Spain, despite protests, kills dog of nurse infected with Ebola...

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Just read this one NY Tines' website...

MADRID — A dog named Excalibur who belonged to an Ebola-infected nurse was euthanized on Wednesday, even as protesters and animal rights activists surrounded the Madrid home of the nurse and her husband. A online petition calling for the dog’s life to be spared had drawn hundreds of thousands of signatures.

The furor came amid questions about whether dogs can get and transmit the disease. In the United States, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thomas Skinner, said Wednesday that studies had shown that dogs can have an immune response to Ebola, meaning that they can become infected. But he said there had been no reports of dogs or cats developing Ebola symptoms or passing the disease to other animals or to people.

The death of Excalibur, a 12-year-old rescue dog, was confirmed to reporters by Javier Rodríguez, an official from Madrid’s regional government, and the body is expected to be cremated.

No we're gonna have to worry about our dogs, too?

This is getting outrageous!

People are going to start sending their animals away and the disease won't be caught. This was exactly the wrong thing to do. People live their animals like children.

If they executed her and the husband too, then they'd really get it.

Or do you have to do the whole city already?

They claim dogs are carriers, so as a precaution they euthanised the dog.

Would you rather it lived and potentially spread the disease around Madrid. As it stands, the nurse may well have passed the disease on through her mistake of touching her face with the gloves she was wearing whilst nursing the sick priest. She went away on holiday. Where did she go?

I am a real animal lover, but I can see the sense in this. If they didn't do what they have done and the dog spread the disease, what would you be saying then?

In its native land, Ebola is zoonotic, meaning it can pass from human to animal and animal to animal. How do you think they know what Ebola infection looks like in monkeys and pigs if monkeys and pigs can't get this? This particular outbreak was said to have started when someone ate improperly cooked bat.

That's three animals, and the bats don't show symptoms, meaning they are asymptomatic, so that you can't tell they are carrying the virus.

It is said that dogs are also asymptomatic carriers of the virus, meaning they can get it and carry it around like canine Typhoid Marys, only in this case it's Ebola. There is no cure.

So what do you do? This is really the only prudent step to take because the very last thing you want is for this disease to establish itself in a native animal and become endemic so that you have to worry about random outbreaks popping up wherever human and infected animal cross paths. This is currently what happens in Africa.

I'm sorry but if they were smart they could have taken the opportunity to keep the dog in a secure unit and took the time to study if the dog actually had Ebola and if the effects and symptoms would be the same ,considering that it is still unknown for certain how the nurse contracted the virus in the first place.

a reply to: Technikal

Waste of time and money on an animal when they can focus on humans...sorry but that was the right call

a reply to: wildapache
It's a sad situation, no matter.
If Ebola clusters start popping up all over the country, is it a stretch to wonder what is next?
At which point will humans be euthanized if they test positive for ebola? Not now but some point in the future?
Not an opinion, mind you, just a speculative question.

a reply to: drwill

They didn't even do that to Typhoid Mary, and I don't see them doing that in Africa.