# Sunshine virus



## Emma96 (Jul 30, 2018)

*Posting on behalf of a friend.
*
How long is the incubation period for sunshine virus? 

If a snake in the collection was tested positive for sunshine virus and than got another one tested and it came back clear, is it likely that the virus hasn't shown yet?
Or is it 100% clear of the virus?


----------



## Bl69aze (Jul 30, 2018)

sunshine virus can take years to show any symptoms from what i understand.


----------



## Pauls_Pythons (Jul 30, 2018)

You could have a false negative.
There are substantiated reports of animals carrying the disease for years and not showing any outward signs.


----------



## Stompsy (Jul 30, 2018)

Paul is correct. You can get false negatives, so the snake could have the virus but not be shedding it at the time it was tested. I attended Shane Simpson’s forum on viruses a while back and he has a written text version of it available somewhere. Give it a look in as it provides heaps of relevant information!


----------



## Emma96 (Jul 30, 2018)

That's what I thought but was not 100% sure.
I was going to purchase reptile virus E book written by Shane Simpson to get a better understanding on what affects reptiles. I will also try and find that post.

Thankyou guys for the information


----------



## Elcho (Aug 1, 2018)

It is not know how long pythons can carry the virus without shedding it. There are several viruses not just sunshine that are an issue, definitely get Shane's E book if you are interested in learning more. As stated above there can be false negatives so this is why multiple tests are required. At a minimum 12 month quarantine and 2 clear tests is a good start. I personally would do a two year quarantine period with 3 negative tests results. Some viruses are airborne so separate parts of the house doesn't guarantee safety from the rest of the collection. At the end of the day a lot of pet keepers and breeders don't bother to test and a lot is still unknown with incubation periods etc. You really need to way up the cost vs risk and through the breeder is big and/or well known doesn't mean their collection is virus free. Viruses don't care how big or expensive your collections are.


----------



## Sdaji (Aug 1, 2018)

To the people saying these things are airborne: Do you think expos should be banned? If not, how do you justify that?

How do you explain situations like the giant herp expos in Europe and the USA where everyone runs around handling everything and then everything else not spreading everything to everything?

I think it's an interesting and important issue, but most of the information out there is completely wrong. Also, including the main people, including vets, who bang on about the importance of quarantine, virtually no one does. In my 25 odd years of being involved pretty heavily in the herp scene, including myself, I think I can count the number of private keepers who properly quarantine on one hand, and I can only think of one commercial facility in Australia which properly quarantines.


----------



## Elcho (Aug 1, 2018)

I think expos are outdated and wouldn’t attend one, not just because of the risk but everything there has normally been posted on Facebook 100 times anyway. I think testing should be mandatory when selling animals or the death of an animal. Also mandatory reporting back to the department by vets. If the results come back positive your collection should be locked down or destroyed. I have a good laugh when peoples risk management is to buy from a well known breeder. Most of those larger breeders are a higher risk in my opinion because they go to expos, have people coming to look at their collection, breed the latest morph to stay ahead of the game etc. I personally don’t know if it is airborne but think more money should be spent on research. The development of a vaccine would be the best option if possible. What risk do these viruses have on our native wildlife? Surely the government should be putting something in place to control the spread that is happening. Everyone is worried about sunshine but there are several others out there just as bad that no one talks about.
[doublepost=1533112674,1533111973][/doublepost]


Sdaji said:


> I can count the number of private keepers who properly quarantine on one hand, and I can only think of one commercial facility in Australia which properly quarantines.



That’s probably another issue. What is proper quarantine? Everyone has a different answer.


----------



## Sdaji (Aug 1, 2018)

Elcho said:


> I think expos are outdated and wouldn’t attend one, not just because of the risk but everything there has normally been posted on Facebook 100 times anyway.



If you think expos are outdated you're wrong. Even if you are 100% correct about them being bad (and perhaps you're right), they exist, they are growing, they will continue to grow.



> I think testing should be mandatory when selling animals or the death of an animal. Also mandatory reporting back to the department by vets.



LOL



> If the results come back positive your collection should be locked down or destroyed.



One of the great many reasons this will never happen.



> I have a good laugh when peoples risk management is to buy from a well known breeder. Most of those larger breeders are a higher risk in my opinion because they go to expos, have people coming to look at their collection, breed the latest morph to stay ahead of the game etc.



I totally hear you here. I think it's very funny every time I see some of the big breeders being so outspoken about quarantine and virus awareness, while they are known to have viruses in their collections and they frequently display blatant quarantine violations. A very common thing is for them to talk about the importance of quarantining for 6-24 months, but also proudly show pictures of their new acquisitions, then shortly after show pictures of those new acquisitions mating with animals in the main collection, etc. I'd love to name some of these high profile, widely-respected people, but these days I'm not generally in the mood for a bun fight.



> I personally don’t know if it is airborne but think more money should be spent on research.



Funded by and carried out by whom? I am yet to see anyone do any proper research, and I can't imagine anyone actually willing to donate a relevant amount of money.



> The development of a vaccine would be the best option if possible.



LOL



> What risk do these viruses have on our native wildlife?



Probably zero.



> Surely the government should be putting something in place to control the spread that is happening.



