Dog flu: real concern or just Internet hysteria?

I don't have any answers on this, but I noticed my post linking to the NYTimes story about it is getting a lot of traffic, and when I searched out on the web, I came across some TV station sites saying it was all just bunkum, rumor and hysteria.

So I decided to check it out as much as I can, online. I mean, it isn't completely unheard of that the New York Times could have been hoodwinked, but I highly doubt it. But just to be on the safe side, I checked snopes.com, the Internet hoax debunker site. If there's a bona fide internet hoax out there, I trust Snopes to be all over it, and there's NOTHING ON SNOPES ABOUT DOG FLU BEING BS.

(Methinks some local TV stations are hard up for some sensational rumor to debunk, and found some uninformed local vets who were willing to sound off on camera.)

I was wondering if the NY Times story is getting dated as the Internet interest has taken off, so just one quick news link turned up this Reuters story from just 18 MINUTES before I made this post, and there were many more, but I grabbed this one just to be up the the minute.

It says the DOG FLU STORIES ARE REAL, but it also tempers some of the initial warnings about how serious it is. I'm not sure what that means, but it is interesting to me that all the experts quoted in these kinds of stories seemed to be focused on it hopping from dogs to people, like that's all we care about, when in actuality, some of us just sit around and worry about our dogs, OK?

I mean, look at how nuts people went over the plight of the poor pets that were forced to be left behind in Katrina, and how people who sit and worry about pets are now affecting evacuation policies for hurricanes like Rita.

(I have an acquaintance from Houston who says the evacuation traffic was way worse than it needed to be because people were hauling carloads of cats with just one or two people in the car, whole caravans of pet brigades or some such. She thought it was getting a bit excessive. Are there really that many people who have that many cats? Maybe I'm naive, but I'd hate to see those litter boxes.)

Anyway, I don't want to contribute to unnecessary hysteria, nor do I want to experience unnecessary hysteria, so here's some bits from the most recent update on the story I can find right now.

Link: New dog flu virus came from horses, experts say - Yahoo! News.

New dog flu virus came from horses, experts say

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent 18 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new dog flu virus that has killed some racing greyhounds made an unusual jump from horses to dogs and may threaten pets but not people, experts said on Monday.

And the virus can also infect dogs without making them sick, meaning it is not as deadly as some reports have suggested, they said.

[...]

There is no evidence that it can infect people, said Dr. Ruben Donis of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who has published a report on the new virus in the journal Science.

"We must keep in mind that this H3N8 equine influenza virus has been in horses for over 40 years. In all these years we have never been able to document a single case of human infection with this virus," Donis told reporters in a telephone briefing.

"At this point there is no reason to panic," he said, adding that in lab dishes, anyway, the virus could be controlled with antiviral drugs."

Dr. Cynda Crawford of the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine first discovered the virus in greyhounds. It looked deadly at first.

"This virus can cause a respiratory disease that mimics a syndrome that we call kennel cough," Crawford told reporters.

"Kennel cough can be due to a myriad of infectious agents," she added, with a bacterial infection called Bordetella the most common cause.

MILD FORM OF DISEASE

Further checks have found the virus in dogs that were both ill and that seemed entirely healthy in Florida, New York and Massachusetts.

"Despite the rumors that are out on the Internet, this disease is not as deadly as people want to make it. Nearly all dogs are susceptible to infection ... about 80 percent of them will have a mild form of disease, characterized by cough and some nasal discharge that will resolve," she said.

It seems to have a mortality rate of between 5 and 8 percent, she said.

[...]

This was an "an unprecedented interspecies transfer," he said -- and would have implications for understanding the potential of H5N1 to begin infecting people easily.

And dogs could infect people with new viruses, too, the researchers theorized.

"Evidence of canine influenza infection in pet dogs, a primary companion animal for humans, raises the possibility that dogs may provide a new source for transmission of novel influenza A viruses to humans," they wrote in the Science report.

Crawford said pet owners did not need to be unduly concerned yet.

"I am taking my two Pekinese to be groomed next week. I will continue to board my pet greyhounds at boarding kennels when I need to," she said.

She will even let her dogs play at dog parks, but said owners should exercise common sense and keep their pets inside when they have any respiratory disease for two weeks or so, both to allow them to fully recover and to protect other dogs.