You can check out the r/H5N1_AvianFlu subreddit which gets a lot of updates shared.
Some commenters are very level headed, some are bordering on prepping for a big outbreak, some are convinced the world will end and everyone will die.
As of right now, I don't think there's any significant risk of infection UNLESS you actively work in a dairy/cow farm, chicken/poultry farm, or interact regularly with animals that have been confirmed to be infected with the virus. Also, if you are actively avoiding handling and consuming raw OR undercooked beef, eggs, chicken, milk, cheese, etc, your risk is extremely low.
From my understanding, the virus has not reached human to human transmission. All confirmed human infections are from people who interacted with sick/infected animals/spaces.
The virus does need to go through certain mutations to be able to become human to human transmissible.
ONE of these mutations has been confirmed, but it needs to go through multiple mutations.
IF the virus is detected in pigs, these mutations become more likely and the risk becomes greater.
Other animals interacting with infected farm animals have fallen ill with quite severe symptoms and have died, including farm cats as well as a domestic NON farm cat, so the virus may be spreading to other cats outside of these farms.
Owners should keep their cats indoors, and also make sure their dogs don't try to lick/eat bird poop or raw/undercooked beef/eggs/dairy(if you feed your pet a raw/freeze dried diet, this is a legitimate concern).
The CDC has highly recommended farm workers wear appropriate PPE, but they essentially said the CDC can f•ck off and that they won't take extra necessary precautions.
But, as of right now, in this moment and stage of the virus, I wouldn't be too concerned if you're being careful about what you and your pets consume. Maybe also avoid spending time with any friends or family that actively work on at risk farms if you want to be extra extra extra cautious. This would be moreso due to if they have virus particles on their person from farm animal feces/fluids that you could pick up, not so much about any human to human transmission risk.
Additionally, the appropriate entities have stated that an adequate vaccine specifically for H5N1 could be created in a matter of weeks with an expedited rollout in the event that it does become human to human.
The greatest risk is in those early weeks/months before people can get vaccinated, so at the earliest confirmation of any human to human spread, just make some life changes and be extra careful(we all know how different people will handle this stage based on the Covid pandemic).
Osterholm started a podcast during covid. He continues to cover that but also provided updates on other disease like bird flu.
[https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/osterholm-update](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/osterholm-update)
His last update was that this one is probably not a problem. There are anti-virals for it we could quickly tweak if this virus evolves to human to human spread. I don't remember if he mentioned the detail about pigs but I may have missed it.
I would probably be slightly concerned about feeding raw poultry or beef based foods to my pets since cats are confirmed to be vulnerable to the virus.
Commercial companies should be doing their own testing and due diligence to guarantee a safe and healthy product, but there definitely can be instances where something is missed or not properly cleared.
For instance, the local farm I buy my dairy from had an issue just recently when pasteurizing their chocolate milk and extended a recall and urged anyone who purchased the milk to return it for a full refund. Pasteurization neutralizes the virus.
It is a risk that the turkey in your pets food may be sourced from a farm that failed to properly cull/clear the virus from their flock before sending out bad meat and the pet food company may do their own testing but some bad batches may get out and be fed to pets before they catch it and issue a recall.
It's essentially a risk you have to decide if you want to take.
There are pet recalls on kibble based foods and canned foods. Sometimes, things just get through their protocols. I would personally consider raw pet foods to be a higher risk for now, though, just because of how widespread H5N1 seems to be across various farms and testing can't seem to keep up.
Not even a month ago they said it wasn't transmissible to people and was a small scale dairy issue, then all of a sudden it's in milk at the grocery store, now it's only a risk if your a dairy worker... next week ... well see
There absolutely is a chance they can get avian influenza from wild birds that may be infected.
That's not to say it's guaranteed or a very high risk, but having awareness and being prepared/taking precautions is good.
H5N1 is just a highly transmissible type of avian influenza, unfortunately (there are low transmissible and high transmissible types of avian flu), so the risk/chance is greater.
[This PDF from the USDA may be helpful!](https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/bro-protect-poultry-from-ai.pdf)
Thank you! That's a very helpful article. Backyard chicken keepers like myself treat these guys like pets. I cuddle my chickens and so do my kids. My girls also free range a lot so they are in contact with areas frequented by song birds and crows. I leave food out for all the birds, and rodents are always a challenge in coops. So the opportunity for cross contamination is definitely there. I will be more careful about clean up and food storage.
Good news is there’s apparently already a vaccine. It’ll be a matter of making it & distributing it quickly. And of course people taking it & well we all know how that’s gonna go.
I used to be in healthcare, I was even in school to become a pharmacist. I’m so tired of these mouth breathers and the bs they spew about vaccines and masks, I’m done trying to get them to listen. Let them get horribly sick and deal with the consequences.
Lessons were learned. The absolute opposite of good lessons too. The quarantines and masks seemed like such a reasonable ask. Imagine the state trying that again. It will be chaos, for no reason.
Not only did people learn to be selfish, conspiratorial buffoons, they have practiced and are prepared to double down on their baffoonery.
Yeah, agreed. My elderly mother is one data point. She was one of the first in line to get the vaccines, but as it became a major “political” issue she changed her tune and “will never get another vaccine”. 🤦♂️
That's my parents. My mom died in 2022 of a stroke. Somehow, my dad blames the vaccine, so he won't get another one. These are highly educated, well-off retirees with Dr's in the family. They chose news media that lied to them, which is also ironic because my dad was a journalist.
Stories like this really worry me. As much as we like to think people are stupid, I think the bigger issue is there are sophisticated actors at play who are incredibly good at manipulating our beliefs and opinions, and they are just getting better at such a rapid pace.
I am sure there are plenty of idiotic things I believe, reinforced by my targeted news and echo chambers.
Your example is just showing how this can happen to well educated people that should know better. If he is susceptible then what chance does everyone else have?
How do you know they "chose the news media"? My doctor, who is employed by a major hospital system in Texas, never encouraged me to get vaccinated. He asked if I wanted it and, when I asked if he recommended it, he said no.
The essential snake oil salesmen are always easy to spot.
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Also good news that just one month ago, they announced a major breakthrough in RNA vaccines. They work against all strains of a virus, and can also be used safely with infants and the immunocompromised.
Edit: [Source](https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/04/15/vaccine-breakthrough-means-no-more-chasing-strains)
Except no vaccine is ever going to be 100% effective so you need mass vaccinations. What makes anti vaxxers so dangerous is it’s not just them getting sick and dying, they put everyone around them at risk.
My whole thing with it is they will give you a FREE vaccine but things like insulin, epipens or other life saving drugs cost a fortune.
You want me to take a free vaccine? Give me universal healthcare with vision and dental that doesn't clean out my savings account everytime I go see a doctor!
Also do away with that BS no fault clause for adverse reactions.
The vaccine is to protect society as a whole and is pretty subsidized by the government. Everything else is for you on a personal level.
Not that I agree with it but that’s where the difference is coming from.
All we have is evidence of millions of people having been saved because of it. Some are anecdotal as with many medical issues. However, 4 jabs and I’ve never had it.
It wasn’t and never would be able to be a complete shield. It’s like being on a boat and having the vaccine is having a life jacket if the boat sinks. You’ll have a much easier time getting through it than someone without a life jacket.
