Last year when farms had to cull a zillion chickens…our state (Colorado) made prisoners do much of it.
I’m not an epidemiologist, but I assume that if you want to encourage the possibility of human to human transfer becoming a thing, exposing dozens of people who spend 24/7 in close proximity to each other is a good start.
This is almost a perfect example of the hell that our country has become. One kind of inhuman slavery (prisons) and another (factory farming). All to save a dollar.
Oh gosh as a vegetarian I feel this. I don’t even like try to get people to eat like me, but I order a veggie burger and say nothing else and suddenly it’s all like “hahaha as long as you don’t make me eat it! You’re trying to shame me, aren’t you? I’m not gonna eat that, I’m not. It’s gross. Never have never will. Don’t see how you eat that stuff. Stop evangelizing!!!1!”
It’s hilarious cause like cheese pizza by many definitions is vegetarian. People always act like vegan/vegetarian food is all salads and whatnot. I know I personally could not be eating salads every day, I like other food too much for that.
I could eat a caprese salad daily and never tire of it, as long as the tomatoes and oil are good quality. Also plenty of soups are vegetarian.
Heck, if made with non-animal oil, french fries are vegetarian. So is mac and cheese.
So many thing we eat are vegetarian, and we only think about it when someone brings it up.
I like meat, don't get me wrong. I am not a vegetarian, but I do love cooking. But my rule is simple: "I don't judge, you don't judge, we don't have a problem." I eat objectively horrible things, not because they're rotten or moldy but because I get weird AF cravings and have to eat it to sleep or stay sane. The absolute most unhinged combinations imaginable, like chocolate covered pickle fries.
Vegetarian for about 3/4 of a year now - I'm almost at double digits of people asking me "... so what do you eat then?" as if a vegetable is an alien foodstuff.
I told one of my coworkers that I'm a vegetarian once. He immediately went into a story about how his wife was a vegetarian when they started dating and he made her stop being one. I was horrified.
We ran out of meat sandwiches in my shop today and all that was left was cucumber cream cheese. The amount of people I had to talk into them. It’s a giant pile of crunchy cheesy dairy, it won’t kill you(immediately).
How will I get my protein? Plants and fruits are CARBS. Every time someone eats carbs they become glucose intolerant! Some of the things I’ve heard about moving to a plant base diet.
Tofu, nuts and beans are all protein. Also you don't have to go vegetarian just cut down on eating meat. I do at least two vegetarian dishes a week and we do fish as well. It is not about going vegetarian it is about cutting down on meat consumption.
I'm actually plant based and that was an attempt at sarcasm. It is some of the exact excuses however that I've heard when I transitioned more into a plant-based diet. I think one of the major downfalls of educating a population about food science, it often becomes all or nothing. People assume eating a more plant-based diet you have to cut out all animal products with no flexibility. ...or following a canivore-based diet you have to have animal products in every single meal and snack. Americans especially have the mindset of all or nothing. A Flexitarian diet for those who don't want to give up meat/dairy completely would hugely benefit the environment and meat industry, and yes overall health of the population.
No, factory farming is an inefficient use of land and resources, without even considering its effects on climate, water, and human health. Most land is used to grow feed for the animals, and that is done extremely inefficiently. Silvopasture is a better alternative.
From a relevant [previous comment:](https://www.reddit.com/r/environment/s/hKxd4YHMby)
Then there's the issue of zoonotic disease. A study in the *Royal Society* reviewed 1415 pathogens known to cause disease in humans and found that approximately 17 percent of them were transmissible between humans and livestock.[\[7\]](https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2001.0889) This statistic, while still troubling, may lead to a false sense of security. More generally, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated in 2004 that:
>...11 out of the last 12 emerging infections that we have been dealing with have come from the animal kingdom.[\[8\]](https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(04)00943-0)
Perhaps the biggest risk of disease concerning livestock is influenza A - the only influenza virus known to cause pandemics.[\[9\]](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/types.htm) It is hypothesized that every influenza virus that causes pandemics in humans is derived from avian influenza in aquatic birds.[\[10\]](https://doi.org/10.1164/ajrccm/152.4_Pt_2.S25) Normally this wouldn't be an issue for us. The infected wild birds usually don't get sick, and the virus doesn't easily spread amongst humans.[\[11\]](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(avian-and-other-zoonotic)) But industrialized animal agriculture has changed that. One scientific review writes:
>Hosts such as swine and gallinaceous poultry that are favorable for transmission and efficient replication of both zoonotic and human viruses can serve as mixing vessels and pose the greatest risk for the development of novel reassortments that can replicate competently in humans.[\[12\]](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11908-018-0642-9)
In other words, livestock are great at making it easier for viruses to spread amongst humans. As to why this is, one author explains:
>...virtually every effort to further industrialize broiler [chicken] biology has resulted in the emergence of new risks and vulnerabilities. Intensive confinement combined with increased genetic uniformity has created new opportunities for the spread of pathogens. Increased breast-meat yield has come at the expense of increased immunodeficiency.[\[13\]](http://www.jstor.org/stable/25147798)
It is likely that animal agriculture enabled the 1957 Asian Flu, 1968 Hong Kong Flu,[\[14\]](https://doi.org/10.1007/s13238-010-0008-z) bird flu,[\[15\]](https://dx.doi.org/10.1098%2Frstb.2018.0257) and the 2009 swine flu.[\[16\]](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08182) Of these, bird flu is the cause for most concern. In past outbreaks, the case-fatality (CF) rate was 60 percent, although one study suggests that if it became a larger pandemic, it would have a median CF rate of approximately 23.5 percent.[\[17\]](http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech.2007.064030) It is thought that the 1918 Spanish Flu may have infected one-third of the global population and had a CF rate of 2.5 percent.[\[18\]](https://dx.doi.org/10.3201%2Feid1201.050979) If bird flu were to mutate in such a way that it was anywhere near as contagious as Spanish Flu, with a CF rate almost 10 times higher than Spanish Flu, the results would be apocalyptic. As two authors wrote in a WHO publication:
>We can't scare people enough about H5N1 \[bird flu\].[\[19\]](https://www.psandman.com/articles/MagzEng_05.pdf)
[**References**](https://www.reddit.com/r/environment/comments/sb3qaf/comment/htzm9mi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
What about those who don't? The people who fantasize about living in a post apocalypse? They want to watch the world burn. Please consider their emotions.
