COVID-19 is very infectious. One person can infect 2.5 people (R2.5). To make it simple, we’ll say one person can infect two other people (R2). Here is a picture to visualize it.
In 8 days, this one person could have been the cause of 31 COVID-19 infections.
What about BVD? There have been no studies that show the infection rate (R0 [R-naught] Number), but we might be able to get an idea based off an outbreak we saw in the Texas panhandle one time. There was a pen with a BVD-PI animal in it, this pen had a 30.8% mortality rate and a 79.2% morbidity rate. Out of all the animals that died, 3 had samples sent off to be tested. All of the samples came back as BVDV-1b, identical to the BVD-PI animal found in the pen. So, we are positive the PI animal infected at least 3 other animals (R3).
In 8 days, 1 BVD-PI animal would have caused 120 infections. Obviously, this is way higher than COVID. Again, there is no data to support the true infection rate of BVDv. It would be different in a feeder setting than it would a ranch setting. Here we are just trying to visualize how fast the virus spreads.
Follow us as we explore what COVID and BVD have in common and how we can take what we have learned from COVID and apply it to our beef operations.
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