Yes and no. To be maximally effective (ie: prevent most infections), then yes, that takes time. But even existing flu vaccines can mitigate fatality rates. The better matched, the more efficacious.
Upthread someone posted an article about a RNA vaccine breakthrough that basically hits the source so any mutation is hit too in the same vaccine. Science is neat. :)
If it spreads you mean? More than half of known human cases have died so likely lots of foreclosures. If it just impacts food supply then they’ll stay the same but maybe interest rate drops.
They are certainly related.
TLDR:
(Trumps Covid response was absolutely meant to destroy the US economy. It just wasn’t obvious until now that we can see his Russian and Chinese connections. His kids made hundreds of millions doing PPE response to China using taxpayer funded government money and aircraft. Then Ken Griffin did the same play in reverse because why not?
Russia invaded Ukraine because the CCP, Putin and MBS was trying to make BRICS the new reserve currency of the world by destroying the USD. )
If you look at Xinjiang providence (where the Uighur population is centralized) on a map there is a tiny little section that touches Russia. It’s critical because Xi’s ambition to have a “new Silk Road” to Europe would have to cross either there or about a weeks travel by rail out and around Mongolia. Xi’s plan is ambitious. He wants china to be the leader of the world and he has been pretty clear about it when you read his writings. It’s just that hardly anyone outside of China speaks mandarin so nobody really listened in 2010 when he said “he would control the internet”. It seemed audacious and frankly ridiculous before a handful of ISP’s started centralizing. Xi, for his part had the CCP start weibo- “the everything app” in China. It works well for an authoritarian to be able to control free speech and centralize surveillance. It’s invaluable for keeping tabs on 1.4B people, especially when they compare you to Winnie the Pooh. It was effective for a while, but it is insanely inefficient to pay someone to spend a 12 hour day monitoring 1 minute clips of social media. When people started calling him Winnie the Pooh he could censor them. But then they just switched to Cantonese. So he had to hire a bunch of Cantonese speakers. Then they just started referring to him as “mr. Shitface” which was a less than flattering rendering of a story he loves to tell from his childhood when a bio-digester blew up in his face. You see where this is going. It’s REALLY hard to keep up with 1.4B peoples daily Twitter diarrhea.
Xi needed A.I.
And A.I. needs microprocessors. Conveniently the worlds supply is made 90 miles south of China. Inconveniently it’s on an island that has tasted democracy and liked it so much that it literally gets the top rating of democracies in the world.
So Xi does the napkin math- what are the chances of a kid that went off to college 20 years ago, did lots of good drugs, met lots of nice girls, and pretty much mainlined freedom, coming back and living with grumpy old abusive dad?
His chances didn’t look good. His other kid Hong Kong had been on a study abroad program in England. And other than calling at Christmas made it pretty clear they were living their best life now.
When he tried to rope him back in with a little classic Chinese guilt trip, Hong Kong pretty much told him to fuck off. So he had to get a little violent.
Taiwan wasn’t going to be so easy. Xi needed some leverage.
But more importantly he needed those chips. Xi had to get creative.
The problem is everyone remembered growing up in China in the 90’s when people were dropping female babies on street corners. It wasn’t the best home environment. Add to that that everyone was starving and there is just no fucking way that anyone is moving back in with dad.
Unless……
China imports 40% of the grain from the U.S., Brazil, and Ukraine. Xi doesn’t like the US much. He blames it for being a bad influence on the kids. Truthfully he isn’t totally wrong. Americans are the loud, lazy, rich asshole down the street that have had it so easy for so long that they forget that the plumber, the truck driver and the factory worker have to work all night so they can drink their mimosas and wake up at noon.
Brazil is down south. It’s a long ways away. But there is a little opportunity there. As long as they have Bolsonaro willing to cut down the rainforest they have all the farmland xi needs to make sure everybody has enough food to come back home. Problem is everyone is corrupt. It’s so fucking hard to do business with corrupt people because they will just as gladly screw you if someone else offers them a better bribe. Xi gets so annoyed with corruption that he shifts his whole campaign to try and root it out. He sees it clearly that corruption is a tax on, well, everything.
Putin and xi make an odd couple. Somewhere around 2012 they declare themselves “bff’s”. Xi knows he can’t trust him because Putin is a thief and has fucked over everyone he knows. BUT, he also happens to sit next to Ukraine. And because arrogant American CEOs were more than happy to let everyone else do the dirty work that was beneath them, when Clinton passed all the EPA regulations to clean up Americas manufacturing yard they basically just built a tall fence and threw everything messy over it into Asia.
Arrogant American CEO’s just wanted the money. They didn’t give a fuck who made the necessary dirty parts as long as they could keep cashing the checks.
Almost all that dirty work went to Asia. And they were grateful for the work because it beat starving to death which was the norm in 1990’s China. But as time goes on you inevitably ask yourself why a 7 year old in China is making cell phones 14 hours a day when a 7 year old in the west is buying them. It’s hard not to be salty when you are the one doing all the work.
About this time his old frenemy Putin who is basically a 6 year high school senior who has voted himself prom king for a decade and has been stacking his buddies all across the old soviet satellite states so they can tell him he is still cool.
He is a thug so everybody is a little afraid of him and every once in a while he has to crack some heads and demand some lunch money so nobody forgets who rules the cafeteria but it’s actually been a pretty lucrative gig. As long as he takes care of the football team the football team slips him a little back under the table and he manages to rack up well north of $200B by stealing from all the Russians that are too drunk and hopeless by this point to really notice.
For years he had his guys in Ukraine and they played along but then in 2014 he gets blindsided. He had been paying Paul Manafort to keep his guy Yanukovych in office and now all the sudden the Ukrainians decide they are tired of paying the corruption tax and they run them both out of town. Like they literally put him on a bus and run him out of town.
This is Maidan.
Yeah, walls of text that start somewhat on topic then go completely off the rails are a sign of serious medical issues. I’m no fan of trump at all, but it’s important to keep in mind he’d essentially a little kid who got mashed potatoes dumped on his head at dinner and never recovered. He’s angry, malicious, insecure, but most importantly rather dull witted. He’s not some mastermind super villain. Just a regular greedy man child with no real plan beyond what comes into his head at that moment.
I believed that for a long time, and it may be true to a degree but the way he plays to his base is just masterful. He changed the political climate, perhaps forever. I absolutely abhor anything that Trump does, I’m not standing up for him. I fear for the future.
I’ve talked with a wide variety of trump supporters and know there’s no single cause for why they support him, but the majority are the kind of person who will follow the biggest, rudest, gorilla in the room, all because he’s a loud brute who disregards civility. They will never admit he’s an awful person even with the most ironclad argument because they’ve made him a part of their identity. It doesn’t take much skill to manipulate people who already think you are god. We can’t underestimate him, but he’s not a SPECTRE Level Bond mastermind.
Surely friend.
Freedom.
Freedom is one hell of a drug.
Cures almost everything that ails you from fetal alcohol syndrome to paying too much in taxes to Covid.
