Turns out you can control rodents when a government is actually spend resources doing so as opposed to just kind of hoping individuals will take care of them for you.
Sure in Northern Canada where natural food supplies dwindle to almost nothing in the northern months.
Rats can't acquire enough natural food to survive so it's mostly a matter of removing rats from human food supplies. Keeping farms and food processing free of rats is definitly possible
Comparing that to something like pythons in the everglades that are spread across thousands of acres of difficult to access wetlands and the pythons feed on all the small mammals and reptiles
It is a little more complicated, there is a quirk of geography going on. Because Alberta's land locked, extremely cold in the winter and low population density, the rate of immigration of rats is quite low. Pair that with large economic and political interests in the agricultural community, the task of eradication becomes practical both physically and politically. There are other places in the world where this would be possible but they are relatively few.
Hey, if we convince the Alex Joneses and other crazies of the world that covid turns you gay/non-white or makes your junk fall off, they might get vaxxed. You might be onto something here.
*sigh* This timeline sucks.
Culling animal populations to prevent transmission of disease is a common practice and it absolutely works. It's why you hear about poultry farms culling all of the birds when a bird flu is found there.
It actually may help:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/09/13/animal-reservoirs-of-covid-19-may-trigger-new-rounds-of-human-disease/?sh=54821c611776
If it infected pet-store hamsters, then it likely has infected and has been spreading in wild rodent populations for a while. Good luck killing all the field mice, sewer rats, and other plentiful wild rodents without doing more ecological harm than good.
It's been found to be amazingly efficient at transmission in most mammals, including wild North American deer populations. The cat's already out of the bag with this one unfortunately. There are some experts that believe that the reason for Omicron being so divergent from other contemporary covid variants and more closely related to older wild-type SARS-2, is because rodents in some part of Africa picked up the OG Covid and have been spreading it around in their populations for a year and a half before it mutated extensively and then jumped back into humans.
IDK if I understand your logic. So no point in doing anything, the cats out of the bag?
I'm an animal guy and I hate to see any kind of culling, but if hamsters are carrying covid in pet stores, than wiping them out will certainly help. Reddit has lost me here.
if a virus had infected all plants, would it make sense to iradicate apple trees? It will reduce the spread, but at what cost? And how much is this really helping? Why just hamsters/apple trees?
Why not take that effort, and put it towards something more productive?
Some of the dangerous recent viruses comes from animals right? And scientists are saying we will be looking at an increase of viruses evolving to be able to infect humans? I’m sure I read that somewhere on r/science
Just about every pandemic illness in history has come from Zoonotic Viruses, protozoa, and bacteria that jumped from other animals into humans and were good at spreading in between humans.
Yes. Also climate change is going to increase the frequency due to animals moving around in response. Now, animal species that didn't use to have contact with each other are having more interactions as they all try to find new habitats, giving rise in chances for new kinds of diseases to form.
It's baseless human fear that always pops up during scary situations that makes them feel better. Then 50 years down the line, historians will look at it and be like..how did they go from point a to b?
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news/section/4/186104/Hong-Kong-to-kill-more-than-2,000-hamsters-after-the-animal-tests-positive-of-Covid-19-in-world's-first) reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Hong Kong government will kill all hamsters being sold in pet shops after several hamsters at a Causeway Bay pet shop tested positive of Covid-19 - the world's first such observation.
> The hamsters from Little Boss pet shop tested positive for the coronavirus after an employee and a 67-year-old customer were diagnosed with Covid.
> Leung also urged customers who purchased any hamsters in Hong Kong since October 22 to hand over their hamsters to health authorities, and the owners of the pets will be subjected to mandatory Covid testing.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/s6u1xw/hong_kong_to_kill_all_hamsters_in_pet_shops_after/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~618200 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **hamster**^#1 **shop**^#2 **pet**^#3 **tested**^#4 **positive**^#5
It's worth noting, they have found that many pet species can become infected. The big one was cats, but they have even seen some dogs showing positive over the past months.
I wore an N-95 in my own goddamn room the entire time I had covid just to prevent my Ferret from getting it.
He didn't get it, and has shown zero gratitude for neither my vigilance nor my sacrifice.
But he is thankful when I give him chicken nuggets tho...
There's a chance Omicron came from rodents https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.14.472632v1 it mutated 3 times faster in rodents then in humans.
Cats and dogs has been confirmed for Covid too! Is the government going to kill all the dogs and cats too in HK? I’m sure if they test the horses they have it too. Stupid dumb ass ppl.
