OT? Dairy flu

[RonO]

The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning for
"possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu. The
CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the virus and
the threat to humans. They knew from the first detections that humans
were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and contact
tracing. Humans had already likely spread the virus to other dairy
herds for some time. They knew from the first sequencing results that
many states did not get cattle but ended up with the virus. People were
the obvious vector for spread of the virus between herds. We have known
for years that the flu virus only survives for around 5 hours on the
skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but we also know that you
have to be infected within a few minutes of getting it on your skin or
clothing because the virus doesn't seem to be infective after a few
minutes on those surfaces. The virus survives the longest on hard
surfaces and is infective off those surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the
poultry farms that were infected by the dairy virus in the same counties
as the infected herds would have had little reason to exchange
equipment. Infected humans likely took the virus to those poultry
farms. The two known human cases were shedding infective virus. The
CDC has understood this from the very beginning of their involvement,
but they failed to act on it. They claim that it isn't their policy to
force testing onto farm workers, so they never checked to determine the
rate that humans were being infected even though there was ancedotal
evidence of other dairy workers with red eye (eye infection). The crazy
thing is these red eye individuals can infect other humans. They got
infected, and they are shedding virus. If the CDC had started testing
and contact tracing they would already know how the other herds and
poultry flocks got infected.

What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases. They
both claimed to rely on farm reporting. This is stupid. The FDA tested
milk products from 38 states. They tested products that came from milk
processing plants in those states and found 17 states with H5N1 positive
milk samples, but would not release the names of the states because they
claimed to only be worried about the safety of the food chain.
Pasteurization was found to kill the virus. When the FDA finally did
release the names of the states a couple weeks later it was found that 9
new states not yet identified as having positive dairy herds had
produced milk products that were positive for the dairy virus. 3 of the
states already known to have infected herds were not found to have
positive dairy products, so they likely missed some positive states of
the 38 tested. The CDC could have predicted the results because they
started to monitor waste water and most of the new states that were
found to have positive dairy products had also shown flu virus in the
waste water.

The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people. Currently the infected humans only have mild
eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently tear
ducts). The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections. As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for. The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus. I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had high
mortality because the virus infected their brains. Influenza virus is
normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to infecting
human brains that would be a real tragedy.

So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided to
prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus. It doesn't
sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to limit the
first human cases with severe symptoms. In order to do that you have to
identify them as soon as you can. The humans currently being infected
are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the infected herds and
monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts. The next pandemic
could have already started in one of the states with unidentified
infected dairy herds. They need to track down the dairies that
contributed to the milk of the processing plants that produced positive
milk samples. They need to go to the counties with positive waste water
(these include multiple sites in California that has not yet claimed to
have positive herds and several of these sites are in rural areas
surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare scenario) and identify
infected herds. They need to track the contacts of the dairy workers so
that they can identify more infected herds in states that are already
known to have infected herds. Once they identify all the possible
sources of infection they can monitor those herds and people and then
try to keep any virus from spreading and becoming a pandemic.

Ron Okimoto

[*Hemidactylus*]

Post by RonO
The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning for
"possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu. The
CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the virus and
the threat to humans. They knew from the first detections that humans
were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and contact
tracing. Humans had already likely spread the virus to other dairy
herds for some time. They knew from the first sequencing results that
many states did not get cattle but ended up with the virus. People were
the obvious vector for spread of the virus between herds. We have known
for years that the flu virus only survives for around 5 hours on the
skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but we also know that you
have to be infected within a few minutes of getting it on your skin or
clothing because the virus doesn't seem to be infective after a few
minutes on those surfaces. The virus survives the longest on hard
surfaces and is infective off those surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the
poultry farms that were infected by the dairy virus in the same counties
as the infected herds would have had little reason to exchange
equipment. Infected humans likely took the virus to those poultry
farms. The two known human cases were shedding infective virus. The
CDC has understood this from the very beginning of their involvement,
but they failed to act on it. They claim that it isn't their policy to
force testing onto farm workers, so they never checked to determine the
rate that humans were being infected even though there was ancedotal
evidence of other dairy workers with red eye (eye infection). The crazy
thing is these red eye individuals can infect other humans. They got
infected, and they are shedding virus. If the CDC had started testing
and contact tracing they would already know how the other herds and
poultry flocks got infected.
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases. They
both claimed to rely on farm reporting. This is stupid. The FDA tested
milk products from 38 states. They tested products that came from milk
processing plants in those states and found 17 states with H5N1 positive
milk samples, but would not release the names of the states because they
claimed to only be worried about the safety of the food chain.
Pasteurization was found to kill the virus. When the FDA finally did
release the names of the states a couple weeks later it was found that 9
new states not yet identified as having positive dairy herds had
produced milk products that were positive for the dairy virus. 3 of the
states already known to have infected herds were not found to have
positive dairy products, so they likely missed some positive states of
the 38 tested. The CDC could have predicted the results because they
started to monitor waste water and most of the new states that were
found to have positive dairy products had also shown flu virus in the
waste water.
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people. Currently the infected humans only have mild
eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently tear
ducts). The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections. As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for. The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus. I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had high
mortality because the virus infected their brains. Influenza virus is
normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to infecting
human brains that would be a real tragedy.
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided to
prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus. It doesn't
sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to limit the
first human cases with severe symptoms. In order to do that you have to
identify them as soon as you can. The humans currently being infected
are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the infected herds and
monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts. The next pandemic
could have already started in one of the states with unidentified
infected dairy herds. They need to track down the dairies that
contributed to the milk of the processing plants that produced positive
milk samples. They need to go to the counties with positive waste water
(these include multiple sites in California that has not yet claimed to
have positive herds and several of these sites are in rural areas
surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare scenario) and identify
infected herds. They need to track the contacts of the dairy workers so
that they can identify more infected herds in states that are already
known to have infected herds. Once they identify all the possible
sources of infection they can monitor those herds and people and then
try to keep any virus from spreading and becoming a pandemic.