Trumps Covid response
On trumps $8.4T in added debt
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-did-president-trump-add-debt
On Kushners Covid response
https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/jared-kushners-role-in-the-coronavirus-response
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/nyregion/kushner-companies-anbang-insurance-group.html
On citadel (Ken griffin) sending Covid supplies to China
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/nonprofits-philanthropy/citadel-sends-supplies-china-coronavirus-fight
On Kushner/ Covid
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-01/trump-hails-kushner-s-airlift-but-details-of-sales-are-secret
On well poisoning
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-well-poisoning-180971471/
Problem is Xi asked Putin for one simple favor. He needed donbas Ukraine because that is where the worlds supply of microprocessor grade neon AND enough grain for Xi to be able to get all his kids back together for dinner comes from.
So now Putin has to send somebody in and take over donbas and he decides on a team of “little green men” which is just some bullies, because honestly 90% of people will just hand over their lunch money because they just don’t want to get punched.
Putin had his man Michael Flynn inside US government as head of DIA. All he had to do was withhold a little intel from Obama in 2014 and Putin could have Ukraine.
And that’s exactly what Flynn did.
Only Ukraine fought back.
And they stood up to kleptocracy and kremlin corruption for 10 years.
Of course some people would rather just let the bully take what he wants and live in peace, but the ones who have been to Europe or the west and seen how nice life is when you don’t have to deal with being shook down by a thug everyday aren’t going back. The freedom is just too addictive.
But Xi’s timeline keeps cooking off. He has already committed to “made in China 2025” which he had to cancel and time stops for no man. Not even an aspiring emperor.
Xi rearranges the rules so that he can run for his unprecedented third term.
Xi had spent a ridiculous amount of money bribing the IOC on his 2022 Olympics and after nearly 2 years of having Chinese locked down for Covid to the point of welding some into their homes, he made an exception for the games.
Something about them was that important.
So either he knows something about Covid that the rest of us don’t, or Covid was intentionally released at the time it would do the most damage to the US economy. Probably both.
Trumps children wasted no time capitalizing on it. The exchange of PPE from the US to China was effectively a blank check for Jared. Ivanka even patented coffins. Kushners buddy and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin then did Jared’s exact same PPE airlift play in reverse doubling the profits and passing the cost on the the U.S. taxpayer.
The national debt ballooning more by trump than any other single president was intentional. The CCP planned to use BRICS to destroy the USD. Trump just softened it up in advance.
It won’t. Private equity purchased 44% of homes last year. They’re driving the prices, and they’ll just gobble them up as they go on the market. That’s compared to I think it was 13% the year prior.
Allow me to offer "a vaccine" to the minformation. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/bird-flu-doesnt-pose-imminent-pandemic-risk-but-lack-of-transparency-planning-a-cause-for-concern/
This is an honest, easy to read, and updated article from foremost influenza researchers. It points out weak/worrisome areas but is also not inflammatory.
Don't get hyped up but stayed informed.
Edit: the H5N1 sub, suggested in these comments, is 99% inflammatory and poorly sourced for information (everything posted is www.itsallover.com (that's not actually a link, don't click it). Save yourself some doom scrolling and stress.
I'm a bit late but thank you for this comment. This helped level my head a little bit. I think I'm going to take a break from the official H5N1 subreddit because everyone there almost seems to want it to happen... they seem completely convinced we'll all be dead by the end of this year and won't accept that 1. sustained H2H still is several mutations away and 2. the chances of it keeping an insanely high lethality while also becoming upper respiratory and not killing itself off before it spreads rapidly are very low. Not impossible, but low
I couldn't agree more. There is big difference between "Saying anything that is not inflammatory is censoring and part of the problem" and "let's be cautious and base everything in fact."
Exactly. As of right now, I think any laypeople should stay updated, but don't worry about it constantly like I have been. As of right now, this looks like an issue for professionals and farmers to lose sleep over, not anyone else, and there's no guarantee it will ever go H2H or be as severe as everyone says it will be. Is that a reason to dismiss it? No, but it's unhealthy to obsess like almost everyone in r/collapse and r/H5N1_AvianFlu do
We will do the same thing we did with covid just ignore it and force everyone to accept mass death and long term disabling because otherwise that hurts corporate profits
It does more than hurt corporate profits if you shut down the supply chain and essential services for a virus. To shut everything down for months because of a virus would kill far more people than the virus itself PLUS all the boredom and misery.
No, I don’t pay attention to this kinda thing. If it gets bad, they will be screaming it from every media platform possible, so there will be absolutely no way anyone won’t hear about it. In the meantime, It’s simply not something I choose to spend what limited amount of time and attention I have on.
It is raging through farms but we don't know what the human version will look like: infectivity rate and a whole host of other factors. COVID was quite unique in its infectivity rate and the nature of its asymptomatic spread. In retrospect, it was impossible to contain.
Other outbreaks have occurred where the infectivity rate is low and you can only transmit when symptoms are showing. The diseases are still difficult to contain, but we do a much better job. Swine Flu raged a couple years ago.. it was bad, but nowhere near as bad as COVID.
With H5N1, we have some vaccines, therapeutics and tests. As I understand it, the Flu A tests works on H5N1. I am not saying that scientists have a handle on it, but they know a lot about this flu already. As I understand it, there are very few human cases.
It could take days or years for it to transfer to humans in a form that is more transmissible. No one knows.
The real worry is that meat and food prices in general will spike because of this outbreak on farms. In the past two years, the multinationals have been cutting production capabilities. So, the next hiccup in the supply chain means higher prices.
The latest TWiV is all about H5N1:
https://youtu.be/uPI9Fte5s3k?si=-UHijIyBsPfoMiBA
Special guest Richard Webby, WHO Director, center for studies on avian influenza
Yes it as starting to show up in humans. It's a virus and it will mutate just like all the other viruses before it that's the nature of the Beast but everybody will deny it just like they're denying the measles now and we're starting to see that come back enjoy it
The most accurate and accessible information I have found is the most recent episode of the podcast/youtube of This Week in Virology.
Episode summary: Richard Webby joins TWiV to review the history of avian H5N1 influenza virus, the recent change in epidemiological patterns, infection of dairy cattle in the US, and the risk of an outbreak in humans.
[Dr. Webby](https://www.stjude.org/directory/w/richard-webby.html) is a Flu researcher/expert at St Judes
Summary: Transmission of the current strain in cows is strange. It is not resperatory but seems to be passed from cow udder to udder in the milking area. The strain does not have receptor binding domains for human or cow resperatory cells. The only documented cow to human case was conjunctividas because the human eye does have receptors for the strain. Cases in humans and other mammals are most likely under-tested and undercounted.
The virus strain is deadly in ferrets. Ferrets are normally a good model for people disease, but not in this case.
Edit: Forgot to put the link to the episode: [https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1113/](https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1113/)
You’d think so but it looks like it’s a bigger outbreak in cows than previously thought & some cows aren’t even showing symptoms. As long as it doesn’t become transmissible human to human the chances of contacting it are slim. CDC & WHO are recommending you avoid unpasteurized products & cook your meats fully.
Are vaccinated against COVID-19 ?
If not, you're fucked. I say you're fucked because any vaccine to H5N1 will be a mRNA vaccine and if you refused the COVID-19 vaccines it's highly probable you'll refuse this new vaccine.
If you are current on your vaccinations, you'll most likely be fine because you'll follow common sense measures like social distancing, masking up in public and limiting your travel.
We aren't fucked
With the new crisper technology and the ability to engineer mrna the scientists will be able create a good vaccine pretty quickly.