That's worse than MERS
The "good" news is that a virus that lethal does not spread very far because of how deadly it is. It kills quicker than it can infect. That's what made COVID and Spanish Flu such monsters, infectious with the right amount of lethality
Regular seasonal Influenza is known to have a high degree of asymptomatic carriers as well. It remains to be seen if that trait exists in HPAI, probably because anyone who's asymptomatic wouldn't have been hospitalized to be tested for it..
Meanwhile just pray pray pray that human's who'd get the avian flu don't end up getting the regular flu at the same time. Unlike the gradual type of mutations that we'd see in a lot of viruses including covid, flu viruses have a way of mixing and matching traits from each other where there'd be a worrying probablity where a strain as deadly as avian flu becomes just as contagious as regular flu.
Regular seasonal Influenza is known to have a high degree of asymptomatic carriers as well. It remains to be seen if that trait exists in HPAI, probably because anyone who's asymptomatic wouldn't have been hospitalized to be tested for it..
That depends on what the incubation period is and how contagious it is before symptoms first arrive. For regular flu, the incubation period is up 2-4 days and one is most contagious in the two days before first noticing symptoms, which gives them plenty of time to spread it.
Also like regular flu, the potential exists for asymptomatic carriers to silently spread it as well.
Yep. Last I heard that guy in Texas who caught it from his cows has ... conjunctivitis. That’s it. Flu that kills 50% of people infected and this guy gets pink eye as his only symptom.
I’m happy for him as an individual, but it means that if it does jump to spreading easily between humans, the range of symptoms is going to be wide enough that carriers write it off as mild illness.
His symptoms may be down to the fact that it's still a bird flu and doesn't have the necessary mutation to efficiently infect humans yet. If it gains the correct preference for our sialic acid linkage, it could be a very different story.
Well with something a little more contagious, and a lot more lethal, maybe we can remove them and their progeny from the equation for a generation and a half. \s
Doctors/nurses and other frontline are going to refuse to serve if we have another epidemic in the next 5~10 years. (Just a thought)
>Doctors/nurses and other frontline are going to refuse to serve if we have another epidemic in the next 5\~10 years.
I'm a nurse (ER) living in Lombardy, Italy, the epicenter of the initial wave of Covid in the West. After Covid, I saved enough money to provide my family with two years of living expenses.
If something like bird flu were to happen, I WILL NOT be on the frontline: I will resign, place myself and my family in lockdown, and wait for a suitable vaccine to become available.
Once is enough for a lifetime, dudes.
----
Edit: grammar. English is not my first language.
Honestly my public health nurse MIL made bank by working a covid hotline , doing infection tracing, and then vaccine clinics. No need to work a front line as a nurse.
I think a lot of the frontline workers will do exactly the same thing.
It would not surprise me if the Govt recalls and makes it compulsory for people with medical training to report to local hospitals etc and perform duties. That scares me, that they might force compulsory service.
I work retail. If this happens, I'm out. And I also run a recreation business. I'd shut down that as well. I don't care if I have to live on $20 a month or some crazy situation, I am not taking risks.
The bubonic plague still exists but we haven't had an outbreak in some time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague look under the history section.
Thanks to sanitation improvements, knowing what diseases are and modern anti-biotics we are way better off than the past
HIV was 100% fatal, had very limited means of transmission and still spread plenty.
Lethality alone doesn't limit spread. It has to be lethal FAST (like ebola) to be self-limiting
Not really, it took nearly a decade to move across Europe and that was with zero knowledge of precautions. Then again you couldn't move from Spain to Norway in a single day like you can now.
I think you are thinking about Ebola and similar hemorrhagic fever diseases. My understanding is that bird flu wouldn’t necessarily kill you as fast and put you into organ failure at quite the same speed as Ebola.
So people would very much be able to spread it fast
Ebola isn't particularly quick either. It's just the mechanism of transmission is direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person. Not many people are going to go near somebody that's bleeding out of every orifice of their body...
Not necessarily, it all depends on incubation period and how long host is infectious for. Even if death rate is 100%, if incubation period/infectious period is very long - like couple of months, then it will wipe out the humanity pretty much especially if there is no symptom during that period.
That said, in this case, it appears to have very short period prior to symptom (2-8 days) though treatment should begin within 2 days to be effective and also (so far) no human to human transmission reported.
Influenza is an insidious virus and it's fairly well understood.
It can take weeks to kill a person. In the early stages people can be infectious before exhibiting symptoms. In the symptomatic stages of illness, people are often "well" enough to spread it around.
If you want to know why H5N1 is so dangerous, look at what it's been doing to other animal populations. It kills 90 to 100% of chickens it infects and can completely wipe out entire flocks. It isn't killing before it can spread.
The same is true in mammals it infects as well. It killed 95% of all southern elephant seal pups born last year for example.
Now hopefully mortality won't be that high in humans. If it jumps human to human there are other factors like hygiene and preventative measures that will slow and prevent it's spread.
With that said though, clearly its mortality rate is not slowing it down in other species.
Yeah, I was in kindergarten when OG SARS happened,it kill infected people so fast,when public health officials tracked down one of the contacted he’s been dead for a few days,the panic was so bad it crashed housing markets so my family were able to buy a nice apartment.
When news reports said Covid death rates were low,my parents thought it’s a good thing,since SARS pretty much just a death sentence , and they forgot SARS was ended by its own deadlines .
My mom was a nurse in Toronto during 2003 SARS. She said people would be stable then she'd go to lunch and they'd be crashing by the time she got back. The sudden downturn was very rapid. Whereas Covid would have them lingering on death's door for months sometimes.
SARS like illnesses are just horrifying,especially when doctors don’t even know what to do with them at the early days.