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell them
not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should ramp up H5
based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for matching and
effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

[RonO]

Post by *Hemidactylus*

Post by RonO
The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning for
"possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu. The
CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the virus and
the threat to humans. They knew from the first detections that humans
were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and contact
tracing. Humans had already likely spread the virus to other dairy
herds for some time. They knew from the first sequencing results that
many states did not get cattle but ended up with the virus. People were
the obvious vector for spread of the virus between herds. We have known
for years that the flu virus only survives for around 5 hours on the
skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but we also know that you
have to be infected within a few minutes of getting it on your skin or
clothing because the virus doesn't seem to be infective after a few
minutes on those surfaces. The virus survives the longest on hard
surfaces and is infective off those surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the
poultry farms that were infected by the dairy virus in the same counties
as the infected herds would have had little reason to exchange
equipment. Infected humans likely took the virus to those poultry
farms. The two known human cases were shedding infective virus. The
CDC has understood this from the very beginning of their involvement,
but they failed to act on it. They claim that it isn't their policy to
force testing onto farm workers, so they never checked to determine the
rate that humans were being infected even though there was ancedotal
evidence of other dairy workers with red eye (eye infection). The crazy
thing is these red eye individuals can infect other humans. They got
infected, and they are shedding virus. If the CDC had started testing
and contact tracing they would already know how the other herds and
poultry flocks got infected.
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases. They
both claimed to rely on farm reporting. This is stupid. The FDA tested
milk products from 38 states. They tested products that came from milk
processing plants in those states and found 17 states with H5N1 positive
milk samples, but would not release the names of the states because they
claimed to only be worried about the safety of the food chain.
Pasteurization was found to kill the virus. When the FDA finally did
release the names of the states a couple weeks later it was found that 9
new states not yet identified as having positive dairy herds had
produced milk products that were positive for the dairy virus. 3 of the
states already known to have infected herds were not found to have
positive dairy products, so they likely missed some positive states of
the 38 tested. The CDC could have predicted the results because they
started to monitor waste water and most of the new states that were
found to have positive dairy products had also shown flu virus in the
waste water.
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people. Currently the infected humans only have mild
eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently tear
ducts). The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections. As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for. The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus. I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had high
mortality because the virus infected their brains. Influenza virus is
normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to infecting
human brains that would be a real tragedy.
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided to
prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus. It doesn't
sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to limit the
first human cases with severe symptoms. In order to do that you have to
identify them as soon as you can. The humans currently being infected
are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the infected herds and
monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts. The next pandemic
could have already started in one of the states with unidentified
infected dairy herds. They need to track down the dairies that
contributed to the milk of the processing plants that produced positive
milk samples. They need to go to the counties with positive waste water
(these include multiple sites in California that has not yet claimed to
have positive herds and several of these sites are in rural areas
surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare scenario) and identify
infected herds. They need to track the contacts of the dairy workers so
that they can identify more infected herds in states that are already
known to have infected herds. Once they identify all the possible
sources of infection they can monitor those herds and people and then
try to keep any virus from spreading and becoming a pandemic.

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell them
not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should ramp up H5
based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for matching and
effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

The dairy workers were resistant to be tested. Many were illegal aliens
and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor. The Dairy owners
were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
poultry within a mile of the infected flock. The poultry flocks that
were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated. 6 and a half
million layers in Michigan alone. Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
infected herds. Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
the state.

So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
movement in trying to stop the spread. Multiple waste water sites
around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are
testing dairies in those counties. The nightmare scenario is that
patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
anyone notices.

One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
influenza infections. 30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
during the masking required during Covid. It tells us that we could
probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action. My take is
that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
environment around them by sneezing and coughing.

Ron Okimoto

[vallor]

Post by RonO

Post by *Hemidactylus*

Post by RonO
The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning
for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu.
The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the
virus and the threat to humans. They knew from the first detections
that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and
contact tracing. Humans had already likely spread the virus to other
dairy herds for some time. They knew from the first sequencing
results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
virus. People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between
herds. We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for
around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but
we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to
be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces. The virus
survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected
by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
have had little reason to exchange equipment. Infected humans likely
took the virus to those poultry farms. The two known human cases were
shedding infective virus. The CDC has understood this from the very
beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it. They
claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers,
so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
workers with red eye (eye infection). The crazy thing is these red
eye individuals can infect other humans. They got infected, and they
are shedding virus. If the CDC had started testing and contact
tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks
got infected.
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
They both claimed to rely on farm reporting. This is stupid. The FDA
tested milk products from 38 states. They tested products that came
from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with
H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the
food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus. When the FDA
finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
dairy virus. 3 of the states already known to have infected herds
were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed
some positive states of the 38 tested. The CDC could have predicted
the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
also shown flu virus in the waste water.
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people. Currently the infected humans only have
mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently
tear ducts). The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections. As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for. The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus. I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
high mortality because the virus infected their brains. Influenza
virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided
to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus. It
doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
limit the first human cases with severe symptoms. In order to do that
you have to identify them as soon as you can. The humans currently
being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts.
The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states
with unidentified infected dairy herds. They need to track down the
dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
produced positive milk samples. They need to go to the counties with
positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that
has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites
are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
scenario) and identify infected herds. They need to track the
contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected
herds in states that are already known to have infected herds. Once
they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor
those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading
and becoming a pandemic.

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

The dairy workers were resistant to be tested. Many were illegal aliens
and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor. The Dairy owners
were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
poultry within a mile of the infected flock. The poultry flocks that
were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated. 6 and a half
million layers in Michigan alone. Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
infected herds. Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
the state.
So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
movement in trying to stop the spread. Multiple waste water sites
around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are
testing dairies in those counties. The nightmare scenario is that
patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
anyone notices.
One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
influenza infections. 30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
during the masking required during Covid. It tells us that we could
probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action. My take is
that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
environment around them by sneezing and coughing.
Ron Okimoto

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/

Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk: Study

Is this the flu you are referring to? (Wish you'd source your info...)

(I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)

ObOrigins:
The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution. When
people talk about how evolution is "only a theory", they get it wrong:
the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
_observed fact_ of evolution.