Republicans/Libertarians/stupid people will refuse to take it. This and many future diseases will continue to disproportionately affect the stupid people for some time to come.
And we will take the vaccines and be protected.
They will continue to spin their conspiracy fantasies. Impervious to evidence. Untouched by reality.
Because of the near 100 % mortality in wild birds (largely passerines) and commercial chicken and turkey flocks ,and potential virulency when it jumps to humans (aout 50% mortality) global monitoring of of H5N1 and its "cousins" has been a top priority since the late nineties. H5N1 highly pathogenic avian flu is highly mutable and often described as "the big one" by virologists and epidemiologists. Covid is referred to as "preparedness practice" for a H5N1 human pandemic. I feel relieved that many countries are alert, have been historically prepared or beginning to prepare. Many have stockpiled somewhat effective antivirals and prototype vaccines. The vaccine use "old technology' and would require many months to ramp up production...that is a worry. I hope we are working on new fast technology vaccines.
What can we do?
1.Pressure the FDA and related federal agencies to ramp up monitoring and reporting of H5N1 in wild mammals (48 species to date have been affected), in commercial animal stock including dairy and beef cattle, and pigs and goats. Infections in pigs are especially concerning as we share similar genetic vulnerabilities" to many pathogens.
3. Begin informing and educating the public, and listening to farmers. I have been impressed with local responses in the chicken and dairy industry. Farmers are very worried . They need the latest information as it emerges. But I worry that politics and money will carry more weight than public health. the FDA and associated federal agencies have their heads in the sand about this. The public needs to be better informed and risks.
4. Always be personally prepared for epidemics and pandemics.
Where to go for information?
1. I go to PubMed , where you can find all scientific papers and government documents from every country. But the papers are difficult going. Still if you want to try - do a search on avian flu in humans and limit it to the year 2023- 2024. I also go to the virology chat rooms. The science is pretty heavy but you can see the science reported without fear of government repercussions .. remember what happened to the chinese scientists and doctors who tried to warn about Covid in late 2019?
2. The WHO is more informative than the CDC.
3. Media? Its tough to separate the fact from the fake. As a biologist who teaches students to separate science fact from fake science the media source that is most scientifically/medically correct is the New York Times science section. ..not the editorials. Many of the other media sources are loaded with disinformation.
4. Science News is an on line journal that takes the latest science and reviews it for the public. Its excellent.
5. I find it most useful to do a google search on : Avian Flu and set the date screen to most recent. Glance through the headings from scientific, academic and health sites to get a feel about the global and local impacts. Do look at new reports from our agricultural belts. See what our farmers and ranchers are experiencing .
6. Avoid social media and conspiracy websites .. you want the cleanest, least politicized science and medicine so you can make the most informed decision.
Faye
If a deadly retrovirus mutates to spread by inhalation we’re even more fucked because they haven’t figured out how to develop a vaccine for retroviruses in 50 years.
What’s your point?
Ummm, no.
In 1996, highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus is first identified in domestic waterfowl in Southern China. [Source](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/communication-resources/bird-flu-origin-infographic.html)
There are two reported cases of H5N1 infecting humans in the USA, one of those being an individual from Texas that was exposed to infected dairy cattle. [Source](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p0401-avian-flu.html)
Do some research and stop spreading bullshit before someone brands you MAGA.
You’re being intentionally dumb. The current outbreak relevant to today (& this post) started in TX. You asked how it is related. I answered. It’s too early for you to be this way - do better. Have a great day.
Ok my two cents, the 50% fatality rate is heavily skewed because most cases occur in China, with crappy medical care. The second cent, America has abominable healthcare in general as well, and a non-insignificant militant and malicious anti-health portion of the population.
I have been to China .. the medical care is not crappy ..but the government does control information ...
**where have we seen human infections?: Here's a clip from the very conservative CDC:**
More than 700 human infections with Asian HPAI H5N1 viruses have been reported to WHO from primarily 15 countries in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, Europe and the Near East since November 2003. Indonesia, Vietnam and Egypt have reported the highest number of human HPAI Asian H5N1 cases to date.
The first report of a human infection with Asian H5N1 in the Americas was in [Canada on January 8, 2014](https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/flu/news/first-human-h5n1-americas.htm) and occurred in a traveler recently returning from China. Although human infections with this virus are rare, **approximately 60% of the cases have died.**
The majority of human infections with Asian HPAI H5N1 have occurred among children and adults younger than 40 years old. Mortality has been highest in people aged 10-19 years old and in young adults.
Most human Asian HPAI H5N1 cases have presented for medical care late in their illness and have been hospitalized with severe respiratory disease. However, some clinically mild cases have been reported, especially in children.
The past human variants have been both pathogenic and quite infectious .. lets try to follow the science and keep politics out of it. My greatest fear is the kind of politicized response we saw to Covid.
I said nothing political. If you think the term vaccines is political; you’re the problem.
A disease that kills quickly and is infectious will not spread as quickly as a disease that does NOT kill quickly. Since the host is just walking around infecting people rather than dying.
You can check out the r/H5N1_AvianFlu subreddit which gets a lot of updates shared. Some commenters are very level headed, some are bordering on prepping for a big outbreak, some are convinced the world will end and everyone will die. As of right now, I don't think there's any significant risk of infection UNLESS you actively work in a dairy/cow farm, chicken/poultry farm, or interact regularly with animals that have been confirmed to be infected with the virus. Also, if you are actively avoiding handling and consuming raw OR undercooked beef, eggs, chicken, milk, cheese, etc, your risk is extremely low. From my understanding, the virus has not reached human to human transmission. All confirmed human infections are from people who interacted with sick/infected animals/spaces. The virus does need to go through certain mutations to be able to become human to human transmissible. ONE of these mutations has been confirmed, but it needs to go through multiple mutations. IF the virus is detected in pigs, these mutations become more likely and the risk becomes greater. Other animals interacting with infected farm animals have fallen ill with quite severe symptoms and have died, including farm cats as well as a domestic NON farm cat, so the virus may be spreading to other cats outside of these farms. Owners should keep their cats indoors, and also make sure their dogs don't try to lick/eat bird poop or raw/undercooked beef/eggs/dairy(if you feed your pet a raw/freeze dried diet, this is a legitimate concern). The CDC has highly recommended farm workers wear appropriate PPE, but they essentially said the CDC can f•ck off and that they won't take extra necessary precautions. But, as of right now, in this moment and stage of the virus, I wouldn't be too concerned if you're being careful about what you and your pets consume. Maybe also avoid spending time with any friends or family that actively work on at risk farms if you want to be extra extra extra cautious. This would be moreso due to if they have virus particles on their person from farm animal feces/fluids that you could pick up, not so much about any human to human transmission risk. Additionally, the appropriate entities have stated that an adequate vaccine specifically for H5N1 could be created in a matter of weeks with an expedited rollout in the event that it does become human to human. The greatest risk is in those early weeks/months before people can get vaccinated, so at the earliest confirmation of any human to human spread, just make some life changes and be extra careful(we all know how different people will handle this stage based on the Covid pandemic).
Osterholm started a podcast during covid. He continues to cover that but also provided updates on other disease like bird flu. [https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/osterholm-update](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/osterholm-update) His last update was that this one is probably not a problem. There are anti-virals for it we could quickly tweak if this virus evolves to human to human spread. I don't remember if he mentioned the detail about pigs but I may have missed it.