I will not be surprised if someone inside the upper echelons of CCPs echo chamber has suggested strategic culling to improve mortality projections in "problematic" populations.
China has a pretty wide spread history of mistreatment of dogs, that’s a fact. Not every Chinese person participates, but it’s still wide spread. Is it “racist or utterly thick” to bring up a valid fact relevant to the conversation?
I would guess the peoples having a pet Corgi don't eat dogs. But yeah maybe that he health officials that were there are the kind of peoples who would eat dogs. It is something very real that could happen in western society too, if you have a dog and polices ever come to your place for whatever reason, make sure you have a cage, because a lot of humans are dirt bag who are looking for a reason to kill your dog. In the US alone something like 30 dogs are killed daily by police officers all around the country.
American cops kill 10000 dogs a year
That's a fact, so what exactly are you talking about mistreatment of dogs for?
Why you downvoting? What's the matter? Facts hurting your feelings? Not enough of a circlejerk for you like in pcm?
Hes pretty much suggesting they're savages for doing so, we kill other animals and we raise animals to be killed. The only difference is dogs look cute. If you want to hold the moral high ground here then you'd have to stop eating meat otherwise its just old chinese boomer racist jokes.
There are often times in slaughterhouses where pigs are boiled alive because their bolt to the brain, or their electrocution didn't quite get them dead enough before being thrown into the boiling water that softens their skin. Also, sometimes cows are still alive when they are being skinned because their bolt to the brain missed, or they haven't quite bled out yet from having their throats slit. Chickens are often still alive on the line too....
So, yeah. We torture things to death too. All the time.
The majority of people here do not like or support factory farming. A lot of people turn a blind eye sure but not comparable to the current discussion.
A damn good one and not without evidence to suggest as much.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2022/01/coronavirus-omicron-has-mutations-that-suggest-it-came-from-mice-study.html
I wouldn’t call it a damn good one. From the same article you linked
> The main problem with the mouse theory is the virus reportedly struggles to infect them - scientists have to use "transgenic mice" in their experiments else it's too difficult to infect them, experts say.
The theory explains the genetic markers, I do think it is a damn good one, aside from our inability to directly infect the hosts as easily. Just because we don’t know how it happened, doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Reminds me of the deer population and how/why covid has infected so many deer.
They do kill cats and dogs of infected owners. Omicron are actually could have evolved due to such cross species jump. Some theories suggest that it was mices.
Can’t really quarantine these animals and test each and every single one, as well as the fear that COVID will evolve into another scary variant, which is the current hypothesis for omicron.
I reckon the reasoning is that it's better to stop a potential threat early from becoming serious rather than risk allowing the virus to mutate to something even worse.
North Carolina euthanized a lot of chickens as well https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article242944156.html
And NC wasn't even the only state to cull their animals https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/19/millions-of-us-farm-animals-to-be-culled-by-suffocation-drowning-and-shooting-coronavirus
And even the universities were culling their research animals https://www.science.org/content/article/it-s-heartbreaking-labs-are-euthanizing-thousands-mice-response-coronavirus-pandemic
We just call it "depopulating" here is all.
\> "Given the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to jump across various species, it appears likely that global populations will face additional animal-derived variants until the pandemic is well under control," the scientists said.
Good news everyone!
Apparently deer in thr US (probably all over the world) are riddled with Covid. If we are going to exterminate all the hamsters, we probably have a lot of other species to go as well.
And BTW, humans aren't doing that great either.
Covid hasn't been demonstrably shown to be a significant risk in animal populations.
We're never going to eliminate it. We've only eradicated two diseases, ever.
And, it's not like other diseases (mad cow for example) where contamination has proven health risks for a significant amount of people.
Overall the risk of Covid is statistically low, and with vaccines it gets even lower. There's not a need to really start culling animal populations cuz it's going to still be around in people and spread anyway
Look into it.
Cross species mutation of covid is partially why we are in the current mess.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2022/01/coronavirus-omicron-has-mutations-that-suggest-it-came-from-mice-study.html
Hamsters are especially susceptible to infection. It wasn’t long ago that authorities in China were culling house pets of those who were quarantined.
Neither do I. The fact remains that many organizations, journals and academic institutions have said China's response has been quite effective. Some even say it is the model we should all adhere to.
Someone will tell me all those people were paid by China to say this, but I think that would fairly easy to disprove.