[RonO]

Post by vallor

Post by RonO

Post by *Hemidactylus*

Post by RonO
The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning
for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu.
The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the
virus and the threat to humans. They knew from the first detections
that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and
contact tracing. Humans had already likely spread the virus to other
dairy herds for some time. They knew from the first sequencing
results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
virus. People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between
herds. We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for
around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but
we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to
be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces. The virus
survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected
by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
have had little reason to exchange equipment. Infected humans likely
took the virus to those poultry farms. The two known human cases were
shedding infective virus. The CDC has understood this from the very
beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it. They
claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers,
so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
workers with red eye (eye infection). The crazy thing is these red
eye individuals can infect other humans. They got infected, and they
are shedding virus. If the CDC had started testing and contact
tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks
got infected.
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
They both claimed to rely on farm reporting. This is stupid. The FDA
tested milk products from 38 states. They tested products that came
from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with
H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the
food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus. When the FDA
finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
dairy virus. 3 of the states already known to have infected herds
were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed
some positive states of the 38 tested. The CDC could have predicted
the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
also shown flu virus in the waste water.
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people. Currently the infected humans only have
mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently
tear ducts). The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections. As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for. The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus. I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
high mortality because the virus infected their brains. Influenza
virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided
to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus. It
doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
limit the first human cases with severe symptoms. In order to do that
you have to identify them as soon as you can. The humans currently
being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts.
The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states
with unidentified infected dairy herds. They need to track down the
dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
produced positive milk samples. They need to go to the counties with
positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that
has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites
are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
scenario) and identify infected herds. They need to track the
contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected
herds in states that are already known to have infected herds. Once
they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor
those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading
and becoming a pandemic.

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

The dairy workers were resistant to be tested. Many were illegal aliens
and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor. The Dairy owners
were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
poultry within a mile of the infected flock. The poultry flocks that
were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated. 6 and a half
million layers in Michigan alone. Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
infected herds. Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
the state.
So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
movement in trying to stop the spread. Multiple waste water sites
around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are
testing dairies in those counties. The nightmare scenario is that
patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
anyone notices.
One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
influenza infections. 30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
during the masking required during Covid. It tells us that we could
probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action. My take is
that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
environment around them by sneezing and coughing.
Ron Okimoto

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/
Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk: Study
Is this the flu you are referring to? (Wish you'd source your info...)
(I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)
The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution. When
the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
_observed fact_ of evolution.

Look at the CDC waste water data for California. California has not
started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites around the
bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste water, as high as
counties known to have infected dairy herds. It looks like the bay area
is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but no one wants to check.
Several of those counties have issued warnings not to drink raw milk,
but they don't want to verify that they have the issue for some stupid
reason.

https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by H5N1
virus in raw milk. Pretty much from day 1 we have known that the virus
in raw milk could infect cats.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows

The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm

The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples 10
days after they released the fact that they had found the positive
samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as long as you
didn't drink raw milk you were OK. They have contributed to the delay
in identifying all the infected herds.

https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai

The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings and
testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples. Both
claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but that
obviously is not working.

The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds because
of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be relying on self
reporting and are not actively investigating dairy herds in the positive
waste water counties.

https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy herds
even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and the waste
water data identifies even more, and it identifies some of the counties
that they should be checking. Not only that, but the waste water data
and positive milk data overlap and identify the counties that they
should check in the positive milk states.

They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the infected
herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though the symptoms
were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more chance of the
virus evolving into something much worse. It looks like the USDA and
CDC went into denial due to politics and being burned during Covid. It
is crazy that they have been in denial that humans took the virus to
other dairy herds and the poultry farms. How else has the virus spread
to states that never got cattle, and then infected poultry farms in
those states? Kansas and South Dakota never got cattle from Texas, but
it looks like Kansas was infected and then the infection spread from
Kansas to South Dakota even though South Dakota did not get cattle from
Texas nor Kansas. Infected people obviously took the virus to those
states. Influenza is known not to be infective off skin and clothing
for more than a few minutes. It may survive on clothing for up to 12
hours, but is only infective for around 30 minutes once it gets onto
clothing. The infected humans were shedding live virus, and that is
obviously how the virus has spread to so many herds.

This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
pandemic. Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up and
are preparing for worse to come. They can still identify the infected
herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they have decided
to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off the dairies as
something that is killing people. The stupid thing is that in order to
do this effectively they still need to identify the infected herds in
order to have the best chance of identifying patient zero that gets a
mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by vallor

Post by *Hemidactylus*

Post by RonO
The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning
for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu.
  The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the
virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first detections
that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and
contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to other
dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing
results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between
herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for
around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but
we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to
be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus
survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected
by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans likely
took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human cases were
shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the very
beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it.  They
claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers,
so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these red
eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, and they
are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact
tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks
got infected.
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid.  The FDA
tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that came
from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with
H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the
food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When the FDA
finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds
were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed
some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have predicted
the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
also shown flu virus in the waste water.
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have
mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently
tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
high mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza
virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided
to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It
doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to do that
you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently
being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts.
  The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states
with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track down the
dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the counties with
positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that
has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites
are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the
contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected
herds in states that are already known to have infected herds.  Once
they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor
those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading
and becoming a pandemic.

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal aliens
and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy owners
were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks that
were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a half
million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
the state.
So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites
around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are
testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that
patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
anyone notices.
One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could
probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My take is
that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
environment around them by sneezing and coughing.
Ron Okimoto

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/
Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk: Study
Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your info...)
(I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)
The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution.  When
the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
_observed fact_ of evolution.

Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has not
started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites around the
bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste water, as high as
counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It looks like the bay area
is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but no one wants to check.
Several of those counties have issued warnings not to drink raw milk,
but they don't want to verify that they have the issue for some stupid
reason.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by H5N1
virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known that the virus
in raw milk could infect cats.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows
The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm
The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples 10
days after they released the fact that they had found the positive
samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as long as you
didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have contributed to the delay
in identifying all the infected herds.
https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai
The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings and
testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples.  Both
claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but that
obviously is not working.
The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds because
of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be relying on self
reporting and are not actively investigating dairy herds in the positive
waste water counties.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy herds
even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and the waste
water data identifies even more, and it identifies some of the counties
that they should be checking.  Not only that, but the waste water data
and positive milk data overlap and identify the counties that they
should check in the positive milk states.
They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the infected
herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though the symptoms
were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more chance of the
virus evolving into something much worse.  It looks like the USDA and
CDC went into denial due to politics and being burned during Covid.  It
is crazy that they have been in denial that humans took the virus to
other dairy herds and the poultry farms.  How else has the virus spread
to states that never got cattle, and then infected poultry farms in
those states?  Kansas and South Dakota never got cattle from Texas, but
it looks like Kansas was infected and then the infection spread from
Kansas to South Dakota even though South Dakota did not get cattle from
Texas nor Kansas.  Infected people obviously took the virus to those
states.  Influenza is known not to be infective off skin and clothing
for more than a few minutes.  It may survive on clothing for up to 12
hours, but is only infective for around 30 minutes once it gets onto
clothing.  The infected humans were shedding live virus, and that is
obviously how the virus has spread to so many herds.
This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up and
are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify the infected
herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they have decided
to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off the dairies as
something that is killing people.  The stupid thing is that in order to
do this effectively they still need to identify the infected herds in
order to have the best chance of identifying patient zero that gets a
mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.
Ron Okimoto

A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers have
already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively not
trying to identify all the infected herds.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html

The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about because
infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not human to human,
but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of the dairy workers, nor
test them and their contacts. This fact just means that they have
refused to do the work needed to know that they are wrong. They have
known from day one that the other herds and poultry flocks did not get
infected from virus on clothing or skin of dairy workers or their
contacts, and had even proposed the laughable excuse that the poultry
farm could have been infected by an exchange of equipment. Who would
exchange equipment between a dairy farm and a 2 million bird layer
facility? The most likely scenario has always been that people took the
virus to the other herds and poultry farms, and they were likely
infected and shedding virus. They knew from day one that Kansas and
South Dakota had not gotten cattle, but they refused to do dairy worker
contact tracing. The sequence indicates that someone took the virus to
Kansas from Texas, and then from Kansas to South Dakota. Does anyone
believe that they were exchanging equipment between those states? It
looks like they have done it on purpose, but it is likely just denial
and stupidity related to politics.

A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health department
wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to determine how many
have been infected. They should also test the contacts of the positive
dairy workers that they will be identifying. They should also do
contact tracing so that they can identify more infected herds in
Michigan. More and more herds Michgan herds are being identified every
week, and there are probably a lot more that they don't know about since
they were in denial of how the virus was spreading between herds. It is
pretty much a fact that the CDC would know how all the other herds and
poultry flocks got infected if they had just instituted testing and
contact tracing two months ago. There are obviously a lot more states
and a lot more infected herds than we currently have identified, and all
of them are infecting dairy workers, and likely the dairy worker contacts.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by RonO

Post by vallor

Post by *Hemidactylus*

Post by RonO
The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning
for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu.
  The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the
virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first detections
that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and
contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to other
dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing
results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between
herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for
around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but
we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to
be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus
survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected
by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans likely
took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human cases were
shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the very
beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it.  They
claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers,
so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these red
eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, and they
are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact
tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks
got infected.
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid.  The FDA
tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that came
from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with
H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the
food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When the FDA
finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds
were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed
some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have predicted
the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
also shown flu virus in the waste water.
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have
mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently
tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
high mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza
virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided
to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It
doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to do that
you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently
being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts.
  The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states
with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track down the
dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the counties with
positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that
has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites
are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the
contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected
herds in states that are already known to have infected herds.  Once
they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor
those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading
and becoming a pandemic.

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal aliens
and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy owners
were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks that
were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a half
million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
the state.
So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites
around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are
testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that
patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
anyone notices.
One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could
probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My take is
that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
environment around them by sneezing and coughing.
Ron Okimoto

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/
Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk: Study
Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your info...)
(I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)
The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution.
When
the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
_observed fact_ of evolution.

Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has not
started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites around the
bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste water, as high
as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It looks like the bay
area is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but no one wants to check.
Several of those counties have issued warnings not to drink raw milk,
but they don't want to verify that they have the issue for some stupid
reason.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by
H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known that the
virus in raw milk could infect cats.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows
The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm
The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples 10
days after they released the fact that they had found the positive
samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as long as you
didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have contributed to the delay
in identifying all the infected herds.
https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai
The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings and
testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples.  Both
claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but that
obviously is not working.
The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds because
of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be relying on
self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy herds in the
positive waste water counties.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy herds
even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and the waste
water data identifies even more, and it identifies some of the
counties that they should be checking.  Not only that, but the waste
water data and positive milk data overlap and identify the counties
that they should check in the positive milk states.
They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the infected
herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though the
symptoms were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more chance
of the virus evolving into something much worse.  It looks like the
USDA and CDC went into denial due to politics and being burned during
Covid.  It is crazy that they have been in denial that humans took the
virus to other dairy herds and the poultry farms.  How else has the
virus spread to states that never got cattle, and then infected
poultry farms in those states?  Kansas and South Dakota never got
cattle from Texas, but it looks like Kansas was infected and then the
infection spread from Kansas to South Dakota even though South Dakota
did not get cattle from Texas nor Kansas.  Infected people obviously
took the virus to those states.  Influenza is known not to be
infective off skin and clothing for more than a few minutes.  It may
survive on clothing for up to 12 hours, but is only infective for
around 30 minutes once it gets onto clothing.  The infected humans
were shedding live virus, and that is obviously how the virus has
spread to so many herds.
This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up
and are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify the
infected herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they
have decided to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off
the dairies as something that is killing people.  The stupid thing is
that in order to do this effectively they still need to identify the
infected herds in order to have the best chance of identifying patient
zero that gets a mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.
Ron Okimoto