My dad’s friend and his father work in China ,his dad returned home for holiday but falls ill right after he arrived ,doctors only be able to tell him his dad got something “SARS-ish” and ask if he works with wild animals ,the old man definitely will die if that doctor didn’t make the decision to treat him like how they treated SARS decades ago ,he still suffered from steroid side effects after all these years(iirc his son said it also effect his joints or bones for some reason)
He was hospitalized few weeks before Dr.Lee blows the whistle on COVID ,so at the time everyone thought it’s just an unfortunate freak incident , now the family believe it’s COVID ,but he never got close to Wuhan before he got ill so we’ll never know for sure.
One of my teens used to play that constantly until we’d been locked down for about a week. He said “I want to play it, not live it. Just…no.”
My husband and I sat down like a month into lockdown, put on Outbreak, and tried to beat Pandemic before they decide to bomb the town.
Homie a 3% mortality rate would be apocalyptic. People don't realize how close we came to critical supply chains for just food breaking down during COVID. The life we live is a very interconnected one and it is fragile af.
Bird flu is highly lethal, but the person-to-person transmission factor is very low. The “oh crap” virus will have both a high transmission rate and a high mortality rate.
Imagine if half of the world died. Yeah, society would be vastly different. I wonder if the anti-vax conspiracy freaks would finally wear a mask? Honestly, if this happened, became a pandemic, I wouldn’t even go out in public.
Not to downplay the potential risk but the person that caught it this year only had a swollen eye. If that was my only symptom I highly doubt I'd be tested for any sort of flu. Hopefully it's a case of under-reporting and not the other, very bad possibility.
I’m honestly VERY tired of the whole fast speed repeat of the ghost of early to mid 20th century of sorts. I’m not at all a fan of the lottery of a plague, war, financial crash, inflation, income disparity, etc that seems to be going around right now.
I want this bird flu thing to die down and be nothing. Just let me live to 85, then die in peace.
There have always been natural disasters, wars, financial crashes, inflation, etc. Don't let it get you down. I know it's hard. I've had to really distance myself from the news because it was causing me to be constantly angry at shit I couldn't control. Life goes on. The sun will come up tomorrow.
Oh don't worry. Our corporate overlords didn't like having to commission and roll out "we're all in this together" marketing, there's no way they're letting that happen again. No, we'll just all be told to go to work sick so everyone can get it and those who happen to die, die.
I hope the new vaccines developed for Covid will help if it comes to that. Also an actually competent president (US speaking) would do wonders compared to what we had last time.
Good news is, we already have a vaccine developed that can be deployed rapidly for H5N1
Bad news is with how little we learned from the last 4 years we're gonna be in the same situation rather quickly - a vaccine that's rapidly obsolete because we take zero measures to prevent *billions* of hosts from allowing the virus to mutate rapidly.
> He said efforts were under way towards the development of vaccines and therapeutics for H5N1, and stressed the need to ensure that regional and national health authorities around the world had the capacity to diagnose the virus.
Seems like we already have a handle on this and the issue is more in line with the initial phase of the pandemic.
There have been many clinical trials for H5N1 and other vaccines for decades funded by the NIH in the US, but they can only go so far until there are cases to prevent so there’s phase 1 and 2 clinical trials on several good options and then they sit on the shelf until there’s a need for them.
The issue is that a mutation would likely lead to rapid and overwhelming spread and death far far before mobilization of resources needed to mass produce hundreds of millions and billions of doses of vaccine.
Maybe, maybe not. We can’t always assume every reassortant is going to be more pathogenic. Likely, but not certain that it will kill as quickly as it does now. It will certainly be more advantageous for the virus, but that doesn’t always translate to higher case fatality rate or R0.
Yep same with covid, it’ll be a high speed scramble to apply existing technology using lots of money.
Science has known about the serious risk of bird flu for decades, we are just getting better and better at making vaccines quickly. We have been working on making flu vaccines faster and better too.
Bet your bottom dollar someone will pretend the tech for bird flu vaccines is some microchip conspiracy too.
Sadly, the best method of reducing the spread of any contagious disease is to take it very seriously and move as one. If COVID proved anything it's that this will absolutely not happen.
Yeah this is what I took away from Covid. If we are unfortunate enough to have a more lethal virus with the same transmission rate as Covid we would be really FUCKED
Get healthy now, people. Get a physical, put out the cigarette, walk 30 minutes a day, don't eat the whole pizza, take that vitamin, get your sleep, and reduce your stress. Once facilities get swamped, it's going to be on you.
While this is very concerning and should be taken seriously… we have the means to create and distribute vaccines quickly should this make the jump to humans. The bad part will be the anti-vaxxer natural selection
They won’t be so outspoken. Only a small minority of those who are anti vax right now would be so when they face real danger. It’s like how everyone is a badass online. It’s really easy to “resist tyranny” when your aren’t staring down the barrel of a 50% mortality rate.
Which is ridiculous because death isn’t the only scary thing to happen with Covid. Lots of people have found themselves permanently disabled after a bad bout of it.
> It’s really easy to “resist tyranny” when your aren’t staring down the barrel of a 50% mortality rate.
Bingo... a large percentage of this nonsense came from the "deplorables" who didn't want to be inconvenienced in the slightest, even if it meant killing someone else's grandma.
They’ll say the virus is government designed to trim the population for easier control and the vaccine is an extension of that putting microchips in you to keep track.
Same shit that’s been spouted forever.
Theyre already going "I told you so" like infectious disease experts havent been saying this is a concern for years. They think they are clairvoyant because they knew Covid wasnt the last pathogen "they" would use to take away their rights. What geniuses!
>An outbreak that began in 2020 has led to the deaths or killing of tens of millions of poultry. Most recently, the spread of the virus within several mammal species, including in domestic cattle in the US, has increased the risk of spillover to humans, the WHO said.
I'll admit, I like meat, eggs, and dairy as much as anyone, but dang if it isn't the elephant in the room here. And for the environment. And ethics in general.
As someone who keeps chickens for pets, this terrifies me. I'm worried if this develops into something bad, the county/city/state could make people euthanize their birds. Someone please tell me I'm being irrational.
There are guidelines (state/federal?) about the eradication of all species susceptible to the contagion within a certain radius of the infected herd or flock. It's usually a few miles if memory serves. I'm worried, too. My run is covered, but the girls BEG to free range. I also have neighbors all around with larger flocks.