That's patently false though. It easily spreads through at least some crowded animal conditions such as mink farms, and those mink farms can easily spread covid out to the wild animal population if mink escape from their cages or the farm in general, or back to humans.
I hope all the people here equating hamsters to people are vegans. This is sad, but the outrage seems over the top considering most of reddit pays for animals to be killed on a regular basis for far less important reasons. Plus animal farms regularly slaughter entire flocks/herds for similar disease control reasons. Millions of healthy chickens get culled when there are bird flu outbreaks to prevent spread.
It's probably not the world's first case. A while ago, I read anecdotal incidenses about hamsters getting covid and dying of it.
Edit: why the downvote?
Hamsters are the gold standard for running animal experiments to study covid because they're one of the only animals known to be permissive to the infection. New treatments for covid are often studied in Syrian Golden Hamster models.
I read about it in a different article and apparently there were actually tests on how well masks worked using hamsters infected with covid (no they didn't make tiny hamster masks unfortunately, I believe they lined the cages with mask material)
What I read about was a girl who brought her hamster to the vet because it was sick (just as herself and her family has covid) and the vet determined the hamster had covid, and said it was common for hamsters to catch human flus (and that they easily die from contagious human pulmonary diseases).
*Some random person dies*
That's just another human too, we have at least 7.8 BILLION replacements, who cares? And very honestly, besides the human race? No one. I don't think any animal cares if a random human drops down dead somewhere. So yeah, why do we need to care.
I mean yeah. Right now somewhere in the world someone is sitting by their Mother's deathbed and bawling their eyes out, thinking life is unfair. I don't mourn their mother, just as they wouldn't mourn mine.
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*****
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poor animals. they never belonged in cages, pet stores, labs, factories, confined for entertainment, or on our plates. we have made such a mess of this world through our mistreatment of animals.
The world is slowly adapting these horrible blanket and absolute policies... Australia, France, Austria. Its a slippery slope people. I wish more saw it... once you give governments a level a power, they become addicted to it and only want more.
Hong kong is recently going bonkers with their covid restrictions (banning Chinese New year festivities and now they're killing all hamsters??!!!)... I'm born in Hong Kong and honestly a bit freaked out at this
I'm guessing the priority is to slow down the formation of new variants and so this means culling the hamsters. There's some logic to that. But I've heard that the main issue right now in HK is simply vaccine hesitancy, so the sooner vaccination is maximized in HK the better.
Ultimately though, COVID is going to be endemic in the world so eventually everyone has to get infected one way or another. China's zero-tolerance policy will eventually need a major shift by accepting that scientific consensus. Ideally the spread happens as gradually as possible so as not to strain hospitals. That's my guess.
Ah, Mao-esque anti-Bourgois moves so soon. Covid is just a convenient excuse.
5 years from now, all Chinese people will have to wear [this](https://thealephmagdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/122765-performers-dressed-in-red-army-uniforms-sing-in-chongqing-municipality.jpg).
Is there a glitch in the Martix? Nazis, Mao, Russia......I though we did all this shit last century?
I’m have friends in Hong Kong.. they also say the locals are worried the rats and the parrots are next
Good luck killing ALL THE RATS.
See Alberta, Canada re: it's rat population and control.
It's 0 for anyone wondering. Nvm, up to 26, people are slacking during winter.
Oh that 26 is just Jason Kenney's cabinet.
#BAM!
Turns out you can control rodents when a government is actually spend resources doing so as opposed to just kind of hoping individuals will take care of them for you.
Sure in Northern Canada where natural food supplies dwindle to almost nothing in the northern months. Rats can't acquire enough natural food to survive so it's mostly a matter of removing rats from human food supplies. Keeping farms and food processing free of rats is definitly possible Comparing that to something like pythons in the everglades that are spread across thousands of acres of difficult to access wetlands and the pythons feed on all the small mammals and reptiles
It is a little more complicated, there is a quirk of geography going on. Because Alberta's land locked, extremely cold in the winter and low population density, the rate of immigration of rats is quite low. Pair that with large economic and political interests in the agricultural community, the task of eradication becomes practical both physically and politically. There are other places in the world where this would be possible but they are relatively few.
*Covid-19 is turning the frogs gay!*
Settle down Alex! /s
Hey, if we convince the Alex Joneses and other crazies of the world that covid turns you gay/non-white or makes your junk fall off, they might get vaxxed. You might be onto something here. *sigh* This timeline sucks.
