The UK Briefly Considered Killing All Pet Cats Early In the Pandemic (time.com) 101
schwit1 writes: In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when little was known about the virus, the U.K. government briefly considered asking the public to exterminate every cat amid fears that the pets could spread the disease. Lord Bethell, a former deputy Health Minister from 2020 to 2021, revealed the news Wednesday during an interview with Britain's Channel 4 News.
"Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?" he added. The U.K. has some 10.9 million cats, according to the 2022 PDSA Animal Wellbeing report. The bombshell revelations have sparked astonishment from some on social media, with users sharing images of their own cats and vowing they would have put up a fight. 10 Downing Street's own feline friend Larry's unofficial Twitter parody account wrote: "hard not to take this personally."
"Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?" he added. The U.K. has some 10.9 million cats, according to the 2022 PDSA Animal Wellbeing report. The bombshell revelations have sparked astonishment from some on social media, with users sharing images of their own cats and vowing they would have put up a fight. 10 Downing Street's own feline friend Larry's unofficial Twitter parody account wrote: "hard not to take this personally."
Kill the cats? (Score:4, Insightful)
"... If we can save JUST ONE HUMAN LIFE it will have been worth." - hysterical COVIDIOTS
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I mean, they had to know there would be pushback from cat owners.
Re:Kill the cats? (Score:4, Informative)
In Canada they shut down homeless shelters in the middle of winter to protect homeless people.
Sure, some of them died in porta potty's trying to keep warm. But it's a small price.
https://globalnews.ca/news/758... [globalnews.ca]
The shelter has been forced to close at 9:30 p.m., due to public health directives issued following an outbreak of COVID-19.
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No, that's not what happened. That one particular homeless shelter was not allowed to remain open overnight because it had suffered from a covid outbreak and didn't have the proper physical measures in place. Other homeless shelters remained open overnight, and that particular homeless shelter resumed 24/7 operation around a week later once the city pitched in to help it put the measures in place.
What happened was a tragedy, but it was not a systemic problem.
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No, they didn't. They opened up more beds in fact. Source; I work for an organization that runs homeless shelters in Canada.
Re:Kill the cats? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm surprised they even considered it.
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That sounds like an appropriate response if you ask me. Also, pet rent?!! Seriously? Is their child rent? Exactly!!!
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I'm pretty sure a lot of parents wish it was, especially come teenage years. Could we just cancel our renting contract and return the (expletive censored)?
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That counts as pushback.
Re:Kill the cats? (Score:4, Informative)
The black plague was largely spread by parasites that lived on rats or from human to human through these mostly fleas. The cats, obviously killed the rats.
The aristocracies answer. Kill the cats.
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They don't have any real power...politicians can absolutely act counter to the "guidance" of royalty.
It's the politicians who are the new royalty. You're attached to old labels rather than function. No matter how the Party bleats about equality and murdering aristocrats, before a revolution even ends they are a full new aristocracy already.
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Yes, the American idea that one guy can't fuck-up the country, so you're saved. US Congress didn't order the escalation of the Vietnam 'emergency' and Congress didn't order the invasion of Iraq: Your 'one guy can't' ideal is a delusion. What you mean is, a republic works so nothing bad happens. Strange, for 40 years, the television's told me this US republic is evil.
And fleas then jumped onto the cats, who took the diseased parasites straight to the humans. The problem didn't stop at rats and overcrowd
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"Congress didn't order the invasion of Iraq"
Maybe not "order". But Congress certainly did authorize the effort.
H.J.Res.114 - Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002
"Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 - Expresses support for the President's efforts to: (1) strictly enforce through the United Nations Security Council all relevant Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and (2) obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to
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"Congress didn't order the invasion of Iraq"
Maybe not "order". But Congress certainly did authorize the effort.
Sure, after Colin Powell went there and sold them a pack of lies.
Who was behind that? How many people? Was his surname "Bush"?
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COVIDIOTS
That word does not mean what you think it means. Idiot.
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I think they meant to say Covidians
Re:Kill the cats? (Score:4, Insightful)
"... If we can save JUST ONE HUMAN LIFE it will have been worth." - hysterical COVIDIOTS
This is not like mask wearing and vaccines. This would have been beyond the pale but, more importantly, completely unnecessary and ineffective next to other measures as opposed to masks and vaccines. Obviously the first consideration with pet cats is if they can catch the virus and spread it to humans. Beyond this, there's the fact that pet cats are _pets_. In fact, a large percentage of them are indoor pets. It would make zero sense to kill cats who never leave the house to avoid spreading communicable diseases - that they could only catch _from_ the residents of the house - _to_ the residents of the house. Then, for outdoor cats, there's the question of how likely they are to actually catch a virus. That's more complicated. Cats are typically pretty solitary when they are out and about, especially if they're fixed, but they can meet up with each other and even meet in big groups. Of course, in that case, worst case _should_ have been an order to keep pet cats confined. What I find interesting is that the behavior of dogs, even if they go outside only on leashes, is still much more likely to spread disease among them. I mean, they're basically coprophages, for one thing. So why would this have just been for pet cats?