LOL



> Everyone is worried about sunshine but there are several others out there just as bad that no one talks about.



It's clear no one really knows anything, and there's just a bunch of obviously incorrect information being passed around. In the absence of real data, people are willing to believe any moron who claims to know anything.



> That’s probably another issue. What is proper quarantine? Everyone has a different answer.



Indeed, and regardless of which answer you consider correct, effectively no one follows it, but many people lie and pretend to. The most vocal ones usually being among the worst culprits.


----------



## Pauls_Pythons (Aug 1, 2018)

Sdaji said:


> I think I can count the number of private keepers who properly quarantine on one hand, and I can only think of one commercial facility in Australia which properly quarantines.



As far as Im aware trying to quarantine for SV is a waste of time. Animals have been known to be contaminated with SV from testing but have not shown any symptoms for over 3 years. I certainly dont have the ability/space to properly quarantine anything for that period of time.



Elcho said:


> I think testing should be mandatory when selling animals or the death of an animal.



Im not entirely against this suggestion BUT its totally un-managable. Mandatory testing would increase the price of animals in the market as the cost would have to go somewhere. It wouldn't take long before someone was producing counterfeit vet papers saying their contaminated animals were healthy either. I have been considering doing blanket testing across my collection. The only problem is it could be a year before you had confidence that your collection was 'clean' by which time it could have actually been contaminated by a new addition or a visitor or a trip to an expo.
What we need is a method of testing for multiple viruses quickly and accurately.



Sdaji said:


> Do you think expos should be banned? If not, how do you justify that?


$64,000 question. I think there should be no selling of animals at expos IF there is substance behind all the claims that collections are at risk. There are enough avenues currently available for the buying of animals do we need a 1 day selling marathon which gives everyone an opportunity to move on their sick animals to the unsuspecting public?
I have not bought an animal at an expo in the last 20 odd years but when I come back from an expo the first place I go is in the shower and clean clothes. I don't know if the risks are real Sdaji but I will say they do have me worried.


----------



## Sdaji (Aug 2, 2018)

Pauls_Pythons said:


> $64,000 question. I think there should be no selling of animals at expos IF there is substance behind all the claims that collections are at risk. There are enough avenues currently available for the buying of animals do we need a 1 day selling marathon which gives everyone an opportunity to move on their sick animals to the unsuspecting public?
> I have not bought an animal at an expo in the last 20 odd years but when I come back from an expo the first place I go is in the shower and clean clothes. I don't know if the risks are real Sdaji but I will say they do have me worried.



I'm only playing devil's advocate. I know expos aren't going away, neither is selling at expos.

I've never bought an animal from an expo, and I've almost always been extremely selective about where I source things, and if I've really wanted something from a source I wasn't sure about I've quarantined properly. But amusingly, people simultaneously bang on about the risks of viruses and advocate pet shops and expos and themselves actively trade and carry out activities as I described above.

I also wash clothes and shower and go through an elaborate decontamination process after coming into contact with any reptiles/collection/pet shop/expo even if I don't touch any animals, which I almost always don't. Ask anyone who has come back with me from anything to do with reptiles what it's like! Haha! I force them to do it too or they're not allowed inside, and even if they do it all, they won't be allowed near my animals for some time afterwards.

It always amused me, and sometimes made me a little pissed off, when buyers would come to the house, I'd recognise them from the forums and they'd have been talking about quarantine, they'd want to buy stuff, and I wouldn't let them touch anything until they'd bought it. Even after telling me stuff like "I figured while buying a couple of snakes we'd make a full reptile day of it so we visited a couple of pet shops on the way here" they couldn't understand why they weren't allowed inside the house, let alone given the full tour to see and handle everything! Even though I always kept a clean collection, I'd shower and wear fresh clothes immediately before leaving the house if I was going to go to any other keeper's home, though no one else seemed to pay the same courtesy, which is part of why I could count the number of people who I'd be happy to openly show the collection to on my thumbs.

Very very few people practise any form of effective quarantine in Australia, and it's not much different in the USA (I'm actually not 100% sure about Europe). In Asia they don't even really pay attention or talk about the concept of quarantine, but while individual collections seem to vary (which doesn't seem to correlate with quarantine, moreso management and general husbandry methods/standards), the overall picture in terms of diseases prevalence wherever you go, which is very limited. The USA 'should' be a crazy pile of diseases if what we are told by the vets was remotely true, everything in Asia should be diseased, but the reality is clearly different. Getting a grasp on the realities is difficult because almost no one, least of all the vets, wants to be honest or realistic about it, and few even have the knowledge and understanding to grasp the concepts anyway. In reality, almost always, you can go to an expo or one of the notorious markets where countless reptiles are routinely brought in from all over the world and kept long term in the same place with zero attempt at quarantine, and buy whatever you want, and you can be pretty confident it'll be healthy (and if it isn't it's almost always because of poor husbandry or transportation stress). I personally have never done such a thing and literally would have a phobia level freak out about buying from such a place, but I know many people who have and there aren't problems. Many of those shops also have resident animals either as mascots or breeders, which constantly get exposed to animals from all imaginable sources, for years on end, and as long as the husbandry is good, they invariably stay healthy.

Whatever happened to IBD and OPMV anyway?


----------

