. Rabies has required centuries of prevention activities but still exists in wildlife, feral dogs and feral cats.
More recently, swine veterinarians learned to apply population-based, preventative management and medicine seeking to control pseudorabies, PRRS and PEDV, and are currently seeking solutions for African swine fever. Similarly, bovine veterinarians still wrestle with BRD and apply management, vaccination and pharmaceutical interventions. Poultry veterinarians worked diligently on the H7N9 strain of bird flu to avoid it becoming a One Health pandemic. Leptospirosis remains a zoonotic risk to keep in check.
Not all animal diseases qualify as pandemic. However, they demonstrate where the experiences of animal health pros are well-suited to add perspective, leadership and calming to the current SARS-CoV-2 situation.
Source: Animal Health Digest: Search results for: Covid-19. Link. Search results for: pandemic. Link.
INSIGHTS: When I arrived for a doctor’s appointment this week, a security guard and RN met me at a new disinfecting station. The RN screened me with questions, asked me to use hand sanitizer and offered a paper towel for touching elevator buttons and door handles. When I asked about her coronavirus training, she was notably uninformed and had no concept of coronaviruses in animals.
I shared our post, COVID-19 could be lemons or lemonade < link >. She expressed true relief that so much was already known about beta-coronaviruses. I passed her as I left the clinic and she thanked me again, saying she had already shared the post with several of her nursing colleagues. The entire exchange took less than two minutes.
We CAN make a difference!