A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers have
already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively not
trying to identify all the infected herds.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html
The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about because
infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not human to human,
but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of the dairy workers, nor
test them and their contacts.  This fact just means that they have
refused to do the work needed to know that they are wrong.  They have
known from day one that the other herds and poultry flocks did not get
infected from virus on clothing or skin of dairy workers or their
contacts, and had even proposed the laughable excuse that the poultry
farm could have been infected by an exchange of equipment.  Who would
exchange equipment between a dairy farm and a 2 million bird layer
facility?  The most likely scenario has always been that people took the
virus to the other herds and poultry farms, and they were likely
infected and shedding virus.  They knew from day one that Kansas and
South Dakota had not gotten cattle, but they refused to do dairy worker
contact tracing.  The sequence indicates that someone took the virus to
Kansas from Texas, and then from Kansas to South Dakota.  Does anyone
believe that they were exchanging equipment between those states?  It
looks like they have done it on purpose, but it is likely just denial
and stupidity related to politics.
A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health department
wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to determine how many
have been infected.  They should also test the contacts of the positive
dairy workers that they will be identifying.  They should also do
contact tracing so that they can identify more infected herds in
Michigan.  More and more herds Michgan herds are being identified every
week, and there are probably a lot more that they don't know about since
they were in denial of how the virus was spreading between herds.  It is
pretty much a fact that the CDC would know how all the other herds and
poultry flocks got infected if they had just instituted testing and
contact tracing two months ago.  There are obviously a lot more states
and a lot more infected herds than we currently have identified, and all
of them are infecting dairy workers, and likely the dairy worker contacts.
Ron Okimoto

A vaccine manufaturer has announced that it has been tasked to produce 5
million H5 antigen flu vaccines for this summer. They likely need them now.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-06-03/u-s-will-make-millions-of-bird-flu-vaccines-this-summer

There have already been recommendations that they start to vaccinate
dairy workers. It is obvious that they are getting infected, and the
last case had respiratory symptoms and was more easily spreading the
virus into the environment than the previous eye infections. The CDC is
still in denial even though they are only monitoring some of the
infected herds in Texas and Michigan. The dairy workers are likely
getting infected in all the states that have infected herds, but there
is still no movement by the USDA and CDC to identify all the infected
herds and dairy workers. Both are continuing to rely on "self
reporting", and there is no doubt that, that is not working. This is
really not the way to prevent the next pandemic.

The Michigan health department wants to do antibody testing for the H5
antigen among the dairy workers so that they can get a handle on how
many have been infected and no longer are showing symptoms. That should
likely be done in both states (Texas and Michigan) that the CDC has
bothered to monitor. 9 states currently are known to have infected
herds, and the actual number is likely twice that if not more.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by vallor

Post by *Hemidactylus*

Post by RonO
The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning
for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu.
  The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the
virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first detections
that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and
contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to other
dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing
results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between
herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for
around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but
we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to
be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus
survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected
by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans likely
took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human cases were
shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the very
beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it.  They
claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers,
so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these red
eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, and they
are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact
tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks
got infected.
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid.
The FDA
tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that came
from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with
H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the
food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When the FDA
finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds
were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed
some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have predicted
the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
also shown flu virus in the waste water.
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have
mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently
tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
high mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza
virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided
to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It
doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to do that
you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently
being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts.
  The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states
with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track down the
dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the counties with
positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that
has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites
are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the
contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected
herds in states that are already known to have infected herds.  Once
they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor
those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading
and becoming a pandemic.

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal aliens
and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy owners
were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks that
were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a half
million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
the state.
So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites
around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are
testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that
patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
anyone notices.
One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could
probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My take is
that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
environment around them by sneezing and coughing.
Ron Okimoto

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/
Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk: Study
Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your info...)
(I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)
The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution.
When
the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
_observed fact_ of evolution.

Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has not
started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites around
the bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste water, as
high as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It looks like
the bay area is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but no one wants
to check. Several of those counties have issued warnings not to drink
raw milk, but they don't want to verify that they have the issue for
some stupid reason.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by
H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known that
the virus in raw milk could infect cats.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows
The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm
The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples
10 days after they released the fact that they had found the positive
samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as long as you
didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have contributed to the
delay in identifying all the infected herds.
https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai
The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings
and testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples.
Both claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but
that obviously is not working.
The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds
because of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be
relying on self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy
herds in the positive waste water counties.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy herds
even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and the waste
water data identifies even more, and it identifies some of the
counties that they should be checking.  Not only that, but the waste
water data and positive milk data overlap and identify the counties
that they should check in the positive milk states.
They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the
infected herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though
the symptoms were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more
chance of the virus evolving into something much worse.  It looks
like the USDA and CDC went into denial due to politics and being
burned during Covid.  It is crazy that they have been in denial that
humans took the virus to other dairy herds and the poultry farms.
How else has the virus spread to states that never got cattle, and
then infected poultry farms in those states?  Kansas and South Dakota
never got cattle from Texas, but it looks like Kansas was infected
and then the infection spread from Kansas to South Dakota even though
South Dakota did not get cattle from Texas nor Kansas.  Infected
people obviously took the virus to those states.  Influenza is known
not to be infective off skin and clothing for more than a few
minutes.  It may survive on clothing for up to 12 hours, but is only
infective for around 30 minutes once it gets onto clothing.  The
infected humans were shedding live virus, and that is obviously how
the virus has spread to so many herds.
This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up
and are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify the
infected herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they
have decided to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off
the dairies as something that is killing people.  The stupid thing is
that in order to do this effectively they still need to identify the
infected herds in order to have the best chance of identifying
patient zero that gets a mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.
Ron Okimoto

A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers have
already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively not
trying to identify all the infected herds.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html
The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about because
infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not human to human,
but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of the dairy workers,
nor test them and their contacts.  This fact just means that they have
refused to do the work needed to know that they are wrong.  They have
known from day one that the other herds and poultry flocks did not get
infected from virus on clothing or skin of dairy workers or their
contacts, and had even proposed the laughable excuse that the poultry
farm could have been infected by an exchange of equipment.  Who would
exchange equipment between a dairy farm and a 2 million bird layer
facility?  The most likely scenario has always been that people took
the virus to the other herds and poultry farms, and they were likely
infected and shedding virus.  They knew from day one that Kansas and
South Dakota had not gotten cattle, but they refused to do dairy
worker contact tracing.  The sequence indicates that someone took the
virus to Kansas from Texas, and then from Kansas to South Dakota.
Does anyone believe that they were exchanging equipment between those
states?  It looks like they have done it on purpose, but it is likely
just denial and stupidity related to politics.
A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health
department wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to
determine how many have been infected.  They should also test the
contacts of the positive dairy workers that they will be identifying.
They should also do contact tracing so that they can identify more
infected herds in Michigan.  More and more herds Michgan herds are
being identified every week, and there are probably a lot more that
they don't know about since they were in denial of how the virus was
spreading between herds.  It is pretty much a fact that the CDC would
know how all the other herds and poultry flocks got infected if they
had just instituted testing and contact tracing two months ago.  There
are obviously a lot more states and a lot more infected herds than we
currently have identified, and all of them are infecting dairy
workers, and likely the dairy worker contacts.
Ron Okimoto