Re:Kill the cats? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a cat lover and I'd die protecting my cat against human threats, but this news story is overblown. They "considered" it means they had a brainstorming session on one of the first days of the pandemic, and someone came up with that idea. They might have sent it to another ministry with questions "would it be useful?" or "can we really do it?", the answers were NO, and then everybody forgot about it, except this guy right now.
I think UK administration loves to devise contingency plans. In 2013 or so, during the EU financial crisis, the UK prepared a plan to evacuate their citizen out of EU in case of global economical collapse. The risk was ridiculously exaggerated, but they lose nothing writing such plan, except for some money paying a team to think about improbable scenarios.
They are probably working right now on scenarios like nuclear war, or total disruption in food importations.
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"Considering" something is the first step on the path to doing it. There's a huge difference between a extreme action being effectively ruled out by the unlikeliness of precipitating circumstances, vs ruling it out because it is fundamentally insane as a policy measure.
If the SWAT team considers breaching their way in to a hostage situation by blowing up a wall, and decides not to because of likely casualties, that's significantly different than if they had considered randomly pulling people off the street
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The risk was ridiculously exaggerated, but they lose nothing writing such plan, except for some money paying a team to think about improbable scenarios.
I think the real risk is that should that eventuality have come to pass, without such a plan in consideration, the fallout both in terms of British lives lost as well as political injury would have been considerable.
A savvy leadership has contingency plans in place for all sorts of possible futures, even if they are merely sketches and not fully fleshed-out.
So, yes, at the cost of a think-tank study, they did the right thing, which is to look at possible futures and plan accordingly.
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Thanks for formulating it in nice words. I agree with you, that's why despite strongly disagreeing with killing cats, I think it's still important to consider the hypothesis (and hopefully reject it as they did).
Re: Kill the cats? (Score:2)
The fundamental problem is... someone in Britain's government was actually psychopathic enough to even CONSIDER feline holocaust as an option in the first place.
Suppose someone in Britain's government had proposed euthanizing newborn infants under 3 months old & requiring pregnant women to have immediate abortions (or watch their newborn baby get euthanized seconds after delivery, possibly pulled from its mother's arms at gunpoint).
Right. Literally nobody would have even dared to WHISPER such an absurd
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>"more importantly, completely unnecessary and ineffective next to other measures as opposed to masks and vaccines. "
Killing pet cats would indeed be *insane* next to any measure (even if there ever was any evidence that cats could spread COVID-19). But most other early pandemic measures were not that effective, either. Masks are not very effective against aggressively contagious airborne viruses (respirators are, though). Handwashing, sterilizing postal packages, plexiglass shields, and other such thi
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The only hysteria is the over-reaction to the cats anecdote.
So what happened? One guy asked at a meeting how bad it was and if they might have to put down domestic cats? Why not ask?
Better than that other country who prime-minister was asking about injecting bleach.
Remember that over 4 million cattle had been slaughtered in the UK because of the BSE outbreak.
And we've seen increasing cases in recent decades when millions of domestic animals were slaughter to stop disease spread - pigs, chickens, etc.
Denmar
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>"One guy asked at a meeting how bad it was and if they might have to put down domestic cats? Why not ask?"
Because it is insane. To many, killing a cherished indoor pet cat because they might transmit COVID-19 would be in the same realm as killing their children because they might transmit COVID-19.
>"Remember that over 4 million cattle had been slaughtered in the UK because of the BSE outbreak."
You are seriously going to compare killing cattle or chickens to pet cats??
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in the same realm as killing their children because they might transmit COVID-19.
....
You are seriously going to compare killing cattle or chickens to pet cats??
Better than equating them with children, certainly.
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and then crazy cat lady goes to next level! (Score:2)
and then crazy cat lady goes to next level!
If society would have done that... (Score:2)
...I guarantee there would be an official entry into the Oxford English Dictionary to explain exactly what a "cat lady" is. Within an hour.
Hell, we would suddenly see why we can put women on the front lines.
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What if, after killing all the cats, it was actually spread by corgis? Would they off them as well?
Don't speak too soon. Last I heard they are starting to blame dogs.
The Author of 101 Uses for a Dead Cat (Score:1)
Gov knows no bounds (Score:3, Insightful)
For most elected officials and those in Government service this is a fairly normal thought process. They truly believe they are bound by nothing and can do anything because they are the "Government" and they are here to protect you. This is the exact reason to limit the power of any Government the absolute minimum.
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Many of them were ready to turn in their fellow citizens for such crimes as having visitors over during lockdown/restriction periods.
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They truly believe they are bound by nothing
No one is. What you're reading about is some dude saying something on the news. How many idiotic business meetings have you been to where they started a brainstorm session with "There's no such thing as a bad suggestion!".
