North Carolina Pug Tests Positive for Coronavirus, Could Be First Infected Dog in U.S.
A family pug in North Carolina may be the first dog in the U.S. to test positive for the novel coronavirus, according to Duke University researchers, as CNN reported.
The dog belongs to the McLean family in Chapel Hill, NC, who participated in the Duke University study looking at possible treatments for COVID-19. The virus also infected three of the family members: Dr. Heather McLean, Dr. Samuel McLean and their son Ben McLean. Their daughter, Sydney McLean, never showed signs of infection. The family members submit nasal swabs and blood samples weekly.
The researchers also collect samples from the family pets. Of the family pets tested, Winston, who is 2, was the only one to test positive. Both Otis, 13, the older of the McLeans's two pugs, and Mr. Nibs, a 12-year-old tabby cat, tested negative. The family's lizard was not tested, according to The New York Times.
"To our knowledge, this is the first instance in which the virus has been detected in a dog," said Dr. Chris Woods, the principal investigator on Duke's Molecular and Epidemiological Study of Suspected Infection study, in a statement, as TIME reported. "Little additional information is known at this time as we work to learn more about the exposure."
The family said the dog's symptoms lasted only a few days and were mild. The dog was sluggish, sneezing and breathing heavily. Most telling of all, they said, he didn't finish breakfast one morning, as The New York Times reported.
"Pugs are a little unusual in that they cough and sneeze in a very strange way," said Heather McLean, a a professor of pediatrics at Duke University School of Medicine, to local news WRAL. "So it almost seems like he was gagging, and there was one day when he didn't want to eat his breakfast, and if you know pugs you know they love to eat, so that seemed very unusual."
McLean's son Ben told WRAL that "(The dog) licks all of our dinner plates and sleeps in my mom's bed, and we're the ones who put our faces into his face. So, it makes sense that he got (coronavirus)."
The researchers noted that the dog, Winston, had trace amounts of the virus, meaning he was unlikely to spread it.
"His (Winston's) amount of virus that we detected was very low, suggesting that he would not be a likely mechanism or vector of transmission of virus to either other animals or ... to humans in these households," said Woods, as CNN reported.
Experts have said that there is no evidence that pets can transmit the virus to people, and that people should not worry about giving the virus to their pets, according to The New York Times. However, if Winston's case is confirmed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it will raise questions about animal susceptibility to coronavirus.
Dr. John Howe, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association, told The New York Times that he was not alarmed by Winston's positive test, noting that just because a nasal swab test showed exposure did not mean the virus was in his bloodstream.
"I don't believe he was truly infected — you would need to do an antibody test," he said, adding that it is important that people provide their pets with love and care. "Your pets are not going to catch it from you."
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The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>By John R. Platt
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