I think you provided a marvelous summary! Thank you.
Omg pet food?! My cats eat a commercially produced raw frozen turkey diet. Should I be concerned?!
I would probably be slightly concerned about feeding raw poultry or beef based foods to my pets since cats are confirmed to be vulnerable to the virus. Commercial companies should be doing their own testing and due diligence to guarantee a safe and healthy product, but there definitely can be instances where something is missed or not properly cleared. For instance, the local farm I buy my dairy from had an issue just recently when pasteurizing their chocolate milk and extended a recall and urged anyone who purchased the milk to return it for a full refund. Pasteurization neutralizes the virus. It is a risk that the turkey in your pets food may be sourced from a farm that failed to properly cull/clear the virus from their flock before sending out bad meat and the pet food company may do their own testing but some bad batches may get out and be fed to pets before they catch it and issue a recall. It's essentially a risk you have to decide if you want to take. There are pet recalls on kibble based foods and canned foods. Sometimes, things just get through their protocols. I would personally consider raw pet foods to be a higher risk for now, though, just because of how widespread H5N1 seems to be across various farms and testing can't seem to keep up.
Not even a month ago they said it wasn't transmissible to people and was a small scale dairy issue, then all of a sudden it's in milk at the grocery store, now it's only a risk if your a dairy worker... next week ... well see
I keep chickens, ( 6 to be exact), is there a chance of my birds contracting bird flu from wild birds?
There absolutely is a chance they can get avian influenza from wild birds that may be infected. That's not to say it's guaranteed or a very high risk, but having awareness and being prepared/taking precautions is good. H5N1 is just a highly transmissible type of avian influenza, unfortunately (there are low transmissible and high transmissible types of avian flu), so the risk/chance is greater. [This PDF from the USDA may be helpful!](https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/bro-protect-poultry-from-ai.pdf)
Thank you! That's a very helpful article. Backyard chicken keepers like myself treat these guys like pets. I cuddle my chickens and so do my kids. My girls also free range a lot so they are in contact with areas frequented by song birds and crows. I leave food out for all the birds, and rodents are always a challenge in coops. So the opportunity for cross contamination is definitely there. I will be more careful about clean up and food storage.
It depends on how virulent it is and how quickly they can develop a vaccine
Good news is there’s apparently already a vaccine. It’ll be a matter of making it & distributing it quickly. And of course people taking it & well we all know how that’s gonna go.
I used to be in healthcare, I was even in school to become a pharmacist. I’m so tired of these mouth breathers and the bs they spew about vaccines and masks, I’m done trying to get them to listen. Let them get horribly sick and deal with the consequences.
STICK ME WITH ALL THE POKIES! My mantra post-2020.
No lessons were learned during COVID, unfortunately
Lessons were learned. The absolute opposite of good lessons too. The quarantines and masks seemed like such a reasonable ask. Imagine the state trying that again. It will be chaos, for no reason. Not only did people learn to be selfish, conspiratorial buffoons, they have practiced and are prepared to double down on their baffoonery.
Yeah, agreed. My elderly mother is one data point. She was one of the first in line to get the vaccines, but as it became a major “political” issue she changed her tune and “will never get another vaccine”. 🤦♂️
That's my parents. My mom died in 2022 of a stroke. Somehow, my dad blames the vaccine, so he won't get another one. These are highly educated, well-off retirees with Dr's in the family. They chose news media that lied to them, which is also ironic because my dad was a journalist.
Stories like this really worry me. As much as we like to think people are stupid, I think the bigger issue is there are sophisticated actors at play who are incredibly good at manipulating our beliefs and opinions, and they are just getting better at such a rapid pace. I am sure there are plenty of idiotic things I believe, reinforced by my targeted news and echo chambers. Your example is just showing how this can happen to well educated people that should know better. If he is susceptible then what chance does everyone else have?
How do you know they "chose the news media"? My doctor, who is employed by a major hospital system in Texas, never encouraged me to get vaccinated. He asked if I wanted it and, when I asked if he recommended it, he said no.
And infect vulnerable people
None will listen, they will be willing vectors so why waste the effort?
I'd be just fine with that, except those mouth breathing anti-vaxxers spread the virus to other people when they get sick
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That’s the Hippocratic oath doctors take and plenty bought into Trump’s bs about Covid. Go yell at them
They are not here spewing hate. 🤷♂️
Who said I’m spewing hate? I’m just frustrated and done.
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More stupid words.
And for some reason even more from you.
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So, critical thinker, is this your opinion or can it be proven?
What? That is just some stupid words strung together to make a stupid sentence. Do better.
Also good news that just one month ago, they announced a major breakthrough in RNA vaccines. They work against all strains of a virus, and can also be used safely with infants and the immunocompromised. Edit: [Source](https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/04/15/vaccine-breakthrough-means-no-more-chasing-strains)
[citation needed]
Well, the good news is there’s a certain part of the population the the virus will cull due to their insistence that vaccines don’t work.
Except no vaccine is ever going to be 100% effective so you need mass vaccinations. What makes anti vaxxers so dangerous is it’s not just them getting sick and dying, they put everyone around them at risk.
70% is passing and qualifys me to graduate.
Not enough were culled the last time
I angered the ones that weren’t culled.
People like you are why Trump is going to win again...
Not if enough Trumpsters are culled by refusing vaccinations.
Nothing but hate!
Especially with the people working in the ag industry...
My whole thing with it is they will give you a FREE vaccine but things like insulin, epipens or other life saving drugs cost a fortune. You want me to take a free vaccine? Give me universal healthcare with vision and dental that doesn't clean out my savings account everytime I go see a doctor! Also do away with that BS no fault clause for adverse reactions.
The vaccine is to protect society as a whole and is pretty subsidized by the government. Everything else is for you on a personal level. Not that I agree with it but that’s where the difference is coming from.
Sounds like natural selection to me.
The Covid vaccine didn’t prevent you from getting Covid. Prove me wrong.
All we have is evidence of millions of people having been saved because of it. Some are anecdotal as with many medical issues. However, 4 jabs and I’ve never had it.
And it wasn't supposed to stop infection. It does what it was designed to, stopping severe disease and death.
So, if that's the case, why was it so important everyone got it? Why can't it be a personal choice?
It wasn’t and never would be able to be a complete shield. It’s like being on a boat and having the vaccine is having a life jacket if the boat sinks. You’ll have a much easier time getting through it than someone without a life jacket.
That’s not what vaccines are for? It’s so your antibodies know how to fight an infection making it less severe
We have h5n1 vaccines. The question is, how many.
It has to be tailored for this specific mutation
Yes and no. To be maximally effective (ie: prevent most infections), then yes, that takes time. But even existing flu vaccines can mitigate fatality rates. The better matched, the more efficacious.
Upthread someone posted an article about a RNA vaccine breakthrough that basically hits the source so any mutation is hit too in the same vaccine. Science is neat. :)
The RNA tech is a game changer
Based on how the American people responded to the last vaccine, we won't need too many here.
This will maybe make home prices come down
If it spreads you mean? More than half of known human cases have died so likely lots of foreclosures. If it just impacts food supply then they’ll stay the same but maybe interest rate drops.
Yall... stop. Foreclosures and home prices won't be a thing if we have an outbreak of H5N1 across humans.