Don't get your panties in a twist. You may have noticed that not even ruthless dictators went out and culled people's pets. This has zero to do with government power. Humans do inherently self regulate ideas.
Yup, that'd be effective (Score:2)
Even setting aside the fact there'd be widespread civil disobedience... does anyone believe they'd have been even remotely successful at accomplishing this?
The only times humans have been successful at eradicating creatures is when it was unintentional.
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I know what would happen if they tried this in America, and for once I'd take the gun out of the safe and join right in.
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We successfully eradicated COVID-19 and that was intentional.... /s
Most of the cat owners would have gone along (Score:2)
“The revelations have sparked astonishment from some on social media, with users sharing images of their own cats and vowing they would have put up a fight.”
Many would have bragged about their compliance and shamed those who resisted.
Wow, that would be... (Score:5, Funny)
That would have been catastrophic!
Brought to you by.... (Score:1)
...the same country that will jail you for tweeting something that hurts someones feelings...but then brag about their "great" healthcare.
It's BAT soup, not CAT soup. (Score:2)
Emily Litella: "Nevermind!"
No Pets? (Score:2)
It's interesting to think about what the world would look like if humans weren't allowed to have pets, only food and working animals (sheep dogs, horses for herding, cows for milk/meat etc). What would be different, how would people's behavior change? Would they be more sociable with other humans if they couldn't have animal companions? Would vacation frequency go up if they didn't have pets to care for?
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This is my food dog, you insensitive clod.
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Would they be more sociable with other humans if they couldn't have animal companions?
This sent me looking at US presidential pets [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw there!
Did you know that John Adams had a dog called "Satan", or that Polly the parrot "later attended Jackson's funeral but had to be removed due to loud and persistent profanity"?
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Well, they do, but more power to you. With a hint of luck you and people like you can restart the pandemic and we can return to the comfort of our home office.
Thank you for your sacrifice for my comfort.
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Those who don't understand statistics are doomed to become part of it.
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Funny thing about statistics, you're in them, like it or not.
"The UK Briefly considered" (Score:5, Insightful)
Corresponds to fuck all. It means a couple of people batted the idea around for a bit and it never went anywhere. It's just stupid to conflate it to the status of "nearly policy".
If I'm on a middle-management conference call working for United Airlines, and I suggest we just just stop permitting excessively overweight people from getting on the plane, "United Airlines" did not consider it.
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It's a distraction from the far not important things that have leaked out in the last few days. Chaos at the heart of government, pretty infighting, no joined up policy on anything. A Prime Minister who just wanted it to all go away, seemingly unable to understand what was happening.
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Exactly. It was just a random idea tossed around during some random brainstorming session. I'm sure crazier ideas were t
ex-ter-min-ate, ex-ter-min-ate (Score:2)
hic (Score:3)
Not the only example (Score:4, Informative)
Australia killed dogs to keep people from coming to pick them up [usatoday.com]. China killed pets while owners were in quarantine [npr.org].
It's been one of the major failings of covid response that public officials tended to consolidate their whole role into the single concern of reducing infection numbers. So any policy that could conceivably reduce those seemed ipso facto justified.
Sounds like ... (Score:2)
- Signed, Mr. Mouse
just pissed (Score:2)
“Everyone who drinks is not a poet. Maybe some of us drink because we're not poets.” - Arthur Bach
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Black Death Redux (Score:3)
Toxoplasmosis and emptional dependence would.... (Score:1)
...make that a non-starter. Cat owners would prefer another Black Death to wiping out their furry emotional support systems.
The crazy would be entertaining to watch though.
Not A Plan (Score:2)
This was not an actual proposal or plan. It was part of a Doctor Who story arc, and it was set in a slightly later year (COVID-26). Of course at the end, it is the feline alien physicians (aghast as they were at what the humans did) that save everyone.
And then next week nobody on Earth remembers that any of it happened.
Unintended consequences. (Score:1)
I read once about a crop failure in England that had them calling in ecological experts as it was inexplicable. The explanation was this. No Honey Bees. Why not? A massive population surge in field mice had destroyed the hives. Why the mice? No cats? Why no cats? Bird watchers were killing them to keep them from killing the birds they were watching. The bird population was unchanged as the cats killed few that would not likely have died anyway from illness or injury. Solution? Stop killing the pu
It would be a bloodbath... of humans (Score:2)
If the British government passed a law mandating the killing of cats, cat owners would have burned the country down. For every human allegedly saved by the action, there would have been multiple government officials, law enforcement officers, their family members, cat owners, and/or neighbors killed in nasty ways while enforcing the law, while resisting the law, and/or in subsequent retribution and revenge.
When people ask why there needs to be a Monarch whose only real power is the authority to dissolve Par
Now it's Dogs (Score:2)
Sounds good (Score:1)
The Cat-Detector Vans (Score:2)
Connquest of the Planet of the Apes (Score:2)
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes [wikipedia.org] is a sci-fi movie, *NOT* a road map.