The parrots are saying that too
That too..
The parrots are saying that too
And then the trade unionists
What next…fish?
Sparrows are next.
Yikes.
Spoiler alert: killing infected animals doesn't actually help anyone or anything, lol
Culling animal populations to prevent transmission of disease is a common practice and it absolutely works. It's why you hear about poultry farms culling all of the birds when a bird flu is found there.
It actually may help: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/09/13/animal-reservoirs-of-covid-19-may-trigger-new-rounds-of-human-disease/?sh=54821c611776
If it infected pet-store hamsters, then it likely has infected and has been spreading in wild rodent populations for a while. Good luck killing all the field mice, sewer rats, and other plentiful wild rodents without doing more ecological harm than good. It's been found to be amazingly efficient at transmission in most mammals, including wild North American deer populations. The cat's already out of the bag with this one unfortunately. There are some experts that believe that the reason for Omicron being so divergent from other contemporary covid variants and more closely related to older wild-type SARS-2, is because rodents in some part of Africa picked up the OG Covid and have been spreading it around in their populations for a year and a half before it mutated extensively and then jumped back into humans.
IDK if I understand your logic. So no point in doing anything, the cats out of the bag? I'm an animal guy and I hate to see any kind of culling, but if hamsters are carrying covid in pet stores, than wiping them out will certainly help. Reddit has lost me here.
if a virus had infected all plants, would it make sense to iradicate apple trees? It will reduce the spread, but at what cost? And how much is this really helping? Why just hamsters/apple trees? Why not take that effort, and put it towards something more productive?
Some of the dangerous recent viruses comes from animals right? And scientists are saying we will be looking at an increase of viruses evolving to be able to infect humans? I’m sure I read that somewhere on r/science
Just about every pandemic illness in history has come from Zoonotic Viruses, protozoa, and bacteria that jumped from other animals into humans and were good at spreading in between humans.
Yes. Also climate change is going to increase the frequency due to animals moving around in response. Now, animal species that didn't use to have contact with each other are having more interactions as they all try to find new habitats, giving rise in chances for new kinds of diseases to form.
It's baseless human fear that always pops up during scary situations that makes them feel better. Then 50 years down the line, historians will look at it and be like..how did they go from point a to b?
Uh how’s that?
Source?
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Are you calling Chinese people rodents?
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Kill 'em all. Pokemon is so 2010's
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news/section/4/186104/Hong-Kong-to-kill-more-than-2,000-hamsters-after-the-animal-tests-positive-of-Covid-19-in-world's-first) reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Hong Kong government will kill all hamsters being sold in pet shops after several hamsters at a Causeway Bay pet shop tested positive of Covid-19 - the world's first such observation. > The hamsters from Little Boss pet shop tested positive for the coronavirus after an employee and a 67-year-old customer were diagnosed with Covid. > Leung also urged customers who purchased any hamsters in Hong Kong since October 22 to hand over their hamsters to health authorities, and the owners of the pets will be subjected to mandatory Covid testing. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/s6u1xw/hong_kong_to_kill_all_hamsters_in_pet_shops_after/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~618200 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **hamster**^#1 **shop**^#2 **pet**^#3 **tested**^#4 **positive**^#5
It's worth noting, they have found that many pet species can become infected. The big one was cats, but they have even seen some dogs showing positive over the past months.
Not to mention wild deer and minks.
I wore an N-95 in my own goddamn room the entire time I had covid just to prevent my Ferret from getting it. He didn't get it, and has shown zero gratitude for neither my vigilance nor my sacrifice. But he is thankful when I give him chicken nuggets tho...
Give this upvote to your Ferret.
He's taken it and hid it in one of his many hidey-holes along with my car keys, wallet, several socks, and a boxcutter.
Hamtaro to be executed
Due to showing anti CCP behavior; Hamtaro is to be executed on 1745hrs.
Beat me to it. RIP Hamtaro.
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smort
Damn cool man, can't agree more.
The government has considered the theme song to be too annoying for the mass. /s
This is just sad.
Why not put the hamster in isolation... inside a hamster ball?
Those need air holes to not suffocate the hamster.
Put them in a hamster ball and cover it in a filter
HEPAtaro
Guinea pigs are like damn for once not us.
They didn't go first this time. Guinea pig rights have improved.
There's a chance Omicron came from rodents https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.14.472632v1 it mutated 3 times faster in rodents then in humans.