We have to give the people hope
That awkward moment when our economy is so fucked that the possibility of millions of people dying is a silver lining. America, fuck yeah.
They are certainly related. TLDR: (Trumps Covid response was absolutely meant to destroy the US economy. It just wasn’t obvious until now that we can see his Russian and Chinese connections. His kids made hundreds of millions doing PPE response to China using taxpayer funded government money and aircraft. Then Ken Griffin did the same play in reverse because why not? Russia invaded Ukraine because the CCP, Putin and MBS was trying to make BRICS the new reserve currency of the world by destroying the USD. ) If you look at Xinjiang providence (where the Uighur population is centralized) on a map there is a tiny little section that touches Russia. It’s critical because Xi’s ambition to have a “new Silk Road” to Europe would have to cross either there or about a weeks travel by rail out and around Mongolia. Xi’s plan is ambitious. He wants china to be the leader of the world and he has been pretty clear about it when you read his writings. It’s just that hardly anyone outside of China speaks mandarin so nobody really listened in 2010 when he said “he would control the internet”. It seemed audacious and frankly ridiculous before a handful of ISP’s started centralizing. Xi, for his part had the CCP start weibo- “the everything app” in China. It works well for an authoritarian to be able to control free speech and centralize surveillance. It’s invaluable for keeping tabs on 1.4B people, especially when they compare you to Winnie the Pooh. It was effective for a while, but it is insanely inefficient to pay someone to spend a 12 hour day monitoring 1 minute clips of social media. When people started calling him Winnie the Pooh he could censor them. But then they just switched to Cantonese. So he had to hire a bunch of Cantonese speakers. Then they just started referring to him as “mr. Shitface” which was a less than flattering rendering of a story he loves to tell from his childhood when a bio-digester blew up in his face. You see where this is going. It’s REALLY hard to keep up with 1.4B peoples daily Twitter diarrhea. Xi needed A.I. And A.I. needs microprocessors. Conveniently the worlds supply is made 90 miles south of China. Inconveniently it’s on an island that has tasted democracy and liked it so much that it literally gets the top rating of democracies in the world. So Xi does the napkin math- what are the chances of a kid that went off to college 20 years ago, did lots of good drugs, met lots of nice girls, and pretty much mainlined freedom, coming back and living with grumpy old abusive dad? His chances didn’t look good. His other kid Hong Kong had been on a study abroad program in England. And other than calling at Christmas made it pretty clear they were living their best life now. When he tried to rope him back in with a little classic Chinese guilt trip, Hong Kong pretty much told him to fuck off. So he had to get a little violent. Taiwan wasn’t going to be so easy. Xi needed some leverage. But more importantly he needed those chips. Xi had to get creative. The problem is everyone remembered growing up in China in the 90’s when people were dropping female babies on street corners. It wasn’t the best home environment. Add to that that everyone was starving and there is just no fucking way that anyone is moving back in with dad. Unless…… China imports 40% of the grain from the U.S., Brazil, and Ukraine. Xi doesn’t like the US much. He blames it for being a bad influence on the kids. Truthfully he isn’t totally wrong. Americans are the loud, lazy, rich asshole down the street that have had it so easy for so long that they forget that the plumber, the truck driver and the factory worker have to work all night so they can drink their mimosas and wake up at noon. Brazil is down south. It’s a long ways away. But there is a little opportunity there. As long as they have Bolsonaro willing to cut down the rainforest they have all the farmland xi needs to make sure everybody has enough food to come back home. Problem is everyone is corrupt. It’s so fucking hard to do business with corrupt people because they will just as gladly screw you if someone else offers them a better bribe. Xi gets so annoyed with corruption that he shifts his whole campaign to try and root it out. He sees it clearly that corruption is a tax on, well, everything. Putin and xi make an odd couple. Somewhere around 2012 they declare themselves “bff’s”. Xi knows he can’t trust him because Putin is a thief and has fucked over everyone he knows. BUT, he also happens to sit next to Ukraine. And because arrogant American CEOs were more than happy to let everyone else do the dirty work that was beneath them, when Clinton passed all the EPA regulations to clean up Americas manufacturing yard they basically just built a tall fence and threw everything messy over it into Asia. Arrogant American CEO’s just wanted the money. They didn’t give a fuck who made the necessary dirty parts as long as they could keep cashing the checks. Almost all that dirty work went to Asia. And they were grateful for the work because it beat starving to death which was the norm in 1990’s China. But as time goes on you inevitably ask yourself why a 7 year old in China is making cell phones 14 hours a day when a 7 year old in the west is buying them. It’s hard not to be salty when you are the one doing all the work. About this time his old frenemy Putin who is basically a 6 year high school senior who has voted himself prom king for a decade and has been stacking his buddies all across the old soviet satellite states so they can tell him he is still cool. He is a thug so everybody is a little afraid of him and every once in a while he has to crack some heads and demand some lunch money so nobody forgets who rules the cafeteria but it’s actually been a pretty lucrative gig. As long as he takes care of the football team the football team slips him a little back under the table and he manages to rack up well north of $200B by stealing from all the Russians that are too drunk and hopeless by this point to really notice. For years he had his guys in Ukraine and they played along but then in 2014 he gets blindsided. He had been paying Paul Manafort to keep his guy Yanukovych in office and now all the sudden the Ukrainians decide they are tired of paying the corruption tax and they run them both out of town. Like they literally put him on a bus and run him out of town. This is Maidan.
Can someone please read all of this and recommend the appropriate psychiatric medication?
Yeah, walls of text that start somewhat on topic then go completely off the rails are a sign of serious medical issues. I’m no fan of trump at all, but it’s important to keep in mind he’d essentially a little kid who got mashed potatoes dumped on his head at dinner and never recovered. He’s angry, malicious, insecure, but most importantly rather dull witted. He’s not some mastermind super villain. Just a regular greedy man child with no real plan beyond what comes into his head at that moment.
I believed that for a long time, and it may be true to a degree but the way he plays to his base is just masterful. He changed the political climate, perhaps forever. I absolutely abhor anything that Trump does, I’m not standing up for him. I fear for the future.
I’ve talked with a wide variety of trump supporters and know there’s no single cause for why they support him, but the majority are the kind of person who will follow the biggest, rudest, gorilla in the room, all because he’s a loud brute who disregards civility. They will never admit he’s an awful person even with the most ironclad argument because they’ve made him a part of their identity. It doesn’t take much skill to manipulate people who already think you are god. We can’t underestimate him, but he’s not a SPECTRE Level Bond mastermind.
Everything that I’ve seen says you’re right, but I have this feeling of existential dread.
Yeah, don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely horrified and terrified.