A vaccine manufaturer has announced that it has been tasked to produce 5
million H5 antigen flu vaccines for this summer.  They likely need them
now.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-06-03/u-s-will-make-millions-of-bird-flu-vaccines-this-summer
There have already been recommendations that they start to vaccinate
dairy workers.  It is obvious that they are getting infected, and the
last case had respiratory symptoms and was more easily spreading the
virus into the environment than the previous eye infections.  The CDC is
still in denial even though they are only monitoring some of the
infected herds in Texas and Michigan.  The dairy workers are likely
getting infected in all the states that have infected herds, but there
is still no movement by the USDA and CDC to identify all the infected
herds and dairy workers.  Both are continuing to rely on "self
reporting", and there is no doubt that, that is not working.  This is
really not the way to prevent the next pandemic.
The Michigan health department wants to do antibody testing for the H5
antigen among the dairy workers so that they can get a handle on how
many have been infected and no longer are showing symptoms.  That should
likely be done in both states (Texas and Michigan) that the CDC has
bothered to monitor.  9 states currently are known to have infected
herds, and the  actual number is likely twice that if not more.
Ron Okimoto

It should be noted that this is a recombinant virus. When the Eurasian
strain of H5N1 got into North America it recombined with a North
American strain of avian influenza. It isn't fully the Eurasian virus
that has a 50% mortality rate among infected humans. At least 4 humans
have been infected by the dairy H5N1 (the first before it was a dairy
virus) and they have all had mild symptoms. The fear is that it will
mutate or recombine again with a human influenza A and become more
infective with more severe symptoms.

They really want to keep this virus off of pig farms because a swine
influenza recombinant could be more deadly to humans. The sad fact is
that by not identifying and quarantining the infected dairy herds they
are just making it more possible to transfer the virus to pig farms.
They already know that humans are likely taking it to poultry farms, so
they need to identify all the infected dairies and make sure that the
workers and their contacts do not go to other farms. At this time the
CDC and USDA are still only "recommending" that dairy workers at
infected farms and their contacts do not go to other farms. They should
make it more than a recommendation.

The dairy virus has the HA and NA (H5N1) antigen genes of the Eurasian
virus. It also has the PA and M gene segments (sort of RNA chromosomes)
of the Eurasian H5N1. The PB1, PB2, NP and NS gene segments are from
another wild bird influenza virus. In the news the HA clade 2.3.4.4b
HPAI A(H5N1) name is used. This is it's H5 gene clade designation, but
it is genotype (full genome) B3.13 of that clade.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-analysis-texas.htm

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by vallor

Post by *Hemidactylus*

Post by RonO
The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning
for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu.
  The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the
virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first detections
that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and
contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to other
dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing
results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between
herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for
around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but
we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to
be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus
survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected
by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans likely
took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human cases were
shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the very
beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it.  They
claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers,
so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these red
eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, and they
are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact
tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks
got infected.
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid.
The FDA
tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that came
from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with
H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the
food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When the FDA
finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds
were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed
some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have predicted
the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
also shown flu virus in the waste water.
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have
mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently
tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
high mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza
virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided
to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It
doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to do that
you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently
being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts.
  The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states
with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track down the
dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the counties with
positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that
has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites
are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the
contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected
herds in states that are already known to have infected herds.
Once
they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor
those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading
and becoming a pandemic.

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal aliens
and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy owners
were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks that
were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a half
million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
the state.
So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites
around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are
testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that
patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
anyone notices.
One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could
probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My take is
that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
environment around them by sneezing and coughing.
Ron Okimoto

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/
Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk: Study
Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your info...)
(I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)
The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution.
When
the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
_observed fact_ of evolution.

Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has not
started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites around
the bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste water, as
high as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It looks like
the bay area is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but no one wants
to check. Several of those counties have issued warnings not to
drink raw milk, but they don't want to verify that they have the
issue for some stupid reason.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by
H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known that
the virus in raw milk could infect cats.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows
The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm
The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples
10 days after they released the fact that they had found the
positive samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as
long as you didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have
contributed to the delay in identifying all the infected herds.
https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai
The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings
and testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples.
Both claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but
that obviously is not working.
The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds
because of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be
relying on self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy
herds in the positive waste water counties.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy herds
even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and the
waste water data identifies even more, and it identifies some of the
counties that they should be checking.  Not only that, but the waste
water data and positive milk data overlap and identify the counties
that they should check in the positive milk states.
They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the
infected herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though
the symptoms were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more
chance of the virus evolving into something much worse.  It looks
like the USDA and CDC went into denial due to politics and being
burned during Covid.  It is crazy that they have been in denial that
humans took the virus to other dairy herds and the poultry farms.
How else has the virus spread to states that never got cattle, and
then infected poultry farms in those states?  Kansas and South
Dakota never got cattle from Texas, but it looks like Kansas was
infected and then the infection spread from Kansas to South Dakota
even though South Dakota did not get cattle from Texas nor Kansas.
Infected people obviously took the virus to those states.  Influenza
is known not to be infective off skin and clothing for more than a
few minutes.  It may survive on clothing for up to 12 hours, but is
only infective for around 30 minutes once it gets onto clothing.
The infected humans were shedding live virus, and that is obviously
how the virus has spread to so many herds.
This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up
and are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify the
infected herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they
have decided to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off
the dairies as something that is killing people.  The stupid thing
is that in order to do this effectively they still need to identify
the infected herds in order to have the best chance of identifying
patient zero that gets a mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.
Ron Okimoto