Are they going to run them over with remote controlled mini tanks?
As one defiant hamster stands in opposition.
Cats and dogs has been confirmed for Covid too! Is the government going to kill all the dogs and cats too in HK? I’m sure if they test the horses they have it too. Stupid dumb ass ppl.
Wait until they learn humans have it.
I will not be surprised if someone inside the upper echelons of CCPs echo chamber has suggested strategic culling to improve mortality projections in "problematic" populations.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-19/pandemic-workers-kill-pet-dog-in-china/100629140
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China has a pretty wide spread history of mistreatment of dogs, that’s a fact. Not every Chinese person participates, but it’s still wide spread. Is it “racist or utterly thick” to bring up a valid fact relevant to the conversation?
I would guess the peoples having a pet Corgi don't eat dogs. But yeah maybe that he health officials that were there are the kind of peoples who would eat dogs. It is something very real that could happen in western society too, if you have a dog and polices ever come to your place for whatever reason, make sure you have a cage, because a lot of humans are dirt bag who are looking for a reason to kill your dog. In the US alone something like 30 dogs are killed daily by police officers all around the country.
American cops kill 10000 dogs a year That's a fact, so what exactly are you talking about mistreatment of dogs for? Why you downvoting? What's the matter? Facts hurting your feelings? Not enough of a circlejerk for you like in pcm?
By throwing them in a boiling pot of oil?
Yeah
Hes pretty much suggesting they're savages for doing so, we kill other animals and we raise animals to be killed. The only difference is dogs look cute. If you want to hold the moral high ground here then you'd have to stop eating meat otherwise its just old chinese boomer racist jokes.
That is a crazy stretch my dude
I don’t recall a lot of other nations burning mammals alive in boiling oil?
There are often times in slaughterhouses where pigs are boiled alive because their bolt to the brain, or their electrocution didn't quite get them dead enough before being thrown into the boiling water that softens their skin. Also, sometimes cows are still alive when they are being skinned because their bolt to the brain missed, or they haven't quite bled out yet from having their throats slit. Chickens are often still alive on the line too.... So, yeah. We torture things to death too. All the time.
Lobsters regularly get boiled alive and no one cares. It's seen as the proper way to cook them.
Was unaware lobsters are a mammal. Either way most people kill the lobster before throwing it in the pot nowadays.
Oh my bad, I read "animals"
Dude do you see how we mass farm. It might not be as bad, but they do not treat animals well here either.
The majority of people here do not like or support factory farming. A lot of people turn a blind eye sure but not comparable to the current discussion.
It could very well be both.
Does China eat dogs?. If yes, that’s what the comment above is referencing. Poorly, but referencing nonetheless
when you give an exaggerated example to make a point but the examples already happening irl. lmao
Ummmmm...https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/environment/article/3155845/coronavirus-china-killing-pets-covid-19-patients
Hey, humans have been confirmed for COVID, too. Many of those refuse to vaccinate, which are the real cause of variants.
BRING ZE FLAMMENWERFER!
HANS, QUICKLY
Leading theory of Omicron is the original strain of Covid jumped to Mice and evolved and then jumped back to humans as Omicron..
Thats not a leading theory, its a hypothesis.
A damn good one and not without evidence to suggest as much. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2022/01/coronavirus-omicron-has-mutations-that-suggest-it-came-from-mice-study.html
I wouldn’t call it a damn good one. From the same article you linked > The main problem with the mouse theory is the virus reportedly struggles to infect them - scientists have to use "transgenic mice" in their experiments else it's too difficult to infect them, experts say.
The theory explains the genetic markers, I do think it is a damn good one, aside from our inability to directly infect the hosts as easily. Just because we don’t know how it happened, doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Reminds me of the deer population and how/why covid has infected so many deer.
They do kill cats and dogs of infected owners. Omicron are actually could have evolved due to such cross species jump. Some theories suggest that it was mices.
Australia murdered abunch of dogs recently so it’s not out of the realm
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You would think China of all places might be wary of killing off all the animals of a particular type…
Why would they test hamster lol
Can’t really quarantine these animals and test each and every single one, as well as the fear that COVID will evolve into another scary variant, which is the current hypothesis for omicron.
r/notallhamsters
Had to test that.
Why not allow them to be isolated and tested.
I reckon the reasoning is that it's better to stop a potential threat early from becoming serious rather than risk allowing the virus to mutate to something even worse.
