COVID Spreading Rapidly Among White-Tailed Deer

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Yesterday I used this space to lament the fact that a large number of white-tailed deer in the central US are currently dying at the hands of hunters and under the wheels of vehicles.  Most states have hunting seasons designed to reduce the deer population - currently estimated to be over 30 million in the United States alone, and the hunting seasons, combined with the mating seasons of the deer, tend to drive many across American roadways and into the paths of on-coming vehicles.    The fall of the year is traditionally a time of great carnage for deer in the United States.

There have been several news reports over the past couple of weeks about a new threat to the deer population.  It seems that deer have been contracting the COVID virus from humans - through contaminated trash, water, and human waste - and then rapidly spreading the virus among themselves.  One study in Iowa showed that 80% of that state's white-tailed deer population either has COVID anti-bodies (indicating that they have had the virus) or the virus itself.

It is not known yet whether the deer will have the ability to pass the virus back to humans - such as when a hunter skins and guts an animal that he has shot - or when ingesting the meat or blood of the dead deer.  Last November seventeen million captive minks that were being "farmed" in Denmark had to be killed after the COVID virus spread into their population and then spread back to humans in a mutated form. 

The virus currently residing within the deer population is concerning to scientists based on Denmark's experience with the minks.  If it can jump species, which it clearly already has, and then remain within that species growing and mutating, and then jump back to humans in a new, and perhaps more dangerous, form, the pandemic might conceivably go on forever.

In addition to minks, the COVID virus has been reported in cats, dogs, ferrets, lions, tigers, pumas, hyenas, and gorillas.  There is concern, of course, that the virus could spread from deer to domestic  herd animals like cattle and sheep.

So far there has been no reported evidence of the virus returning to humans after being carried by the deer, but all of that research is still young - like the virus itself - and more is constantly being learned.

Right now this much IS known.  The COVID virus has spread to the American deer population, and once a few deer contracted it from human waste or garbage or whatever, it spread rapidly among the deer.  Now the virus is being held "in reserve" in the deer population where it does not have to deal with vaccinations or masks or mandates, and it expands and mutates among the deer.  Will it bounce back to humans?  No one knows yet, but it did bounce back to the human population from the farmed minks in Denmark.

Today deer and being hit along highways all across the nation, and they are being dragged to the side of the roadways by individuals who will necessarily have contact with their body fluids - and then the roadkill deer are being consumed by animal scavengers and sometimes even humans.  And for those deer lucky enough to survive the highway carnage, many will be felled by hunters, and as they are "processed" for meat, they will again have the opportunity to spread the virus back to humans - if it can be transmitted back like it was with the Danish minks.

This might be a good year to stay away from the deer, but I somehow suspect that Joe Bob ain't a-gonna pay it no never mind no how.  He'll be out in the woods when the sun comes up on Saturday morning, sitting on his ice chest, drinking his breakfast, and waiting on a deer to walk up nice and close so he can kill it - and this year the deer might just even the score!