COVID-Fueled Animal Cruelty

Last week in Shanghai a pet dog was beaten to death by a “health” worker. The incident, which took place in the Pudong district of the city, was captured on video.

Even in locked down, relentlessly censored China, the video went viral on social media, according to CNN.

Corgi Beaten to Death in Shanghai

The dog was a corgi.

The video shows a COVID prevention worker in protective gear chasing down the corgi and killing it with a shovel.

China News Weekly reported that the corgi’s owner, who tested positive for COVID and was forced to quarantine, had left the dog on the street because he couldn’t find anyone to care for it.

He didn’t want his corgi to starve to death and thought his dog might have a fighting chance fending for itself.

Apparently, since the corgi’s owner had tested positive, the “health” worker was afraid the dog might infect others.

Shanghai’s entire population, some 25 million people, has been forced back into lockdown, a move that has led to extreme emotional despair, at least one murder-suicide, and widespread fear of starvation.

In countries and municipalities around the world, practically since the beginning of the worldwide concerns about COVID, humans have used a fear of this virus as an excuse for some of the most unnecessary animal cruelty the world has ever seen.

Murdered Minks

In November of 2020, Denmark killed nearly 17 million minks. They were gassed to death on a farm in Naestved.

Officials said the animals were killed (but they used the word “culled”) because of fear that the minks could spread the virus back to humans.

They did these killings in a rush and buried the minks in shallow graves. Just a few weeks later decaying bodies of the minks started rising to the surface and literally coming out of the ground, according to a report from The Guardian.

A month after the killings the New York Times reported that this government cruelty resulted in the loss of 5,000 jobs in Denmark and might have been illegal.

Worse still, it’s very likely that—just like with the brutal beating of the corgi in Shanghai, it wasn’t necessary.

Even though there is some evidence that suggests COVID from animals can spread to humans (and vice versa), the risk is likely to be extremely low.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that in the unlikely event that you contract COVID from a pet, the infection will be in any way severe.

Three Snow Leopards Die at Nebraska Zoo

In November 2021, a year after what the Danish started calling “Minkgate,” the children’s zoo in Lincoln, Nebraska announced that three snow leopards died from complications from COVID.

As with deaths in humans “from” COVID, it is likely that the deaths of these animals were not because of the virulence of the virus itself, but because of how the zookeepers managed it.

Why do I say this?

We know from news reports that once the animals tested positive, Ranney, Everest, and Makalu were treated with steroids and antibiotics “to prevent secondary infection.”

But we also know, from a growing body of scientific evidence, that when you administer antibiotics to animals that have a viral infection, the animals are more likely to die.

For example, a 2019 study published by a team of researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London concluded that mice infected with influenza were three times more likely to die if they were then given antibiotics.

A Cochrane review, published in 2013, found that there is no scientific or medical reason to use antibiotics to treat colds. A full ten percent of people who had colds who were treated with antibiotics experienced side effects. These included bowel problems, diarrhea, nausea, skin rashes, and fungal infections.

The authors of the Cochrane review concluded that: “There is no evidence of benefit from antibiotics for the common cold … There is evidence that antibiotics cause significant adverse effects in adults when given for the common cold.”

Antibiotics administered to humans to fight bacterial infections have been shown to cause acute side effects at least 20 percent of the time.

Did the snow leopards in Nebraska actually die from COVID or were they killed because the vets decided to give them antibiotics, which destroyed their immune systems’ ability to fight off the virus?

We’ll never know.

Animal Abuse Increases

There’s no question that we humans have suffered from increased loneliness, isolation, and domestic violence during this time of global mismanagement. And so, it seems, have our pets.

I’ve seen this firsthand. I’m sure you have too: owners striking their pets, screaming at or choking them. I also know of many depressed and neglected animals who are being left inside all day, partly because their owners are afraid to go outside.

When people feel unhappy and frustrated, they often take their unhappiness and frustration out on their dogs or cats. So much so that animal rights lawyer Bianka Atlas, LLM, calls domestic abuse of companion animals a shadow pandemic accompanying the COVID crisis.

Millions of people adopted or purchased pets for the first time during COVID. Many then found themselves with animals, from birds to snakes to dogs and cats, that they were not equipped to care for.

One of the young adults in my life called me, upset, to talk about this. Their partner had purchased a parrot they could no longer care for.

“It’s so bonded to me, and now we have to let it go. It seems really cruel.”

In 2011, when I went to Norway to do research for one of my books, my friend Rolf said something that has resonated with me ever since.

“I’ve traveled all over the world,” he began, “… [and] I’ve noticed there’s a direct connection between countries where people treat animals humanely and with kindness and countries that have good human rights, especially for women.”

The barbaric murder of a corgi in China put the world’s focus on Shanghai. But the inconsistent, contradictory, and even cruel responses to COVID over the past two years have left me feeling like humans everywhere have lost our humanity. It’s time to get it back.

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