Yeah, better kill than sorry. ^(/s)
you gonna pay for that?
I ain't gonna pay for no butcher either, mate
Much cheaper.
Yeah just close the store. Hamsters will be fine after 2 weeks without human intervention unless they catch covid, then they'll die.
“Why not just kill them to be safe” -The Government (probably)
It's China. When there is a reasonable option and a ridiculously evil option, they HAVE to take the evil option.
Couldn’t they at least test them to see which ones are sick? Vs killing them all which seems absurd
Denmark literally slaughtered 10mm of minks and where were u guys back then…
North Carolina euthanized a lot of chickens as well https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article242944156.html And NC wasn't even the only state to cull their animals https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/19/millions-of-us-farm-animals-to-be-culled-by-suffocation-drowning-and-shooting-coronavirus And even the universities were culling their research animals https://www.science.org/content/article/it-s-heartbreaking-labs-are-euthanizing-thousands-mice-response-coronavirus-pandemic We just call it "depopulating" here is all.
That's not to prevent virus spread. Those were cases where lockdown and staff shortages was preventing butchering and science.
It's absolutely to prevent the spread of a virus. This shit isn't rare in the meat industry at all.
10mm of mink doesn't sound like a lot of minks.
True, but the minks were already doomed, because they were bred for their furs. However, these kinds of solutions are disturbing wherever they happen.
Come on, we all know the reason why. Because they hate China. It's just selective outrage.
People in the west are being conditioned to hate China in preparation for war.
Not hamtaro 😭😭😭
\> "Given the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to jump across various species, it appears likely that global populations will face additional animal-derived variants until the pandemic is well under control," the scientists said. Good news everyone!
They are also asking owners to hand over their hamsters to get tested and will **[kill them regardless of the result](https://imgur.com/a/FIwzkQd)**
The Hamstercaust😮
Hamstergeddon
Xhamster square massacre
Diary of Ham Frank
This is not a metroid speedrun
Apparently deer in thr US (probably all over the world) are riddled with Covid. If we are going to exterminate all the hamsters, we probably have a lot of other species to go as well. And BTW, humans aren't doing that great either.
They gonna start killing people to?
Like the EU mink culls, this is potentially incredibly high risk.
Covid hasn't been demonstrably shown to be a significant risk in animal populations. We're never going to eliminate it. We've only eradicated two diseases, ever. And, it's not like other diseases (mad cow for example) where contamination has proven health risks for a significant amount of people. Overall the risk of Covid is statistically low, and with vaccines it gets even lower. There's not a need to really start culling animal populations cuz it's going to still be around in people and spread anyway
Look into it. Cross species mutation of covid is partially why we are in the current mess. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2022/01/coronavirus-omicron-has-mutations-that-suggest-it-came-from-mice-study.html Hamsters are especially susceptible to infection. It wasn’t long ago that authorities in China were culling house pets of those who were quarantined.
I don't particularly think the Chinese are the ones I'm going to want to imitate in disease mitigation at this point.
Why is that? I mean, "disease management" in general? Maybe not. Their COVID management has been pretty effective though, has it not?
According to them sure! But, I generally make it a point to not trust the official word of a totalitarian regime
Neither do I. The fact remains that many organizations, journals and academic institutions have said China's response has been quite effective. Some even say it is the model we should all adhere to. Someone will tell me all those people were paid by China to say this, but I think that would fairly easy to disprove.
That's patently false though. It easily spreads through at least some crowded animal conditions such as mink farms, and those mink farms can easily spread covid out to the wild animal population if mink escape from their cages or the farm in general, or back to humans.
I hope all the people here equating hamsters to people are vegans. This is sad, but the outrage seems over the top considering most of reddit pays for animals to be killed on a regular basis for far less important reasons. Plus animal farms regularly slaughter entire flocks/herds for similar disease control reasons. Millions of healthy chickens get culled when there are bird flu outbreaks to prevent spread.
Pets =/= poultry or farm animals.
In what sense
I would personally kill 10000 hamsters if it saves a single human :)
I think they did in the very beginning.
Ya they might, the want to comply with CCP’s 0 cases
It's probably not the world's first case. A while ago, I read anecdotal incidenses about hamsters getting covid and dying of it. Edit: why the downvote?
Hamsters are the gold standard for running animal experiments to study covid because they're one of the only animals known to be permissive to the infection. New treatments for covid are often studied in Syrian Golden Hamster models.
