Protect furry family from COVID-19 too

CDC offers tips to help keep pets healthy

For many people, the dreariness of staying at home all day and the stress of the economy have been offset by our furry companions.

Cats and dogs are providing countless hours of entertainment and social media fun while we're home. Every day, we see the posts from Yumans online about “furry co-workers” bringing mayhem to otherwise dreary days inside, and for that, we are thankful.

And now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued new guidelines for pets to keep them safe from COVID-19.

The news comes after two house cats in New York tested positive for the disease.

Both cats had respiratory symptoms before they were tested, and one cat's owner had already tested positive for COVID-19.

And in North Carolina, a family dog – a pug – also tested positive after his owner had tested positive.

A tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York City also tested positive, which was the first case in the U.S. of an animal getting sick.

Now, it's important to note that pets are not spreading this to humans. The goal right now is to help keep pets safe and healthy.

The CDC notes, “treat pets as you would other human family members – do not let pets interact with people or animals outside the household. If a person inside the household becomes sick, isolate that person from everyone else, including pets.”

If you have outdoor cats, they should be kept indoors to prevent them from interacting with other animals or people. And if you have a dog, the CDC recommends walking them on a leash, and maintaining at least 6 feet from other people and animals. It's also recommended to avoid dog parks or other places where a large number of people and dogs gather, the CDC says.

If you should get COVID-19, wear a mask around your pet and avoid contact with it – a challenging thing to do. Or, have another member of your household care for the pet until you are better.

The CDC emphasizes that there is no evidence that animals are “playing a significant role in the spread of COVID-19,” and the risk of a pet spreading it to people is low.

The goal here is to protect your pets from getting sick. Pets are family members – so treat them like you would the humans in your life, and help keep them healthy.

DO YOU AGREE WITH THIS OR NOT?

he cure is worse than the disease.” That mantra is rising to an anarchic roar, but let's meditate for a moment on what it really means.

Public figures have actually said that, for the sake of the economy, the most vulnerable group, the elderly, should be willing to accept the risk of dying from the coronavirus. And that sentiment has been legitimized by media commentators of like ideological persuasion.

Then there are the pop-medicine personalities who have tried to comfort us by estimating that, if we get back to business-as-usual, only 2 to 3 percent more people will die and “that might be a trade-off some folks would consider.” But who exactly are the people who will die, and who are the folks who would consider that an acceptable trade-off?

Besides the elderly, there are those with existing medical conditions that make it hard for them to survive an intense illness. Then there are all the poor, who simply don't have reasonable access to health care if they do get sick. (BTW: Do we really know where those scarce essential medical supplies are being distributed these days?)

Most of us saw the report that 10-20% of the COVID-19 cases in this country are the health-care workers who can't avoid contact with it. That disproportionate sacrifice aside, what's going to happen when there aren't enough healthy medical staff to treat the growing number of sick?

Besides the abject unfairness of forcing these vulnerable groups to take the brunt of the disaster, there's also the practical consideration that unnecessarily allowing large numbers of people to get an infectious disease will only increase the likelihood that all the rest of us will get it.

Granted, many people are facing immediate personal crisis, having had their income slashed or ended altogether, and now find themselves in the unaccustomed position of not being able to fulfill basic needs. However, instead of jumping for the quick fix and buying into the convenient lie that the virus is just a hoax, this actually is an opportunity for us to look at the world straight-on for a change, to face the larger issue.

As with the even greater threat of climate change, the root cause behind a pandemic is our unrealistic expectation for how many humans the planet can support on a continuing basis. For both problems, excessive consumption also is a major contributor, as proven by the fact that cutting back on super-heated economic activity, a necessary step