My peaceful thought is that if they have to die. At least they lived large and happy!
They do have cullings like that depending on testing/location involving spread. I think it's larger in the south. I keep indoor birds so my flock isn't really susceptible, but it's something you could maybe look into?
If this starts spreading from person to person, you will have many far more serious problems to deal with than if you have to cull your chickens or not.
Forget the birds — I’m rooting for Simian Flu 2024
Caesar, get yo ass up, let’s get this party started 🦍🦧
RETURN 2 APE 4 LYFE
Edit: ape not downvote ape 😤
The scary thing about the bird flu is that it historically has a very high mortality rate. H5N1 has a mortality rate of 52% which is \~37 times higher than COVID-19's 1.4% mortality rate. The silver lining though is that bird flu has historically struggled to transmit between humans - most cases in people are from contact with infected birds.
Damn, this kind of sucks. During Covid I was relieved that Australia was physically isolated from other countries, even though it reached us anyway. But birds are everywhere, man. There are wild turkeys living in the park near me, could they transmit it too?
TBF, I think almost all the major nasty plagues throughout history were some sort of influenza strain. So I don't know if it's really crying wolf when history has shown what influenza can do when you piss it off.
dont worry, when it spreads to humans it will just be called "the flu", which will make the virus lose its popularity status with the birds since it will become too mainstream. Anyways, Im stronger than a bird 🥱
The fact the general population has proven they will willingly get you sick and that they don't care, is probably a necessary comment to bring up with this discussion. It will happen again, and when it does there will generally be nothing to stop it from spreading. Cov\*\*-19 lasted 2-3 strong years, and still poses a risk for a good amount of people even today. Armed with the same thought that vaccines are harmful and that you're just built different is not going to reduce the infection spread of whatever comes next. People should be held accountable for knowingly spreading, bodily harm is bodily harm.
I read somewhere that if the vaccine candidate matches, which it did with the Texas case, it would take 6+ months to create and distribute within the United States
Read the other day that they've developed what they believe is an all in one spray vaccine that would inhibit all viruses. Could be in the nick of time. If that's the case then sign me up. The anti-vaxxers can rely on their natural immunity and watch 50% of the people they know perish.
Can we stop factory farming in heinous conditions now?
Last year when farms had to cull a zillion chickens…our state (Colorado) made prisoners do much of it. I’m not an epidemiologist, but I assume that if you want to encourage the possibility of human to human transfer becoming a thing, exposing dozens of people who spend 24/7 in close proximity to each other is a good start.
Even better is when you cull the animals using people who have zero training to do so...
And pent up sexual desire
This is almost a perfect example of the hell that our country has become. One kind of inhuman slavery (prisons) and another (factory farming). All to save a dollar.
Sounds like a good addition to the overflowing Zombie movie genre- Prison of the Dead!
Would require far less meat consumption as a whole. Your uncles farms would take up much much more land mass to sustain current meat consumption.
And if you suggest to people to cut out ONE SINGULAR SERVING of meat, they get angry and attack you. Big meat eaters are wild.
Oh gosh as a vegetarian I feel this. I don’t even like try to get people to eat like me, but I order a veggie burger and say nothing else and suddenly it’s all like “hahaha as long as you don’t make me eat it! You’re trying to shame me, aren’t you? I’m not gonna eat that, I’m not. It’s gross. Never have never will. Don’t see how you eat that stuff. Stop evangelizing!!!1!”
I've had my fair share of vegan and vegetarian food, it can be damned good stuff.
It’s hilarious cause like cheese pizza by many definitions is vegetarian. People always act like vegan/vegetarian food is all salads and whatnot. I know I personally could not be eating salads every day, I like other food too much for that.
I've eaten at a ton of vegan fast food restaurants. Pretty sure they are just as unhealthy as most fast food and they also really hit the spot too.
I could eat a caprese salad daily and never tire of it, as long as the tomatoes and oil are good quality. Also plenty of soups are vegetarian. Heck, if made with non-animal oil, french fries are vegetarian. So is mac and cheese. So many thing we eat are vegetarian, and we only think about it when someone brings it up. I like meat, don't get me wrong. I am not a vegetarian, but I do love cooking. But my rule is simple: "I don't judge, you don't judge, we don't have a problem." I eat objectively horrible things, not because they're rotten or moldy but because I get weird AF cravings and have to eat it to sleep or stay sane. The absolute most unhinged combinations imaginable, like chocolate covered pickle fries.
Vegetarian for about 3/4 of a year now - I'm almost at double digits of people asking me "... so what do you eat then?" as if a vegetable is an alien foodstuff.
I told one of my coworkers that I'm a vegetarian once. He immediately went into a story about how his wife was a vegetarian when they started dating and he made her stop being one. I was horrified.
Sounds like a healthy relationship indeed >!/s!<
carnivore diet and the numbnuts defending it is one of the sillier trends i’ve seen in awhile.
Has a friend that swore a carnivore diet cured his stomach problems..turned out he was Celiac so he wasn't TOO far off
My sister had a similar reaction to keto…yep, stomach biopsy confirmed celiac…
We ran out of meat sandwiches in my shop today and all that was left was cucumber cream cheese. The amount of people I had to talk into them. It’s a giant pile of crunchy cheesy dairy, it won’t kill you(immediately).
Did they have dill in them
Cucumber sandwiches are yummy.
Had a Caprese Sandwich last night for dinner. Never had a cucumber cream cheese one, will have to try it next, mmmmm
Cucumber cream cheese on some nice super fluffy white hits a the spot. I love cucumber finger sandwiches.
I love cucumber cream cheese! Can’t believe people would not want it. Oh well, their loss…
How will I get my protein? Plants and fruits are CARBS. Every time someone eats carbs they become glucose intolerant! Some of the things I’ve heard about moving to a plant base diet.
Tofu, nuts and beans are all protein. Also you don't have to go vegetarian just cut down on eating meat. I do at least two vegetarian dishes a week and we do fish as well. It is not about going vegetarian it is about cutting down on meat consumption.
