Pet owning people with COVID who are at home would probably wish to have the comfort of patting and even hugging man's best friend, but this is a bad idea for several reasons.
First you can easily infect a pet dog leading to symptoms which will not only concern a responsible pet owner but will also cause extra work in caring for the sick animal.
Second, a zoonotic disease (one which can pass between humans and various animals) is extremely dangerous because it provides yet another and especially novel environment which can easily help develop a more dangerous mutation or, to use the recently popular term "variant."
But COVID has been a major boost for shelter adoptions as people who were in lockdown reached out for comfort and companionship to pets. In fact (see link below) some shelters were actually emptied of adoptive dogs which is wonderful if the people don't just dump their new pets back in shelters when the pandemic ends and they are not forced to stay home.
Some, perhaps many will continue to stay home and even work from home as they have experienced the wonderful freedom from dress codes (most punishing for women) and especially from that dreaded daily commute. I know of no one who ever looked forward to spending hours each week sitting in traffic jams.
A pre-print paper cites case studies of pets which developed respiratory symptoms after being in close contact with COVID patients.
In dogs the symptoms of infection include "sneezing, cough, hyaline rhinorrhea (Spanish term which could be translated as watery, perhaps profuse nasal discharge, diarrhea, vomiting, adynamia (weakness), and lack of appetite."
In the study 290 domestic animals were tested, 87.6% cats and 12.4% were dogs. Lab results showed a low but definite infection rate in both dogs and cats.
The report includes a list of the variations found in dogs and humans involved in the study which was conducted in northwestern Columbia.
Back in 2020 the journal Nature reported that dogs can be trained to smell out (so to speak) COVID infected people.
https://www.icpcovid.com/sites/default/files/2021-03/Ep%20117-11%20Can%20dogs%20smell%20COVID_%20Here%E2%80%99s%20what%20the%20science%20says.pdf
Ellis EG. Thanks to sheltering in place, animal shelters are empty. [Accessed June 21, 2020]. https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-pet-adoption-boom. Published April 10, 2020.
The mental health of people forced to stay at home and actively avoid contact with other people will be a major problem that psychologists are already trying to deal with.
Perhaps the freelance writer (such as me) have a big advantage because writers are generally people who isolate themselves to have time and psychological energy to spend 8-10 hours a day writing, a notoriously solitary profession.
The CDC says little about pets other than that COVID can be transmitted both ways between pet and the pet's human.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/covid-19/pets.html
They de-emphasize the risk but it is important to realize that new variants could be much more easily transmissible not just between humans but between humans and animals.
They do recommend isolating people with COVID both from other people in the household but also from any pets.
