Hong Kong warns animal lovers not to obstruct hamster cull

By AFP
Published January 21, 2022

The Hong Kong government is scrambling to cull about 2,000 small mammals -- mostly hamsters -- under its "zero-Covid" strategy - Copyright MIA Recoveries/AFP -

Hong Kong’s government Friday warned local animal lovers not to obstruct its ongoing cull of small animals, a policy triggered when hamsters in a pet shop tested positive for the coronavirus.

The Chinese city adheres to the mainland’s strict “zero-Covid” policy, in which even the slightest sign of the virus is stamped out with contact tracing, targeted lockdowns and long quarantines.

The discovery of Covid-positive imported hamsters in the Little Boss pet store saw roughly 2,000 small pet shop mammals — mostly hamsters, but also rabbits, chinchillas and guinea pigs — culled as a “precautionary measure”, with owners urged to surrender pets purchased after December 22.

But the policy has sparked a backlash, with animal lovers stationing themselves outside the government-run hamster collection facility to dissuade owners from giving up their pets — a move the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department condemned Friday.

“The AFCD demands them to stop such action immediately and return the hamsters taken away,” it said in a statement, adding that police had been notified of the hamster obstructionists.

By late Thursday, the facility said it had received 68 hamsters.

Local TV news Friday showed a police van parked outside the collection facility.

There is currently no penalty for pet owners who withhold hamsters purchased after December 22, but health officials have said Hong Kong has legal mechanisms for enforcing a mandatory surrender.

They also warned of the “increased likelihood” of animal-to-human virus transmission, after finding more Covid-positive cases linked to other local pet shops.

The city’s top microbiologist and government adviser on Covid said the mass cull was needed to “avert disaster”.

“We have reason to believe the source was the warehouse containing more than 1,000 hamsters in close proximity. The virus could multiply via cross-infection and spread to pet shops and other retail outlets,” Yuen Kwok-yung wrote in an article Wednesday.

He added that virus samples found in the pet warehouse resembled the “non-local European Delta variant” — which is now rare in Hong Kong.

Covid-related animal culling remains rare.

Last year, Denmark was criticised for its decision to cull all 15 million of its mink population after some were found to carry a mutated virus variant.

The risk of animal-to-human transmission “remains low”, a World Health Organization official said earlier this week, but is a possibility.

Op-Ed: Grim news – Lions in South Africa and rats in NYC have COVID, spread can loop back to humans

By Paul Wallis
Published January 20, 2022

In a totally unwelcome bit of news, South African research has confirmed the spread of COVID to zoo lions due to human exposure. The lions were seriously ill. In the wild, the spread of the virus could be catastrophic.

This “viral feedback” to animals could be very complex to deal with. If proximity contact with humans is actively contagious to animals, the world has a new, critical, problem which could be unmanageable.

Spread could already be happening. I checked rats+COVID, and, no surprise at all, evidence was found “pointing to infection and mutations” in rats and dogs in New York last year. If rodents can get COVID, it’s a much tougher, truly worldwide, major issue. Rodents are global and can infect just about anything within their proximity. (Well publicized, that bit of news wasn’t. Probably wouldn’t matter if it was. The US is so obsessed with politics that nothing else seems to register.)

In other words, there are many more vectors for the virus to mutate and re-emerge, jumping back to humans. Whether or not this added dimension to the virus had anything to do with the Omicron strain would be hard to prove.

The contagious factor is very important. Carnivores in the wild and rats in cities can’t exactly practice social distancing. The virus could spread through the food chain. It could also create new strains based on new sources of DNA and RNA.

It’s hardly reassuring to know the virus could be branching out to such high-density populations of animals which typically inhabit human environs. If this is the case, we’ve moved on to an imponderable scenario of infection, mutation, and reinfection.

From an evolutionary perspective, the virus has given itself more options for infection by spreading to other high-volume population species. Therefore it can propagate more easily.

One of the imponderables, particularly for the coronaviruses, is that their cross-species infection is literally standard procedure for them. These viruses are highly adaptable, mutate fast, and can move on to new infection options on a routine basis.

The obvious issue is that a multi-species pandemic can also crash critical animal populations. That could easily apply to livestock. It would be extremely hard to manage any sort of immunological process for pigs, sheep, and cattle.

“Herd immunity”, that unspeakably stupid expression, could well be a contradiction in terms. Quite the opposite; the herd could be the best possible vector for the virus. There are lots of infection opportunities in a herd. If so, your food prices can be expected to skyrocket.

Bring in the experts, lose the idiots, particularly the politics.

A crash in the food supply can’t be anything but disastrous. The shambolic response to the human pandemic was bad enough. Millions of dead for the sake of a few self-righteous press releases doesn’t seem to work. Anti-basic hygiene is also not much of a stellar performer.

The politics are far worse than the pandemic. There are no excuses at all for this situation. “Choosing” to be infectious to other people hasn’t helped much, either. It’s as good a way of making sure the pandemic goes on for as long as possible. In this enlightened social environment, irresponsibility rules.

…Now try getting these same idiots to understand something as complex as a crashed or severely compromised food chain. If you think food shortages due to supply chain issues are bad, this can be a lot worse. Whole classes of food may be in serious trouble. You can’t supply food that doesn’t exist.

Expertise, research, and incredible amounts of patience will be required if a food chain infection regime occurs. This is more new territory opened up by the virus. Working management methods will have to be developed.

That can’t happen in the presence of so many ignoramuses in positions of authority.

Let’s try a quiz for politicians:
What, exactly, are you representing? The virus, presumably? …Because you’re sure as hell not representing the best interests of humanity.
Why is it a good idea to have a disease running rampant worldwide? Running out of things to say on all your other total failures?
Who benefits from the pandemic? A useful question. No answers are expected, of course, but surely they’d like to be appropriately thanked?
If you “choose” to infect other people with a possibly fatal disease, why aren’t you in jail? You’re making a choice for other people.
Why is total systemic failure a reason to elect people? I’d love to see the political spin-morticians answer that one.
Do political donors have to be dropping dead before you do your jobs? How unpredictable.

Humanity is its own worst enemy. Tolerating failure simply produces more failure. This severe risk to the food chain is a critical issue that if it happens won’t go away.

Plagues and pandemics never completely wipe out entire populations. Starvation and dislocation of essentials, however, do. Happy?