Fear! Your! Cat! A Parable of Fear-Mongering, Disinformation, and Stupidity
Chronicling the decline of 'journalism', tabloid/legacy media outlets, and, of course, respectable Science™ outlets and 'experts™' one catastrophic pathogen at a time
And now this happened, courtesy of tabloid Heute, which ran the below snippet on 25 Dec. 2023 [source]; translation, emphases, and bottom lines mine.
As an extra Christmas task, see if you can spot the analogies—and, of course, the blind spots—with respect to ‘the novel Coronavirus’.
Cat Owners Beware: Feline Coronavirus Mutates and Kills Thousands of Cats
An aggressive mutation of the feline coronavirus is on the rise in Cyprus and also in Great Britain.
‘Feline infectious peritonitis’, better known by the abbreviation ‘FIP’, is one of the most common causes of death in cats [common you say, like, huhum, the common cold or influenza-like illnesses?] This treacherous disease is triggered by the ‘feline coronavirus’, which recently mutated and is said to be much more aggressive [I call hearsay on this one unless we roll out lockdowns for kittens, mandatory masking, and, of course, PCR testing]. In Cyprus, thousands of animals have already died from the pathogen in 2023 [far away place but vaguely known to Western readers, like, say, ‘Bergamo’; insert Chamberlain quote about Hitler and Czechoslovakia, if needs be].
Spread Cannot be Prevented
The new virus has been spreading in Great Britain since October, which is why it is assumed that imported cats from Cyprus brought the virus with them [it’s these evil, dastardly foreigners that heinously brought the ‘new virus’ with them; what’s the protocol for animal imports from other countries, like the EU?] It is obvious why the new mutation was able to spread so quickly in Cyprus: many street cats live there, comparable to the population of stray dogs in eastern countries. Animal lovers like to bring such animals with them on vacation [go for an all-inclusive vacation, bring a few stray animals: why hasn’t anyone mentioned veterinary regulations so far?] So far, no case of the new variant has been reported in Germany, but this is likely only a matter of time [oh, watch out, ‘cases’ of ‘new variants’—wasn’t it a ‘new virus’ at the top of the paragraph? Oh, my, what’s the difference, eh?]
The new virus ‘FCoV-23’ [which will trigger the dangerously, cold-like ‘nCoV-ih23’ (novel Coronavirus-in humans 23) disease range of ill-defined symptoms; pronounce it ‘Ko-wee23] is likely to be a mixture of the ‘feline’ and ‘canine’ coronavirus, which can occur in dogs [watch out when it’s raining cats and dogs, for the bigger ones might seriously impair road conditions and are said to have scratched and torn umbrellas, too]. According to studies, the mutation unfortunately triggers the fatal FIP disease much more often. Since the only drug available here so far can only be obtained via detours and very expensively, many cats still die from it in Austria.
Science (the journal) Strikes Baaaaaaack
Apologies for the extensive commentary in the above piece, but it’s too painfully stupid.
But see what they are doing: there’s a pathogen around for, well, time immemorial, which is now said to be ‘new’, although whoever edited the above piece can’t decide whether it’s a ‘virus’ or a ‘variant’.
Now we consider all the known tropes, ranging from overcrowded areas abroad (Cyprus, Eastern Europe), gloss over the obvious failure of veterinary regulations and/or their enforcement when people ‘bring animals home’ from the vacation (which, let’s face it, in the case of Cyprus includes airlines that apparently don’t care if a passenger brings a cat along that he or she hasn’t had with them on the inbound flight). Better take off your shoes and belts because terrorism, I suppose.
And then we see the ‘chimeric’ qualities of the ‘canine’ and ‘feline’ versions of the virus, variant, or whatever, we should be on high alert. In particular if we’re dealing, once again, with heinous foreigners who bring death and disease to our shores.
Better to keep the borders wide open, for the above notions only apply to cats and dogs, right?
Oh, lest I forget, since the tabloid piece, of course, didn’t link to any ‘studies’, I ran a quick search (yes, I’m ‘doing my own research’ here):
While I was briefly tempted to click on the items by AP or The Guardian (hey, there’s cat-lovers among the intel community, too), I ended up with the top-placed Science piece, from which the below quotes were taken (here, too, emphases mine):
When thousands of cats started to die this year on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, nicknamed the ‘island of cats’ for its 1-million-strong feline population, the crisis made international news [remember, we’re talking stray cats]. The animals had fevers, swollen bellies, and lethargy—symptoms that pointed to feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), a common condition caused by a type of cat coronavirus. But scientists struggled to explain the apparent explosion in cases [oh my, where is this going…?]
