This is my favorite study lately: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.31.466677v1

In testing done over 10 months ago, C-19 was endemic in White Tail Deer in Iowa in Nov 2020-Jan 2021: 82.5% testing positive for covid, some of which was genome tested and came from different lineages.

(And, wouldn't you know, the surge last fall in the upper midwest coincided almost perfectly with deer season. Minnesota's and Iowa's deer seasons, including everything from archery to muzzle loaders ran Sep 18 through the end of the year--and hospitalizations in MN and IA began to rise around Sep 19-21.)

So, my question is: if DEER have that high a prevalence, despite not having close contact with humans, doesn't that mean that our dogs, cats, gerbils, neighborhood squirrels, racoons, and rats--which we come in contact with every day--probably also have endemic covid, and are a source of transmission?

In which case, how can anyone believe that sticking a mask on your face part of the day will help anything???



From the article:

Multiple spillovers and onward transmission of SARS-Cov-2 in free-living and captive White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

Abstract

Many animal species are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and could potentially act as reservoirs, yet transmission in non-human free-living animals has not been documented. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), the predominant cervid in North America, are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and experimentally infected fawns transmit the virus to other captive deer. To test the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 may be circulating in deer, we evaluated 283 retropharyngeal lymph node (RPLN) samples collected from 151 free-living and 132 captive deer in Iowa from April 2020 through December of 2020 for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Ninety-four of the 283 deer (33.2%; 95% CI: 28, 38.9) samples were positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA as assessed by RT-PCR. Notably, between Nov 23, 2020 and January 10, 2021, 80 of 97 (82.5%; 95% CI 73.7, 88.8) RPLN samples had detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA by RT-PCR. Whole genome sequencing of the 94 positive RPLN samples identified 12 SARS-CoV-2 lineages, with B.1.2 (n = 51; 54.5%), and B.1.311 (n = 19; 20%) accounting for ~75% of all samples.