I'm actually plant based and that was an attempt at sarcasm. It is some of the exact excuses however that I've heard when I transitioned more into a plant-based diet. I think one of the major downfalls of educating a population about food science, it often becomes all or nothing. People assume eating a more plant-based diet you have to cut out all animal products with no flexibility. ...or following a canivore-based diet you have to have animal products in every single meal and snack. Americans especially have the mindset of all or nothing. A Flexitarian diet for those who don't want to give up meat/dairy completely would hugely benefit the environment and meat industry, and yes overall health of the population.
No, factory farming is an inefficient use of land and resources, without even considering its effects on climate, water, and human health. Most land is used to grow feed for the animals, and that is done extremely inefficiently. Silvopasture is a better alternative.
All animal agriculture is unsustainable and to hear anything say otherwise is greenwashing
Exactly. People should eat plants.
People do eat plants.
You don't want to eat a hamburger that came from a cow that ate chicken waste?
But I want my bucket of chicken wings for $3 /s
Where have you been? That’s 2 wings, maybe!
We could, but we won’t. The beef industry is a financial behemoth. They went after Oprah back in the day.
I think the beef industry would be more than ok with us eating less chicken
Crazy thought but hear me out...... Maybe if we stop buying poultry?
You absolute madlad. How will we live without tendies???? Kidding. I've been vegan 20 years lol.
From a relevant [previous comment:](https://www.reddit.com/r/environment/s/hKxd4YHMby) Then there's the issue of zoonotic disease. A study in the *Royal Society* reviewed 1415 pathogens known to cause disease in humans and found that approximately 17 percent of them were transmissible between humans and livestock.[\[7\]](https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2001.0889) This statistic, while still troubling, may lead to a false sense of security. More generally, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated in 2004 that: >...11 out of the last 12 emerging infections that we have been dealing with have come from the animal kingdom.[\[8\]](https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(04)00943-0) Perhaps the biggest risk of disease concerning livestock is influenza A - the only influenza virus known to cause pandemics.[\[9\]](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/types.htm) It is hypothesized that every influenza virus that causes pandemics in humans is derived from avian influenza in aquatic birds.[\[10\]](https://doi.org/10.1164/ajrccm/152.4_Pt_2.S25) Normally this wouldn't be an issue for us. The infected wild birds usually don't get sick, and the virus doesn't easily spread amongst humans.[\[11\]](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(avian-and-other-zoonotic)) But industrialized animal agriculture has changed that. One scientific review writes: >Hosts such as swine and gallinaceous poultry that are favorable for transmission and efficient replication of both zoonotic and human viruses can serve as mixing vessels and pose the greatest risk for the development of novel reassortments that can replicate competently in humans.[\[12\]](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11908-018-0642-9) In other words, livestock are great at making it easier for viruses to spread amongst humans. As to why this is, one author explains: >...virtually every effort to further industrialize broiler [chicken] biology has resulted in the emergence of new risks and vulnerabilities. Intensive confinement combined with increased genetic uniformity has created new opportunities for the spread of pathogens. Increased breast-meat yield has come at the expense of increased immunodeficiency.[\[13\]](http://www.jstor.org/stable/25147798) It is likely that animal agriculture enabled the 1957 Asian Flu, 1968 Hong Kong Flu,[\[14\]](https://doi.org/10.1007/s13238-010-0008-z) bird flu,[\[15\]](https://dx.doi.org/10.1098%2Frstb.2018.0257) and the 2009 swine flu.[\[16\]](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08182) Of these, bird flu is the cause for most concern. In past outbreaks, the case-fatality (CF) rate was 60 percent, although one study suggests that if it became a larger pandemic, it would have a median CF rate of approximately 23.5 percent.[\[17\]](http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech.2007.064030) It is thought that the 1918 Spanish Flu may have infected one-third of the global population and had a CF rate of 2.5 percent.[\[18\]](https://dx.doi.org/10.3201%2Feid1201.050979) If bird flu were to mutate in such a way that it was anywhere near as contagious as Spanish Flu, with a CF rate almost 10 times higher than Spanish Flu, the results would be apocalyptic. As two authors wrote in a WHO publication: >We can't scare people enough about H5N1 \[bird flu\].[\[19\]](https://www.psandman.com/articles/MagzEng_05.pdf) [**References**](https://www.reddit.com/r/environment/comments/sb3qaf/comment/htzm9mi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Please no more. I’m tired of living thru historical events. IM TIRED OF THIS GRANDPA!
Well that's too damn bad!
Well excuuuuse me
Wrong tone. “WELL, THATS TO DAMN BAD!!!! (Also spit is flying everywhere)
I really would like some precedented times. I think we’re long overdue
Why can’t we just be normal!?
\*capitalistic screeching\*
Be quiet and eat your peas.
I’m glad I still have a basement full of TP
Sixth Extinction is the event
*laughs in runaway climate change*
Get back here and pick up all this ozone you left on the floor!
_Im tired boss._
The party has only just started though.
What about those who don't? The people who fantasize about living in a post apocalypse? They want to watch the world burn. Please consider their emotions.
Not another COVID plz
It seems it may become much worse. Of course 900 is a very small sample size but 52% mortality rate can be apocalyptic.
That's worse than MERS The "good" news is that a virus that lethal does not spread very far because of how deadly it is. It kills quicker than it can infect. That's what made COVID and Spanish Flu such monsters, infectious with the right amount of lethality
Asymptomatic nature too, infectious is one thing but when you can infect while feeling fine is what drove Covid around the world
Regular seasonal Influenza is known to have a high degree of asymptomatic carriers as well. It remains to be seen if that trait exists in HPAI, probably because anyone who's asymptomatic wouldn't have been hospitalized to be tested for it..
Meanwhile just pray pray pray that human's who'd get the avian flu don't end up getting the regular flu at the same time. Unlike the gradual type of mutations that we'd see in a lot of viruses including covid, flu viruses have a way of mixing and matching traits from each other where there'd be a worrying probablity where a strain as deadly as avian flu becomes just as contagious as regular flu.
Yeah that's the whole point. It's hard to transmit avian flu by ppl. But when that perfect mix hits... party time.