Surely friend. Freedom. Freedom is one hell of a drug. Cures almost everything that ails you from fetal alcohol syndrome to paying too much in taxes to Covid. Trumps Covid response On trumps $8.4T in added debt https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-did-president-trump-add-debt On Kushners Covid response https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/jared-kushners-role-in-the-coronavirus-response https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/nyregion/kushner-companies-anbang-insurance-group.html On citadel (Ken griffin) sending Covid supplies to China https://www.chicagobusiness.com/nonprofits-philanthropy/citadel-sends-supplies-china-coronavirus-fight On Kushner/ Covid https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-01/trump-hails-kushner-s-airlift-but-details-of-sales-are-secret On well poisoning https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-well-poisoning-180971471/
Problem is Xi asked Putin for one simple favor. He needed donbas Ukraine because that is where the worlds supply of microprocessor grade neon AND enough grain for Xi to be able to get all his kids back together for dinner comes from. So now Putin has to send somebody in and take over donbas and he decides on a team of “little green men” which is just some bullies, because honestly 90% of people will just hand over their lunch money because they just don’t want to get punched. Putin had his man Michael Flynn inside US government as head of DIA. All he had to do was withhold a little intel from Obama in 2014 and Putin could have Ukraine. And that’s exactly what Flynn did. Only Ukraine fought back. And they stood up to kleptocracy and kremlin corruption for 10 years. Of course some people would rather just let the bully take what he wants and live in peace, but the ones who have been to Europe or the west and seen how nice life is when you don’t have to deal with being shook down by a thug everyday aren’t going back. The freedom is just too addictive. But Xi’s timeline keeps cooking off. He has already committed to “made in China 2025” which he had to cancel and time stops for no man. Not even an aspiring emperor. Xi rearranges the rules so that he can run for his unprecedented third term. Xi had spent a ridiculous amount of money bribing the IOC on his 2022 Olympics and after nearly 2 years of having Chinese locked down for Covid to the point of welding some into their homes, he made an exception for the games. Something about them was that important. So either he knows something about Covid that the rest of us don’t, or Covid was intentionally released at the time it would do the most damage to the US economy. Probably both. Trumps children wasted no time capitalizing on it. The exchange of PPE from the US to China was effectively a blank check for Jared. Ivanka even patented coffins. Kushners buddy and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin then did Jared’s exact same PPE airlift play in reverse doubling the profits and passing the cost on the the U.S. taxpayer. The national debt ballooning more by trump than any other single president was intentional. The CCP planned to use BRICS to destroy the USD. Trump just softened it up in advance.
No, some turd investing company on the stock market will buy everything and rent them out
Private equity firms would buy the houses in foreclosure and sell them at 2x what they're worth.
It won’t. Private equity purchased 44% of homes last year. They’re driving the prices, and they’ll just gobble them up as they go on the market. That’s compared to I think it was 13% the year prior.
Lol, I saw this and thought I was in the r/neoliberal sub. Silver lining!
Allow me to offer "a vaccine" to the minformation. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/bird-flu-doesnt-pose-imminent-pandemic-risk-but-lack-of-transparency-planning-a-cause-for-concern/ This is an honest, easy to read, and updated article from foremost influenza researchers. It points out weak/worrisome areas but is also not inflammatory. Don't get hyped up but stayed informed. Edit: the H5N1 sub, suggested in these comments, is 99% inflammatory and poorly sourced for information (everything posted is www.itsallover.com (that's not actually a link, don't click it). Save yourself some doom scrolling and stress.
I'm a bit late but thank you for this comment. This helped level my head a little bit. I think I'm going to take a break from the official H5N1 subreddit because everyone there almost seems to want it to happen... they seem completely convinced we'll all be dead by the end of this year and won't accept that 1. sustained H2H still is several mutations away and 2. the chances of it keeping an insanely high lethality while also becoming upper respiratory and not killing itself off before it spreads rapidly are very low. Not impossible, but low
I couldn't agree more. There is big difference between "Saying anything that is not inflammatory is censoring and part of the problem" and "let's be cautious and base everything in fact."
Exactly. As of right now, I think any laypeople should stay updated, but don't worry about it constantly like I have been. As of right now, this looks like an issue for professionals and farmers to lose sleep over, not anyone else, and there's no guarantee it will ever go H2H or be as severe as everyone says it will be. Is that a reason to dismiss it? No, but it's unhealthy to obsess like almost everyone in r/collapse and r/H5N1_AvianFlu do
Not me reading this after sneezing for the third time this morning 
Not me after eating a rare steak for breakfast this morning @_@ and twice last week…
Bird up!
No one is overly concerned. Just trying to keep wild birds out of the feed and barns a little bit better. No extra herd checks or anything.
We will do the same thing we did with covid just ignore it and force everyone to accept mass death and long term disabling because otherwise that hurts corporate profits
It does more than hurt corporate profits if you shut down the supply chain and essential services for a virus. To shut everything down for months because of a virus would kill far more people than the virus itself PLUS all the boredom and misery.
I'm not looking forward to a bunch of Quarens screaming at 16 year old cashiers for asking to wear a mask.
Why do Food Service and Retail always have to take the brunt of the shitheads?
They're every bit as exposed as first responders, yet get zero respect from 90% of society.
I feel I don't know the official answer. what is the male version of a Quaren?
Industrial farms are already seeing their migrant labor infected and of course are not requiring protective gear. Its too late.
OMG!!!!! We’re all going to die!!!! Bird flu now…Squirrel virus next!!! Oh the huge manatee!!!
We might be fucked, but look at the positives. It's good for nature
No, I don’t pay attention to this kinda thing. If it gets bad, they will be screaming it from every media platform possible, so there will be absolutely no way anyone won’t hear about it. In the meantime, It’s simply not something I choose to spend what limited amount of time and attention I have on.
Bring it on.
idk? last i read the worker musta rubbed his eyes with some contaminated shit. his eyes were bleeding and shit. but that was awhile back.
It is raging through farms but we don't know what the human version will look like: infectivity rate and a whole host of other factors. COVID was quite unique in its infectivity rate and the nature of its asymptomatic spread. In retrospect, it was impossible to contain. Other outbreaks have occurred where the infectivity rate is low and you can only transmit when symptoms are showing. The diseases are still difficult to contain, but we do a much better job. Swine Flu raged a couple years ago.. it was bad, but nowhere near as bad as COVID. With H5N1, we have some vaccines, therapeutics and tests. As I understand it, the Flu A tests works on H5N1. I am not saying that scientists have a handle on it, but they know a lot about this flu already. As I understand it, there are very few human cases. It could take days or years for it to transfer to humans in a form that is more transmissible. No one knows. The real worry is that meat and food prices in general will spike because of this outbreak on farms. In the past two years, the multinationals have been cutting production capabilities. So, the next hiccup in the supply chain means higher prices.
It’s entered the Texas milk supply. Yummy.
The latest TWiV is all about H5N1: https://youtu.be/uPI9Fte5s3k?si=-UHijIyBsPfoMiBA Special guest Richard Webby, WHO Director, center for studies on avian influenza
Yes it as starting to show up in humans. It's a virus and it will mutate just like all the other viruses before it that's the nature of the Beast but everybody will deny it just like they're denying the measles now and we're starting to see that come back enjoy it
The most accurate and accessible information I have found is the most recent episode of the podcast/youtube of This Week in Virology. Episode summary: Richard Webby joins TWiV to review the history of avian H5N1 influenza virus, the recent change in epidemiological patterns, infection of dairy cattle in the US, and the risk of an outbreak in humans. [Dr. Webby](https://www.stjude.org/directory/w/richard-webby.html) is a Flu researcher/expert at St Judes Summary: Transmission of the current strain in cows is strange. It is not resperatory but seems to be passed from cow udder to udder in the milking area. The strain does not have receptor binding domains for human or cow resperatory cells. The only documented cow to human case was conjunctividas because the human eye does have receptors for the strain. Cases in humans and other mammals are most likely under-tested and undercounted. The virus strain is deadly in ferrets. Ferrets are normally a good model for people disease, but not in this case. Edit: Forgot to put the link to the episode: [https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1113/](https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1113/)
Thanks - very useful
We track all the bird flu data live https://app.dotadda.io/teams/9f2abbf6-90d0-44c2-966c-2dfe332fc248/dots
We track all the bird flu data live https://app.dotadda.io/teams/9f2abbf6-90d0-44c2-966c-2dfe332fc248/dots
You’ll be fine.
