Because viri are not considered life in some cases, are they even iNat’s database?
1 Like
As it was already mentioned in comments, yes, they are.
2 Likes
I can recollect my original thought that in theory, and by the same toke, iNat rule, a virus is not a living organism. Going further, photographing mucous caused by viral infection is as specific to a virus as pfau_tarleton said above, as photographing a lake as evidence of fish therein.
At present Flaviviridae are a valid taxa branch in iNat, and there is a valid/active Covid-19 taxon.
You have to remember also that the photographic evidence only plays part of the evidence base. An expert in the field can photograph a spider and later through dissection return to the observation and put a species ID, and stating that micro work confirms the ID. If it is an arachnologist that I have come to respect the IDs of, I would likely confirm on that basis alone! So it’s not always just a “lake as evidence of a fish” situation!
For the large part, this talk of “iNatting Covid” is just a way of “speaking through the anxiety”. I am sure that anyone who has covid-19 and is well enough to put up an observation of covid-19 with whatever evidence they deem fitting, will have more to worry over than getting harrassed regarding the legitimacy of viri observations on iNat.
If anyone feels the need to have that conversation with anyone, please remember to be kind and understanding in how you do so.
2 Likes
yeah, if i get this awful thing i at least want it on my life list… but no real way for it to get research grade, so no real need to post ‘evidence’, why not just make an observation without media for it?
1 Like
Since RG is mostly for submission to GBIF, can I infer that GBIF doesn’t recognize virus submissions? If that’s the case, in case that ever changes and those observations do become eligible for RG, wouldn’t you want pictures (of septum, of test results, etc) attached so the DQA for “Has photos or sounds” is already met?
Or is there another reason viruses, bacteria, etc show up as “unknown” and/or can’t be RG?
1 Like
I really appreciate your insight about the motivations people may have for posting covid cases here. I would have guessed that in many cases, it’s a facebooking-type impulse, or grabbing an opportunity to increase one’s species count. Your view is much more positive.
I do have a disagreement with ID endorsements. Each user is charged with the responsibility of making their OWN identification, not rubber-stamping the opinions of others.
The “Maverick” status of an ID was meant to bring attention to the value of outside opinions. I hate the idea of the process equating to a popularity contest.
3 Likes
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35116497 shows a symptom not a virus. It would be great to see where all the negative and positive test reslts are on an iNat map. We dont get to hear much about where the negatives are and how much testing is really being done, especially here in Africa. It would be so useful to record the tests done and tyheir places and dates and positives and negatives ( as well as deaths and recoveries) would love to see all this on an iNat map.
I wouldn’t expect observers here to post negative results, and a map of negatives at any recording site is likely to become “overtaken by events” rapidly.
For mapping of unambiguously positive results (datapoints are whole-virus genome sequences), this is an interesting site: https://nextstrain.org/ncov . There’s necessarily a built in testing bias of course, but they would like to get more sequences from undersampled places, as discussed in https://nextstrain.org/narratives/ncov/sit-rep/2020-03-27
1 Like
I think live mapping could actually be a dangerous thing. It might be used as a “we are in the hot spot, we need to flee to the non-hot spot”, and thus encourage people to spread the virus faster! My understanding is that there is an asymptomatic period that might lead people to a false sense of “I don’t have it, I’m ok to travel to there…”, and then there are those that will have minor symptoms that don’t perceive it as covid and actively transmit while in transit!
4 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.