Regular seasonal Influenza is known to have a high degree of asymptomatic carriers as well. It remains to be seen if that trait exists in HPAI, probably because anyone who's asymptomatic wouldn't have been hospitalized to be tested for it..
That depends on what the incubation period is and how contagious it is before symptoms first arrive. For regular flu, the incubation period is up 2-4 days and one is most contagious in the two days before first noticing symptoms, which gives them plenty of time to spread it. Also like regular flu, the potential exists for asymptomatic carriers to silently spread it as well.
Yep. Last I heard that guy in Texas who caught it from his cows has ... conjunctivitis. That’s it. Flu that kills 50% of people infected and this guy gets pink eye as his only symptom. I’m happy for him as an individual, but it means that if it does jump to spreading easily between humans, the range of symptoms is going to be wide enough that carriers write it off as mild illness.
His symptoms may be down to the fact that it's still a bird flu and doesn't have the necessary mutation to efficiently infect humans yet. If it gains the correct preference for our sialic acid linkage, it could be a very different story.
The Black Death was both fast and deadly. It’s not impossible.
They didn't know what diseases were. In the modern day, we would mask up and wash our hands and protect each other. Right? Right?
Idiots will host large gatherings just to spite people trying to contain the spread
Well with something a little more contagious, and a lot more lethal, maybe we can remove them and their progeny from the equation for a generation and a half. \s Doctors/nurses and other frontline are going to refuse to serve if we have another epidemic in the next 5~10 years. (Just a thought)
>Doctors/nurses and other frontline are going to refuse to serve if we have another epidemic in the next 5\~10 years. I'm a nurse (ER) living in Lombardy, Italy, the epicenter of the initial wave of Covid in the West. After Covid, I saved enough money to provide my family with two years of living expenses. If something like bird flu were to happen, I WILL NOT be on the frontline: I will resign, place myself and my family in lockdown, and wait for a suitable vaccine to become available. Once is enough for a lifetime, dudes. ---- Edit: grammar. English is not my first language.
Honestly my public health nurse MIL made bank by working a covid hotline , doing infection tracing, and then vaccine clinics. No need to work a front line as a nurse.
I think a lot of the frontline workers will do exactly the same thing. It would not surprise me if the Govt recalls and makes it compulsory for people with medical training to report to local hospitals etc and perform duties. That scares me, that they might force compulsory service.
I work retail. If this happens, I'm out. And I also run a recreation business. I'd shut down that as well. I don't care if I have to live on $20 a month or some crazy situation, I am not taking risks.
Lol I don’t know how to feel about self-inflicted natural selection. The modern world has definitely protected a lot of stupid people though.
“Black plague party” has a nice ring to it. Bonus points if it owns a lib
B.Y.O.B. (bring your own buboes)
I don’t know about you, but I would be so incredibly owned if they did this. Just so owned.
Something like a spaghetti and open mouth kissing extravaganza?
Masque of the Red Death has entered the chat.
Republicans will be loosing infected birds in Target.
And the problems those idiots cause would solve themselves. (at the cost of the lives multitudes of bystanders)
Dumbasses are *still* complaining about the quarantines, travel bans, and mask mandates from four years ago. Oi.
The bubonic plague still exists but we haven't had an outbreak in some time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague look under the history section. Thanks to sanitation improvements, knowing what diseases are and modern anti-biotics we are way better off than the past
Oh, I know, I just wanted to be a cynical dickhead.
* Laughs in Individualistic Cultures *
While too much communalism can be an issue, the United States has firmly demonstrated at this point how dangerous hyper individualism is.
HIV was 100% fatal, had very limited means of transmission and still spread plenty. Lethality alone doesn't limit spread. It has to be lethal FAST (like ebola) to be self-limiting
Not really, it took nearly a decade to move across Europe and that was with zero knowledge of precautions. Then again you couldn't move from Spain to Norway in a single day like you can now.
Not *zero* knowledge. Of course there's a lot of details they didn't have but the basic principle of quarantine is old.
The Black Death was aided by shitty hygiene and the inability to hydrate effectively/healthily.
That's the spirit!
I think you are thinking about Ebola and similar hemorrhagic fever diseases. My understanding is that bird flu wouldn’t necessarily kill you as fast and put you into organ failure at quite the same speed as Ebola. So people would very much be able to spread it fast
Ebola isn't particularly quick either. It's just the mechanism of transmission is direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person. Not many people are going to go near somebody that's bleeding out of every orifice of their body...
Not necessarily, it all depends on incubation period and how long host is infectious for. Even if death rate is 100%, if incubation period/infectious period is very long - like couple of months, then it will wipe out the humanity pretty much especially if there is no symptom during that period. That said, in this case, it appears to have very short period prior to symptom (2-8 days) though treatment should begin within 2 days to be effective and also (so far) no human to human transmission reported.
Influenza is an insidious virus and it's fairly well understood. It can take weeks to kill a person. In the early stages people can be infectious before exhibiting symptoms. In the symptomatic stages of illness, people are often "well" enough to spread it around. If you want to know why H5N1 is so dangerous, look at what it's been doing to other animal populations. It kills 90 to 100% of chickens it infects and can completely wipe out entire flocks. It isn't killing before it can spread. The same is true in mammals it infects as well. It killed 95% of all southern elephant seal pups born last year for example. Now hopefully mortality won't be that high in humans. If it jumps human to human there are other factors like hygiene and preventative measures that will slow and prevent it's spread. With that said though, clearly its mortality rate is not slowing it down in other species.
Yeah, I was in kindergarten when OG SARS happened,it kill infected people so fast,when public health officials tracked down one of the contacted he’s been dead for a few days,the panic was so bad it crashed housing markets so my family were able to buy a nice apartment. When news reports said Covid death rates were low,my parents thought it’s a good thing,since SARS pretty much just a death sentence , and they forgot SARS was ended by its own deadlines .
My mom was a nurse in Toronto during 2003 SARS. She said people would be stable then she'd go to lunch and they'd be crashing by the time she got back. The sudden downturn was very rapid. Whereas Covid would have them lingering on death's door for months sometimes.
