Post by RonOPost by RonOPost by RonOPost by RonOhttps://www.newsweek.com/disturbing-footage-reveals-bird-flu-
infected- cattle-dumped-roadside-1967813
As noted in previous posts the California strain of the dairy
influenza virus has a higher mortality rate among cattle than the
initial virus. Apparently dead cattle are piling up and not being
disposed of in a biosecure manner.
The esimate is that there are over 1,100 dairy herds in California
and 100 have already been confirmed to be infected with more herds
detected by California health officials and already submitted for
verification.
20% of the dairy herd in the US is in California (over a million
cattle). The mortality rate was initially 2%, but around 15% of the
infected cattle are dying in California. Initially around 10% of
the herd was infected at any one time, but now 50% of the herd is
found to be infected in some cases.
Ron Okimoto
https://evrimagaci.org/tpg/california-confronts-bird-flu-cases-among-
dairy-workers-45706
This article claims that California has been contact tracing since
the start in late August. After the first couple weeks the first
claims were that they thought that they had isolated the infected
herds to around half a dozen because they shared workers between the
farms, but the contacts obviously exploded out of those first half
dozen and now they likely have over a 100 infected dairy herds
identified some of them before the cattle showed symptoms.
The claim is that there is still no evidence for human to human
transmission, but that hasn't been true since late July. A Texas
study released their data before peer review.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/previously-
undetected-h5n1-avian-flu-cases-farmworkers-revealed-new-report
They released this data in late July, but the CDC has never
incorporated the data into the known human infections. What they
found was they tested 14 dairy workers from two farms and two of the
dairy workers from one of the farms had antibodies to H5 indicating
that they had been infected by the dairy virus. One of those workers
only had contact with other dairy workers, and did not have contact
with cattle (cafeteria worker). Their submitted publication
indicated that this was evidence for human to human transmission
(worker infected by dairy cattle, and one worker infected that did
not have contact with cattle).
The initial Texas data indicated that around 10% of a herd was
infected (showed symptoms), but when these researchers tested 39 milk
samples from the two farms they found 64% of the samples had H5N1
virus. This is closer to the 50% infection rate that California is
experiencing, but the mortality in Texas was only 2% while it is 10
to 15% of infected animals in California. So going by symptoms under
estimated the rate of infection in Texas herds. They should have
implemented testing like they have in California, and they would have
had a better estimate of the actual infection rate.
One of the authors of this paper is quoted in the news article.
"I am very confident there are more people being infected than we
know about," senior author Gregory Gray, MD, MPH, a UTMB infectious
disease researcher, told NPR. "Largely, that's because our
surveillance has been so poor."
It should be noted that the CDC never changed their minds, and
surveillance continues to be poor (except in California where they
implemented contact tracing) for the rest of the nation.
Ron Okimoto
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/california-
reports-4-more-probable-h5-cases-dairy-workers
California is reporting 4 more cases of human infections. This makes
the total 11 for California. It means that the other states have been
severely under reporting cases, mainly because they are not testing
and contact tracing.
The cases need to be confirmed by the CDC, but the previous ones were
verified, and California is likely using the CDC PCR test. It should
have been fixed by now, and initially had issues with false negative
results when the CDC first put it out, but they have had more than
half a year to fix that test, and false negative results are not an
issue for positive test results.
11 cases involving 9 farms. 2 cases were at the same farm, but it was
a huge dairy farm (something like 5,000 cows) and the two workers
worked at different parts of the farm, and did not have contact with
each other. So it looks like all of them were infected by cattle. In
a previous article California health officials claimed that they were
tracing close contacts of the infected dairy workers, and would be
testing those contacts if they exhibit symptoms. It won't be any
surprise if they find close contacts infected because in both Michigan
and Texas where they asked the question they found that twice as many
close contacts of dairy workers worked at poultry farms or other dairy
farms as the dairy workers themselves, and both Texas and Michigan had
infected poultry flocks with the dairy virus. So they already have
known for months that close contacts may have been spreading the dairy
virus. The CDC just never implemented testing and contact tracing.
Ron Okimoto
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-
influenza/hpai-detections/hpai-confirmed-cases-livestock
The USDA just updated their herd infection data adding 5 California
herds since the last update last week. The number of herds infected in
California went from 99 to 104, but the 5 additions were supposedly
confirmed Oct 10 (last Thursday), and more herds have been submitted
since then. The USDA dosen't seem to be keeping up with what California
is sending them. The USDA is still refusing to start contact tracing
and increase testing in other states. My guess is that they will have
another batch confirmed tomorrow, but may not report them until next week.
The California health department is claiming that California has over
1,100 dairy herds consisting of over 1.7 million cattle. The initial
hope was that because most dairies are very large and have full time
staff that there would be a more limited number of dairy workers with
jobs at multiple dairies as is the case in other states with mostly
smaller herds and part time workers. Contact tracing of workers from
infected farms has allowed California to detect infections in around 9%
of the California dairy herds. This likely means that herd infections
have been severely under reported in other states, but the USDA and CDC
refuse to start contact tracing and testing in other states when they
know that it is the only way that they are going to get the epidemic
under control and reduce worker exposure to infection. The CDC is still
only recommending protective gear for workers working with infected
animals, but they refuse to identify the infected herds so that workers
would know that they should wear protective gear. California has
identified 11 dairy workers infected with the dairy influenza.
As sad as it may be the CDC is still claiming that only around 250
people associated with infected animals have been tested. The number is
currently +250. California may push them closer to 300. The number of
human cases claimed is 25, but one is the Missouri case that did not
have exposure to infected animals.
The California data is not surprising because the sequence is supposedly
closest to Colorado where 10 people were infected with the dairy virus,
but most of them were Poultry workers (6 of the poultry workers were
from one farm) so the CDC has known that infection of workers in
proximity to infected animals was much more likely than they had been
claiming based on their refusal to test the workers and find out what
the infection rate actually has been.
The CDC is still refusing to start a contact tracing and testing program
in other affected states. Everyone knows that the most important thing
to do is reduce dairy worker infections, but the CDC has refused to do
what needed to be done from the very beginning of this fiasco.
Ron Okimoto
herds confirmed Oct 15. This would bring the number of California herds
to 114. Probably 10% of the dairy herds in California are known to be
infected. Around 90% of the California dairy herds are claimed to be in
current contact tracing.
the virus spread so rapidly to so many farms. It looks like the virus
was in California for some time before it was detected.