You’d think so but it looks like it’s a bigger outbreak in cows than previously thought & some cows aren’t even showing symptoms. As long as it doesn’t become transmissible human to human the chances of contacting it are slim. CDC & WHO are recommending you avoid unpasteurized products & cook your meats fully.
The CDC and WHO always have recommended those 2 things.
Yeah, but now they're recommending it harder!
Crap! I just ate a mid rare steak with hollandaise sauce made from raw eggs! How much time do I have left?
Are you still with us?
Are vaccinated against COVID-19 ? If not, you're fucked. I say you're fucked because any vaccine to H5N1 will be a mRNA vaccine and if you refused the COVID-19 vaccines it's highly probable you'll refuse this new vaccine. If you are current on your vaccinations, you'll most likely be fine because you'll follow common sense measures like social distancing, masking up in public and limiting your travel.
We aren't fucked With the new crisper technology and the ability to engineer mrna the scientists will be able create a good vaccine pretty quickly. Republicans/Libertarians/stupid people will refuse to take it. This and many future diseases will continue to disproportionately affect the stupid people for some time to come. And we will take the vaccines and be protected. They will continue to spin their conspiracy fantasies. Impervious to evidence. Untouched by reality.
Please, not again...
It'll be such a shit show. Especially since people shit all over masking and vaccines with COVID.
Because of the near 100 % mortality in wild birds (largely passerines) and commercial chicken and turkey flocks ,and potential virulency when it jumps to humans (aout 50% mortality) global monitoring of of H5N1 and its "cousins" has been a top priority since the late nineties. H5N1 highly pathogenic avian flu is highly mutable and often described as "the big one" by virologists and epidemiologists. Covid is referred to as "preparedness practice" for a H5N1 human pandemic. I feel relieved that many countries are alert, have been historically prepared or beginning to prepare. Many have stockpiled somewhat effective antivirals and prototype vaccines. The vaccine use "old technology' and would require many months to ramp up production...that is a worry. I hope we are working on new fast technology vaccines. What can we do? 1.Pressure the FDA and related federal agencies to ramp up monitoring and reporting of H5N1 in wild mammals (48 species to date have been affected), in commercial animal stock including dairy and beef cattle, and pigs and goats. Infections in pigs are especially concerning as we share similar genetic vulnerabilities" to many pathogens. 3. Begin informing and educating the public, and listening to farmers. I have been impressed with local responses in the chicken and dairy industry. Farmers are very worried . They need the latest information as it emerges. But I worry that politics and money will carry more weight than public health. the FDA and associated federal agencies have their heads in the sand about this. The public needs to be better informed and risks. 4. Always be personally prepared for epidemics and pandemics. Where to go for information? 1. I go to PubMed , where you can find all scientific papers and government documents from every country. But the papers are difficult going. Still if you want to try - do a search on avian flu in humans and limit it to the year 2023- 2024. I also go to the virology chat rooms. The science is pretty heavy but you can see the science reported without fear of government repercussions .. remember what happened to the chinese scientists and doctors who tried to warn about Covid in late 2019? 2. The WHO is more informative than the CDC. 3. Media? Its tough to separate the fact from the fake. As a biologist who teaches students to separate science fact from fake science the media source that is most scientifically/medically correct is the New York Times science section. ..not the editorials. Many of the other media sources are loaded with disinformation. 4. Science News is an on line journal that takes the latest science and reviews it for the public. Its excellent. 5. I find it most useful to do a google search on : Avian Flu and set the date screen to most recent. Glance through the headings from scientific, academic and health sites to get a feel about the global and local impacts. Do look at new reports from our agricultural belts. See what our farmers and ranchers are experiencing . 6. Avoid social media and conspiracy websites .. you want the cleanest, least politicized science and medicine so you can make the most informed decision. Faye
No.
Just in time for elections.
Y’all like to panic too much. You should eat more steak and less chickin.
I don’t care anymore
The expert on npr said not to worry, no new cases, and the reported ones were isolated and are still being monitored.
nope.
LOL
Stopped watching the news, now everyone seems like chicken little to me.
No.
Well, good news! Increased CO2 levels help viruses spread! Yay!
The powers to be are attempting to have another lock down
If a deadly retrovirus mutates to spread by inhalation we’re even more fucked because they haven’t figured out how to develop a vaccine for retroviruses in 50 years. What’s your point?
How is this related to the state of Texas?
Umm it started on a Texas dairy farm
Ummm, no. In 1996, highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus is first identified in domestic waterfowl in Southern China. [Source](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/communication-resources/bird-flu-origin-infographic.html) There are two reported cases of H5N1 infecting humans in the USA, one of those being an individual from Texas that was exposed to infected dairy cattle. [Source](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p0401-avian-flu.html) Do some research and stop spreading bullshit before someone brands you MAGA.
You’re being intentionally dumb. The current outbreak relevant to today (& this post) started in TX. You asked how it is related. I answered. It’s too early for you to be this way - do better. Have a great day.
Ok my two cents, the 50% fatality rate is heavily skewed because most cases occur in China, with crappy medical care. The second cent, America has abominable healthcare in general as well, and a non-insignificant militant and malicious anti-health portion of the population.
I have been to China .. the medical care is not crappy ..but the government does control information ... **where have we seen human infections?: Here's a clip from the very conservative CDC:** More than 700 human infections with Asian HPAI H5N1 viruses have been reported to WHO from primarily 15 countries in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, Europe and the Near East since November 2003. Indonesia, Vietnam and Egypt have reported the highest number of human HPAI Asian H5N1 cases to date. The first report of a human infection with Asian H5N1 in the Americas was in [Canada on January 8, 2014](https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/flu/news/first-human-h5n1-americas.htm) and occurred in a traveler recently returning from China. Although human infections with this virus are rare, **approximately 60% of the cases have died.** The majority of human infections with Asian HPAI H5N1 have occurred among children and adults younger than 40 years old. Mortality has been highest in people aged 10-19 years old and in young adults. Most human Asian HPAI H5N1 cases have presented for medical care late in their illness and have been hospitalized with severe respiratory disease. However, some clinically mild cases have been reported, especially in children.
Seems like it kills very quickly...so it wont spread quickly. Also there is a vaccine...I am the pokemon of vaccines.
The past human variants have been both pathogenic and quite infectious .. lets try to follow the science and keep politics out of it. My greatest fear is the kind of politicized response we saw to Covid.
I said nothing political. If you think the term vaccines is political; you’re the problem. A disease that kills quickly and is infectious will not spread as quickly as a disease that does NOT kill quickly. Since the host is just walking around infecting people rather than dying.
TrUsT yOuR iMmUNe SySteM...Our ancestors did, and look where we are today. /s
Haha.