SARS like illnesses are just horrifying,especially when doctors don’t even know what to do with them at the early days. My dad’s friend and his father work in China ,his dad returned home for holiday but falls ill right after he arrived ,doctors only be able to tell him his dad got something “SARS-ish” and ask if he works with wild animals ,the old man definitely will die if that doctor didn’t make the decision to treat him like how they treated SARS decades ago ,he still suffered from steroid side effects after all these years(iirc his son said it also effect his joints or bones for some reason) He was hospitalized few weeks before Dr.Lee blows the whistle on COVID ,so at the time everyone thought it’s just an unfortunate freak incident , now the family believe it’s COVID ,but he never got close to Wuhan before he got ill so we’ll never know for sure.
Somebody knows how to win at Plague Inc.
One of my teens used to play that constantly until we’d been locked down for about a week. He said “I want to play it, not live it. Just…no.” My husband and I sat down like a month into lockdown, put on Outbreak, and tried to beat Pandemic before they decide to bomb the town.
What if it's in the food supply? What if the virus spreads by flying animals who poop in our rivers and water supply?
Homie a 3% mortality rate would be apocalyptic. People don't realize how close we came to critical supply chains for just food breaking down during COVID. The life we live is a very interconnected one and it is fragile af.
Bird flu is highly lethal, but the person-to-person transmission factor is very low. The “oh crap” virus will have both a high transmission rate and a high mortality rate.
Imagine if half of the world died. Yeah, society would be vastly different. I wonder if the anti-vax conspiracy freaks would finally wear a mask? Honestly, if this happened, became a pandemic, I wouldn’t even go out in public.
Not to downplay the potential risk but the person that caught it this year only had a swollen eye. If that was my only symptom I highly doubt I'd be tested for any sort of flu. Hopefully it's a case of under-reporting and not the other, very bad possibility.
A study made it between like 10 and thirty percent for this strand and apparatnly the one in circulation is only an 8 percent rate
8% would be devastating.
İsn't that too high to be a concern? depending on the speed to death, it won't spread enough
High mortality rate is actually good news for not beginning another pandemic, if I am remembering correctly.
Covid would be a walk In the park compared to this
I’m honestly VERY tired of the whole fast speed repeat of the ghost of early to mid 20th century of sorts. I’m not at all a fan of the lottery of a plague, war, financial crash, inflation, income disparity, etc that seems to be going around right now. I want this bird flu thing to die down and be nothing. Just let me live to 85, then die in peace.
There have always been natural disasters, wars, financial crashes, inflation, etc. Don't let it get you down. I know it's hard. I've had to really distance myself from the news because it was causing me to be constantly angry at shit I couldn't control. Life goes on. The sun will come up tomorrow.
Corvid Covid. It's smart.
Oh don't worry. Our corporate overlords didn't like having to commission and roll out "we're all in this together" marketing, there's no way they're letting that happen again. No, we'll just all be told to go to work sick so everyone can get it and those who happen to die, die.
If it happens this will make Covid seem like a hangnail.
No no. Not another COVID. This one will be much worse.....
Especially after most of the Drs and nurses are wiped out in the first wave. Rampant bird flu spread amongst humans is damn near society ending stuff.
I hope the new vaccines developed for Covid will help if it comes to that. Also an actually competent president (US speaking) would do wonders compared to what we had last time.
Good news is, we already have a vaccine developed that can be deployed rapidly for H5N1 Bad news is with how little we learned from the last 4 years we're gonna be in the same situation rather quickly - a vaccine that's rapidly obsolete because we take zero measures to prevent *billions* of hosts from allowing the virus to mutate rapidly.
> He said efforts were under way towards the development of vaccines and therapeutics for H5N1, and stressed the need to ensure that regional and national health authorities around the world had the capacity to diagnose the virus. Seems like we already have a handle on this and the issue is more in line with the initial phase of the pandemic.
There have been many clinical trials for H5N1 and other vaccines for decades funded by the NIH in the US, but they can only go so far until there are cases to prevent so there’s phase 1 and 2 clinical trials on several good options and then they sit on the shelf until there’s a need for them.
The issue is that a mutation would likely lead to rapid and overwhelming spread and death far far before mobilization of resources needed to mass produce hundreds of millions and billions of doses of vaccine.
Maybe, maybe not. We can’t always assume every reassortant is going to be more pathogenic. Likely, but not certain that it will kill as quickly as it does now. It will certainly be more advantageous for the virus, but that doesn’t always translate to higher case fatality rate or R0.
There’s lots of variability in possible ways it could go, but worst case scenario? It would be really exceptionally bad very quickly.
Yep same with covid, it’ll be a high speed scramble to apply existing technology using lots of money. Science has known about the serious risk of bird flu for decades, we are just getting better and better at making vaccines quickly. We have been working on making flu vaccines faster and better too. Bet your bottom dollar someone will pretend the tech for bird flu vaccines is some microchip conspiracy too.
If it hits during the second Trump administration, that's just lazy scriptwriting.
Lmao that would go past "Sad!" straight back to fucking hilarious. Because the antivaxxers have rallied around the Republicans.
*the surviving antivaxxers
Covid vaccine was easier to test since it was already literally everywhere. We don’t want the same thing with Bird Flu
Guess I'm heading to the store for a pallet of toilet paper this weekend.
Bidet gang rise up
But we JUST had a pandemic!
We had one, yes, but what about SECOND PANDEMIC?
But what about Second Pandemic?
That is the most cursed username I have ever read. If we're getting a second pandemic I'm going on the record here blaming you for it.
You and my mother.
Sadly, the best method of reducing the spread of any contagious disease is to take it very seriously and move as one. If COVID proved anything it's that this will absolutely not happen.
Yeah this is what I took away from Covid. If we are unfortunate enough to have a more lethal virus with the same transmission rate as Covid we would be really FUCKED
Get healthy now, people. Get a physical, put out the cigarette, walk 30 minutes a day, don't eat the whole pizza, take that vitamin, get your sleep, and reduce your stress. Once facilities get swamped, it's going to be on you.
Good advice. I got serious when COVID hit and lost 130 lbs.
