Relearning Biosurveillance and its Former Lessons the Hard Way: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

After 46 years, approaching 50 years, now, only as an observer and interpreter of the scientific literature and data, I am deeply saddened by the state of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2), especially in the US, and less so in the world. But what distresses me more is the veterinary profession and to a lesser extent the medical profession (the latter excused because of their professional isolation from the natural world and all its animal occupants with their myriad of infectious diseases). Having been on the fringe between veterinary medicine and human medicine in the field (both literally and as far as subject matter) of diseases in nature transmissible to man and domestic animals, I have often been rejected at the tables of both and been in a sporadically supported field that was occasionally of interest to the military when in foreign lands and engaged in defending against biowarfare. One glaring frustration for me, in addition to the medical profession’s “surprises” about coronaviruses, which have been evident in animal coronaviruses and largely ignored for a long time, until SARS1, MERS, and now SARS2, when humans became involved, is the veterinary profession’s surprise about humans transmitting the zoonotic virus to animals (anthroponosis) (https://www.kbtx.com/2020/08/06/texas-am-research-project-identifies-first-covid-19-positive-cats-in-texas/; http://tx.ag/BCSCovidResearch) at my old Alma Matter. These zoonotic/anthroponotic occurrences in cats, dogs, and mink indicate the true nature of the virus, it newly spans humans and animals and doesn’t “see” a difference. It was exactly where global bio surveillance should have made the most difference, the time it works in most and best, between outbreaks and spillovers. Where it needs to be adequately supported by private and government resources, but when there is no global pandemic yet and therefore, these entities have the least interest and other more important priorities, it goes wanting. So sad and we are paying for this neglect in arrears.