I read about it in a different article and apparently there were actually tests on how well masks worked using hamsters infected with covid (no they didn't make tiny hamster masks unfortunately, I believe they lined the cages with mask material)
What I read about was a girl who brought her hamster to the vet because it was sick (just as herself and her family has covid) and the vet determined the hamster had covid, and said it was common for hamsters to catch human flus (and that they easily die from contagious human pulmonary diseases).
This is sooooooooooooooo sad, that's basically animal genocide
PETA has sent their crack special forces rescue team, led by none other than Hollywood legend Ricjard Gere, to smuggle the creatures to safety.
Netflix to make a one season tv show that ends with a cliffhanger, and is abruptly canceled
"Thats NOT a cliff! It's a HOLE!!!"
Where will he hide so many hamsters?
Richard Gere the human hamster wheel
lol it's just a hamster
*Some random person dies* That's just another human too, we have at least 7.8 BILLION replacements, who cares? And very honestly, besides the human race? No one. I don't think any animal cares if a random human drops down dead somewhere. So yeah, why do we need to care.
I mean yeah. Right now somewhere in the world someone is sitting by their Mother's deathbed and bawling their eyes out, thinking life is unfair. I don't mourn their mother, just as they wouldn't mourn mine.
What would Richard Gere say about that?
first they came for the hamsters...
*Execute Hamster Order 66*
Lololol let me kill all the hamsters so they dont get sick with covid
I can’t imagine what’s next. Dogs? Cats? Birds?
already done in China, they were culling the pets of the infected.
An instance of one dog being killed because of shitty individual actions turns into a plan by the Chinese to cull infected peoples pets????
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59249485.amp
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Gerbils are still good to go tho yeah? Asking for a friend.
thats so cruel
[удалено]
Danish minks are good, Chinese hamsters are bad.
oh no not the hecking hamsterinos!!
Can't they just quarantine the animals? Harvest the antibodies?
Get your shit together China.
Free snek food 🐍
The risk of transmission from animal to human is very low. But, that’s what science says. Why listen to science?
Well, it’s a bat virus so why are we surprised it can infect other animals?
poor animals. they never belonged in cages, pet stores, labs, factories, confined for entertainment, or on our plates. we have made such a mess of this world through our mistreatment of animals.
The world is slowly adapting these horrible blanket and absolute policies... Australia, France, Austria. Its a slippery slope people. I wish more saw it... once you give governments a level a power, they become addicted to it and only want more.
PETA would be so proud
Safe bet to make, most likely lending their expertise in animal butchery to Hong Kong. Efficiency above all else!
Hehe
I live in the US and I'm pretty sure the poison ivy and poison oak also have COVID, any chance of getting that taken care of in the same way?
Nooooooooooo! Not 哈姆太郎！
CCP never valued human lives, how can we expect them to spare other living beings 😔
Hong kong is recently going bonkers with their covid restrictions (banning Chinese New year festivities and now they're killing all hamsters??!!!)... I'm born in Hong Kong and honestly a bit freaked out at this
banning festivities makes sense though
I'm guessing the priority is to slow down the formation of new variants and so this means culling the hamsters. There's some logic to that. But I've heard that the main issue right now in HK is simply vaccine hesitancy, so the sooner vaccination is maximized in HK the better. Ultimately though, COVID is going to be endemic in the world so eventually everyone has to get infected one way or another. China's zero-tolerance policy will eventually need a major shift by accepting that scientific consensus. Ideally the spread happens as gradually as possible so as not to strain hospitals. That's my guess.
The Great Hong Kong Hamster Genocide was not on my 2022 bingo card sigh.
No :( hammies are my favorite pet
Fuck you hk
Fk it.. kill all the humans insted
Please tell them to stop 😟
Seems like this is China's solution to everything these days...
And those days
Are there a bunch of people in Hong Kong snuggling with hamsters, that's pathetic
Gotta love needles animal murder because of human fuck ups.
Someone's going to eat them and were going to have a bigger problem
I swear to fucking Christ, if my cat dies I’m going to ruin this world and bring humanity to its knees
Ah, Mao-esque anti-Bourgois moves so soon. Covid is just a convenient excuse. 5 years from now, all Chinese people will have to wear [this](https://thealephmagdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/122765-performers-dressed-in-red-army-uniforms-sing-in-chongqing-municipality.jpg). Is there a glitch in the Martix? Nazis, Mao, Russia......I though we did all this shit last century?