Faithful asked:
Quote:
I would like to know why ferrets and cats and whatnot are being tested for H1N1 while our children are denied the test?
Perhaps I can try to give an answer. Dr. Niman can correct it if I am wrong.
People are interested in knowing whether or not vaccine is reaching at-risk populations (as defined by the CDC) before others like hockey players, Goldman-Sachs, CitiGroup employees, county health employees who don't interface with the public, etc. If some groups are "jumping the queue", we may be outraged. I think what you are saying is that if swine flu tests are not being done for most people, testing a pet cat is like placing a higher value on a cat than a child, and that seems wrong.
However, it is very important to know when viruses are "jumping species". There should have been more surveillance testing of pigs and poultry raised as farm animals on an ongoing basis (hindsight is easy). Then researchers would be more certain where h1n1 originated and when it jumped species to humans.
After h1n1 was widely circulating, reports emerged about h1n1 virus in pigs on farms and at fairs, and in turkeys in Chile and Canada. Then there were reports about ferrets used as test-subjects for flu, and then reports about pet ferrets contracting flu.
When a family brought their sick cat in to the vet, he ruled out some likely cat illnesses and said that this cat's symptoms didn't look like typical cat pneumonia, but knowing that the family had been sick with the swine flu, it was logical to wonder if the cat might be infected. It is of value to know what species of animals can contract flu and whether it passes easily between them. What if we thought that we are approaching a level of herd immunity, based on the percentage of people who have either had the swine flu or received a vaccine, and never realized that it could spread efficiently among cats, dogs, pet birds, who knows? I am in favor of some surveillance testing like this vet did in order to find out.
From this NY Times account:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/0 ... swine-flu/Quote:
….the cat arrived at the veterinary school, where he was seen by Dr. Jergens, a small animal specialist and immunologist. Upon examination, it appeared the cat had a respiratory condition, so Dr. Jergens performed a bronchial lavage, injecting fluid in and out of the lungs to collect cells to determine what was making the animal sick.
“It didn’t reveal anything that was consistent with what we typically see with pneumonia in a cat,” Dr. Sponseller said.
Although cats can contract flu from birds, this cat never left the house and was never exposed to any other pet. At that point, it occurred to the veterinarians that since the family members had been recently ill, they might be seeing a case of flu transmitted from human to cat. The school is the site of a major diagnostic lab, so the veterinarians were able to test the cat and quickly confirm he had H1N1, a finding that was later confirmed by additional testing by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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