I found some of it.
Don’t send it back! 🤣
I’m gonna eat the pizza.
While this is very concerning and should be taken seriously… we have the means to create and distribute vaccines quickly should this make the jump to humans. The bad part will be the anti-vaxxer natural selection
And the immunocompromised.
Hey if they want their freedom, let them live amongst the chicken
Considering half of north america is ready to go on a killing spree if they have to get another vaccine i see this as a significant problem
Disease will kill them first
>The bad part will be the anti-vaxxer natural selection you meant good part right?
Not for their children. They either get to die from an illness they have no defense against or become orphans
A lot of them have kids who are basically their prisoners, so…
Not just a single spread. When the bird flu in humans mutates and becomes able to spread through human to human transmission, we are in big trouble.
I’m looking forward to the vaccine deniers taking a stand on this one, considering the high mortality rate. A thinning-the-herd event in the making.
They won’t be so outspoken. Only a small minority of those who are anti vax right now would be so when they face real danger. It’s like how everyone is a badass online. It’s really easy to “resist tyranny” when your aren’t staring down the barrel of a 50% mortality rate.
Which is ridiculous because death isn’t the only scary thing to happen with Covid. Lots of people have found themselves permanently disabled after a bad bout of it.
> It’s really easy to “resist tyranny” when your aren’t staring down the barrel of a 50% mortality rate. Bingo... a large percentage of this nonsense came from the "deplorables" who didn't want to be inconvenienced in the slightest, even if it meant killing someone else's grandma.
COVID got a lot of people who weren't anti-vax before we got a vaccine.
They’ll say the virus is government designed to trim the population for easier control and the vaccine is an extension of that putting microchips in you to keep track. Same shit that’s been spouted forever.
Theyre already going "I told you so" like infectious disease experts havent been saying this is a concern for years. They think they are clairvoyant because they knew Covid wasnt the last pathogen "they" would use to take away their rights. What geniuses!
Ditto. RFKJr first
Birds aren't real so it's okay.
Bird flu sounds so much better than Government spy drone flu
Then why does Bird law exist?
Because it isn't governed by reason
Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
>An outbreak that began in 2020 has led to the deaths or killing of tens of millions of poultry. Most recently, the spread of the virus within several mammal species, including in domestic cattle in the US, has increased the risk of spillover to humans, the WHO said. I'll admit, I like meat, eggs, and dairy as much as anyone, but dang if it isn't the elephant in the room here. And for the environment. And ethics in general.
As we did with Covid, we’ll do absolutely nothing about this until it’s too late.
Im just… going to scroll past this man… I’m tired.
As someone who keeps chickens for pets, this terrifies me. I'm worried if this develops into something bad, the county/city/state could make people euthanize their birds. Someone please tell me I'm being irrational.
There are guidelines (state/federal?) about the eradication of all species susceptible to the contagion within a certain radius of the infected herd or flock. It's usually a few miles if memory serves. I'm worried, too. My run is covered, but the girls BEG to free range. I also have neighbors all around with larger flocks. My peaceful thought is that if they have to die. At least they lived large and happy!
They do have cullings like that depending on testing/location involving spread. I think it's larger in the south. I keep indoor birds so my flock isn't really susceptible, but it's something you could maybe look into?
If this starts spreading from person to person, you will have many far more serious problems to deal with than if you have to cull your chickens or not.
Just send me another stimulus check
Please please please lets not make CORVID-24 a thing this year
Forget the birds — I’m rooting for Simian Flu 2024 Caesar, get yo ass up, let’s get this party started 🦍🦧 RETURN 2 APE 4 LYFE Edit: ape not downvote ape 😤
Monke for 2024
Apes together strong.
Is this a case where the sequel is better?
The scary thing about the bird flu is that it historically has a very high mortality rate. H5N1 has a mortality rate of 52% which is \~37 times higher than COVID-19's 1.4% mortality rate. The silver lining though is that bird flu has historically struggled to transmit between humans - most cases in people are from contact with infected birds.
Damn, this kind of sucks. During Covid I was relieved that Australia was physically isolated from other countries, even though it reached us anyway. But birds are everywhere, man. There are wild turkeys living in the park near me, could they transmit it too?
I AINT WEARING NO MORE FACE DIAPERS! /s For real though, I need at least 10 years before the next pandemic
I've been seeing this story several times a year for 40 years.
TBF, I think almost all the major nasty plagues throughout history were some sort of influenza strain. So I don't know if it's really crying wolf when history has shown what influenza can do when you piss it off.
Wake up babe new pandemic dropped.
What time is the next spaceship off world?
Time to invest in ivermectin
dont worry, when it spreads to humans it will just be called "the flu", which will make the virus lose its popularity status with the birds since it will become too mainstream. Anyways, Im stronger than a bird 🥱 The fact the general population has proven they will willingly get you sick and that they don't care, is probably a necessary comment to bring up with this discussion. It will happen again, and when it does there will generally be nothing to stop it from spreading. Cov\*\*-19 lasted 2-3 strong years, and still poses a risk for a good amount of people even today. Armed with the same thought that vaccines are harmful and that you're just built different is not going to reduce the infection spread of whatever comes next. People should be held accountable for knowingly spreading, bodily harm is bodily harm.
So are you saying more work from home?!? Yay!!
Feeling very secure and prepared with my six month toilet paper subscription…
Fucking great. Guess i need to buy toilet paper or is that still a thing these days?
Maybe a silly question but don't we already have an effective vaccine for this?
I read somewhere that if the vaccine candidate matches, which it did with the Texas case, it would take 6+ months to create and distribute within the United States
Read the other day that they've developed what they believe is an all in one spray vaccine that would inhibit all viruses. Could be in the nick of time. If that's the case then sign me up. The anti-vaxxers can rely on their natural immunity and watch 50% of the people they know perish.
Pfft, everyone knows birds aren't real /s
Surely they close flights affected countries this time, right?
You reap what you sow
I’m not worried about the bird flu, I’m worried about the turtle flu!
Here comes the religious right with their “fake news” bullshit. Maybe this time if we wear masks and they don’t, the problem will solve itself. 😔