Now, researchers have identified a possible culprit: a new strain of feline coronavirus that has coopted key RNA sequences from a highly virulent dog pathogen called pantropic canine coronavirus (pCCoV) [do we have PCR tests for that yet?]. The findings, posted as a preprint last week on bioRxiv, could help explain how severe illness managed to spread so widely among cats on the island.
‘They’ve done a great job in identifying what looks to be a very interesting and concerning virus’, says Gary Whittaker, a virologist at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine who was not involved in the research [an ‘interesting virus’, oh, you heartless, cat-hating bastard /sarcasm]. Although canine-feline coronavirus crossovers have been reported before, he says, this is the first documented case of a cat coronavirus combining with pCCoV, apparently leading to a ‘perfect storm of both disease and transmissibility’. [remember: it’s a pre-print, and we’ll have to wait for ‘the Science™’ to perform its
magicpeer-review before we throw around such heavy words]
This is getting too long already, hence I shall leave you with another impression about the ‘quality’ of these ‘news items’ in Science (the journal), to say nothing about the legacy news outlets who pushed this crap—but it’s awesome in terms of ‘added information value’:
Veterinarians in Cyprus raised the alarm early this year about increased cases of FIP, which is not related to COVID-19 and does not affect humans. By July, animal activists and media outlets had reported nearly 300,000 deaths, although local veterinarians revised that figure dramatically downward, to about 8000. In August, the Cypriot government agreed to the veterinary use of the human SARS-CoV-2 medication molnupiravir, which blocks coronavirus replication and appears to be an effective treatment for FIP [is this treatment also ‘safe’? No-one cares, for it’s about stray cats, right? Also, is this what the gov’t is doing now with its left-over stocks of molnupiravir?]
The rapid rise in cases presented scientists with a puzzle [still no word about ‘testing’, so we don’t know anything about, say, ‘asymptomatic spread’, the relation between ‘tested’ and ‘presumed’ cases, yada yada yada, you know the deal]. Most feline coronaviruses infect the gut, where they cause mild infections that don’t escalate to FIP. These strains are easily transmitted from cat to cat through feces. They sometimes mutate into a more dangerous form called FIP virus (FIPV) that instead infects immune cells and triggers serious disease. But unlike the intestinal strains, FIPV typically isn’t transmitted between animals.
So, to sum up: much ado about nothing, a famous Englishman once wrote: we—meaning: ‘the Science™’ don’t know shit about anything here, but I’m glad we learned that much.
Bottom Lines
As to the end of this sad episode, please allow me to quote a bit more from the Science journal (thanks, Catherine Offord, for bringing this up):
FCoV-23 appears to have arisen when a feline coronavirus encountered pCCoV in an unidentified animal host [my money is either on a bat from South China and/or a Pangolin] and coopted the latter’s spike protein [how do viruses ‘co-opt’ each other’s spike proteins? Birds and bees, I surmise…]—the structure coronaviruses use to gain access to host cells, explains study co-author Christine Tait-Burkard, a virologist at the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute. This and other genetic tweaks may have allowed FCoV-23 to cause severe FIP while still infecting the intestines and spreading through feces, she says. The team also speculates that the spike protein changes could have made FCoV-23 more stable outside an animal host, increasing the chance of transmission via contact with contaminated feces…
The apparent rise in FIP cases this year could partly be the result of increased awareness of the condition, [Margaret Hosie, a virologist at the University of Glasgow and president of the European Advisory Board on Cat Diseases] notes. ‘We don’t know the numbers previously, so we can’t say there’s been a huge outbreak.’ Feline coronaviruses and pCCoV have coexisted in the Mediterranean region for years, she adds, so it’s possible that the genetic crossover happened some time ago…
The discovery of this mixed cat-dog coronavirus highlights the importance of taking a broad, cross-species approach to understanding viral evolution, Whittaker says. ‘This feline coronavirus has got huge potential for us to understand what goes on in general in coronavirus virology.’
Oh, it sure does.
Is it too early to call these ‘experts™’—as well as tabloid, legacy media, and Science (the journal)—morons for blowing up this nothingburger?
On the other hand, it’s got everything we’ve encountered with Sars-Cov-2-slash-Covid-19: it’s allegedly ‘new’, hence we don’t have any baseline to compare it to, loads of conflations (virus/variant, cases, flawed [ahem] stats, ‘experts™’, etc.).
All I can say about this entire absurdity is this:
"How long before we see a cross-over from cat to human? Somebody do something!"
You just know that will be the angle of approach for media-activists and influencers.
I just can't shake the suspicion that this mutation was created in a lab and then released.
So they have been poisoning street cats in Cyprus, is what I take away from the article.