A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers have
already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively not
trying to identify all the infected herds.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html
The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about
because infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not human
to human, but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of the dairy
workers, nor test them and their contacts.  This fact just means that
they have refused to do the work needed to know that they are wrong.
They have known from day one that the other herds and poultry flocks
did not get infected from virus on clothing or skin of dairy workers
or their contacts, and had even proposed the laughable excuse that
the poultry farm could have been infected by an exchange of
equipment.  Who would exchange equipment between a dairy farm and a 2
million bird layer facility?  The most likely scenario has always
been that people took the virus to the other herds and poultry farms,
and they were likely infected and shedding virus.  They knew from day
one that Kansas and South Dakota had not gotten cattle, but they
refused to do dairy worker contact tracing.  The sequence indicates
that someone took the virus to Kansas from Texas, and then from
Kansas to South Dakota. Does anyone believe that they were exchanging
equipment between those states?  It looks like they have done it on
purpose, but it is likely just denial and stupidity related to politics.
A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health
department wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to
determine how many have been infected.  They should also test the
contacts of the positive dairy workers that they will be identifying.
They should also do contact tracing so that they can identify more
infected herds in Michigan.  More and more herds Michgan herds are
being identified every week, and there are probably a lot more that
they don't know about since they were in denial of how the virus was
spreading between herds.  It is pretty much a fact that the CDC would
know how all the other herds and poultry flocks got infected if they
had just instituted testing and contact tracing two months ago.
There are obviously a lot more states and a lot more infected herds
than we currently have identified, and all of them are infecting
dairy workers, and likely the dairy worker contacts.
Ron Okimoto

A vaccine manufaturer has announced that it has been tasked to produce
5 million H5 antigen flu vaccines for this summer.  They likely need
them now.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-06-03/u-s-will-make-millions-of-bird-flu-vaccines-this-summer
There have already been recommendations that they start to vaccinate
dairy workers.  It is obvious that they are getting infected, and the
last case had respiratory symptoms and was more easily spreading the
virus into the environment than the previous eye infections.  The CDC
is still in denial even though they are only monitoring some of the
infected herds in Texas and Michigan.  The dairy workers are likely
getting infected in all the states that have infected herds, but there
is still no movement by the USDA and CDC to identify all the infected
herds and dairy workers.  Both are continuing to rely on "self
reporting", and there is no doubt that, that is not working.  This is
really not the way to prevent the next pandemic.
The Michigan health department wants to do antibody testing for the H5
antigen among the dairy workers so that they can get a handle on how
many have been infected and no longer are showing symptoms.  That
should likely be done in both states (Texas and Michigan) that the CDC
has bothered to monitor.  9 states currently are known to have
infected herds, and the  actual number is likely twice that if not more.
Ron Okimoto

It should be noted that this is a recombinant virus.  When the Eurasian
strain of H5N1 got into North America it recombined with a North
American strain of avian influenza.  It isn't fully the Eurasian virus
that has a 50% mortality rate among infected humans.  At least 4 humans
have been infected by the dairy H5N1 (the first before it was a dairy
virus) and they have all had mild symptoms.  The fear is that it will
mutate or recombine again with a human influenza A and become more
infective with more severe symptoms.
They really want to keep this virus off of pig farms because a swine
influenza recombinant could be more deadly to humans.  The sad fact is
that by not identifying and quarantining the infected dairy herds they
are just making it more possible to transfer the virus to pig farms.
They already know that humans are likely taking it to poultry farms, so
they need to identify all the infected dairies and make sure that the
workers and their contacts do not go to other farms.  At this time the
CDC and USDA are still only "recommending" that dairy workers at
infected farms and their contacts do not go to other farms.  They should
make it more than a recommendation.
The dairy virus has the HA and NA (H5N1) antigen genes of the Eurasian
virus.  It also has the PA and M gene segments (sort of RNA chromosomes)
of the Eurasian H5N1.  The PB1, PB2, NP and NS gene segments are from
another wild bird influenza virus.  In the news the HA clade 2.3.4.4b
HPAI A(H5N1) name is used.  This is it's H5 gene clade designation, but
it is genotype (full genome) B3.13 of that clade.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-analysis-texas.htm
Ron Okimoto

Deborah Birx is claiming that we are making the same mistakes with the
dairy flu as we did with Covid. She claims that we should be testing
every cow and every dairy worker. I agree with her. They know that
there are a lot more states with positive herds than have come forward,
and they know that there are a lot more postive herds in the states that
already know they have positive herds because we keep identifying more
every week, and we aren't even trying to find them. They likely
understand by now that it was infected humans that took the virus to
these other states and herds, so they really do need to start testing
all the dairy workers if they want to have a chance at limiting the
spread, but they should have started doing it 2 months ago.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/04/health/video/dr-deborah-birx-interview-pandemic-preparedness-transparent-communication-digvid

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by vallor

Post by *Hemidactylus*

Post by RonO
The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning
for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu.
  The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the
virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first detections
that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and
contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to other
dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing
results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between
herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for
around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on
clothing, but
we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to
be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus
survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected
by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans likely
took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human cases were
shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the very
beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it.
They
claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers,
so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these red
eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, and they
are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact
tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks
got infected.
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid.
The FDA
tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that came
from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with
H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the
food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When the FDA
finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds
were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed
some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have predicted
the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
also shown flu virus in the waste water.
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have
mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently
tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
high mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza
virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided
to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It
doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to do that
you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently
being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts.
  The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states
with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track down the
dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the counties with
positive waste water (these include multiple sites in
California that
has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites
are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the
contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected
herds in states that are already known to have infected herds.
Once
they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor
those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading
and becoming a pandemic.

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal aliens
and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy owners
were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks that
were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a half
million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
the state.
So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites
around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are
testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that
patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
anyone notices.
One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could
probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My take is
that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
environment around them by sneezing and coughing.
Ron Okimoto

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/
Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk: Study
Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your info...)
(I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)
The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of
evolution. When
the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
_observed fact_ of evolution.

Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has
not started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites
around the bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste
water, as high as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It
looks like the bay area is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but
no one wants to check. Several of those counties have issued
warnings not to drink raw milk, but they don't want to verify that
they have the issue for some stupid reason.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by
H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known that
the virus in raw milk could infect cats.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows
The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm
The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples
10 days after they released the fact that they had found the
positive samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as
long as you didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have
contributed to the delay in identifying all the infected herds.
https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai
The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings
and testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples.
Both claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but
that obviously is not working.
The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds
because of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be
relying on self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy
herds in the positive waste water counties.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy
herds even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and
the waste water data identifies even more, and it identifies some
of the counties that they should be checking.  Not only that, but
the waste water data and positive milk data overlap and identify
the counties that they should check in the positive milk states.
They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the
infected herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though
the symptoms were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more
chance of the virus evolving into something much worse.  It looks
like the USDA and CDC went into denial due to politics and being
burned during Covid.  It is crazy that they have been in denial
that humans took the virus to other dairy herds and the poultry
farms. How else has the virus spread to states that never got
cattle, and then infected poultry farms in those states?  Kansas
and South Dakota never got cattle from Texas, but it looks like
Kansas was infected and then the infection spread from Kansas to
South Dakota even though South Dakota did not get cattle from Texas
nor Kansas. Infected people obviously took the virus to those
states.  Influenza is known not to be infective off skin and
clothing for more than a few minutes.  It may survive on clothing
for up to 12 hours, but is only infective for around 30 minutes
once it gets onto clothing. The infected humans were shedding live
virus, and that is obviously how the virus has spread to so many
herds.
This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up
and are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify the
infected herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they
have decided to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off
the dairies as something that is killing people.  The stupid thing
is that in order to do this effectively they still need to identify
the infected herds in order to have the best chance of identifying
patient zero that gets a mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.
Ron Okimoto

A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers
have already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively
not trying to identify all the infected herds.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html
The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about
because infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not human
to human, but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of the dairy
workers, nor test them and their contacts.  This fact just means
that they have refused to do the work needed to know that they are
wrong. They have known from day one that the other herds and poultry
flocks did not get infected from virus on clothing or skin of dairy
workers or their contacts, and had even proposed the laughable
excuse that the poultry farm could have been infected by an exchange
of equipment.  Who would exchange equipment between a dairy farm and
a 2 million bird layer facility?  The most likely scenario has
always been that people took the virus to the other herds and
poultry farms, and they were likely infected and shedding virus.
They knew from day one that Kansas and South Dakota had not gotten
cattle, but they refused to do dairy worker contact tracing.  The
sequence indicates that someone took the virus to Kansas from Texas,
and then from Kansas to South Dakota. Does anyone believe that they
were exchanging equipment between those states?  It looks like they
have done it on purpose, but it is likely just denial and stupidity
related to politics.
A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health
department wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to
determine how many have been infected.  They should also test the
contacts of the positive dairy workers that they will be
identifying. They should also do contact tracing so that they can
identify more infected herds in Michigan.  More and more herds
Michgan herds are being identified every week, and there are
probably a lot more that they don't know about since they were in
denial of how the virus was spreading between herds.  It is pretty
much a fact that the CDC would know how all the other herds and
poultry flocks got infected if they had just instituted testing and
contact tracing two months ago. There are obviously a lot more
states and a lot more infected herds than we currently have
identified, and all of them are infecting dairy workers, and likely
the dairy worker contacts.
Ron Okimoto

A vaccine manufaturer has announced that it has been tasked to
produce 5 million H5 antigen flu vaccines for this summer.  They
likely need them now.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-06-03/u-s-will-make-millions-of-bird-flu-vaccines-this-summer
There have already been recommendations that they start to vaccinate
dairy workers.  It is obvious that they are getting infected, and the
last case had respiratory symptoms and was more easily spreading the
virus into the environment than the previous eye infections.  The CDC
is still in denial even though they are only monitoring some of the
infected herds in Texas and Michigan.  The dairy workers are likely
getting infected in all the states that have infected herds, but
there is still no movement by the USDA and CDC to identify all the
infected herds and dairy workers.  Both are continuing to rely on
"self reporting", and there is no doubt that, that is not working.
This is really not the way to prevent the next pandemic.
The Michigan health department wants to do antibody testing for the
H5 antigen among the dairy workers so that they can get a handle on
how many have been infected and no longer are showing symptoms.  That
should likely be done in both states (Texas and Michigan) that the
CDC has bothered to monitor.  9 states currently are known to have
infected herds, and the  actual number is likely twice that if not more.
Ron Okimoto

It should be noted that this is a recombinant virus.  When the
Eurasian strain of H5N1 got into North America it recombined with a
North American strain of avian influenza.  It isn't fully the Eurasian
virus that has a 50% mortality rate among infected humans.  At least 4
humans have been infected by the dairy H5N1 (the first before it was a
dairy virus) and they have all had mild symptoms.  The fear is that it
will mutate or recombine again with a human influenza A and become
more infective with more severe symptoms.
They really want to keep this virus off of pig farms because a swine
influenza recombinant could be more deadly to humans.  The sad fact is
that by not identifying and quarantining the infected dairy herds they
are just making it more possible to transfer the virus to pig farms.
They already know that humans are likely taking it to poultry farms,
so they need to identify all the infected dairies and make sure that
the workers and their contacts do not go to other farms.  At this time
the CDC and USDA are still only "recommending" that dairy workers at
infected farms and their contacts do not go to other farms.  They
should make it more than a recommendation.
The dairy virus has the HA and NA (H5N1) antigen genes of the Eurasian
virus.  It also has the PA and M gene segments (sort of RNA
chromosomes) of the Eurasian H5N1.  The PB1, PB2, NP and NS gene
segments are from another wild bird influenza virus.  In the news the
HA clade 2.3.4.4b HPAI A(H5N1) name is used.  This is it's H5 gene
clade designation, but it is genotype (full genome) B3.13 of that clade.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-analysis-texas.htm
Ron Okimoto

Deborah Birx is claiming that we are making the same mistakes with the
dairy flu as we did with Covid.  She claims that we should be testing
every cow and every dairy worker.  I agree with her.  They know that
there are a lot more states with positive herds than have come forward,
and they know that there are a lot more postive herds in the states that
already know they have positive herds because we keep identifying more
every week, and we aren't even trying to find them.  They likely
understand by now that it was infected humans that took the virus to
these other states and herds, so they really do need to start testing
all the dairy workers if they want to have a chance at limiting the
spread, but they should have started doing it 2 months ago.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/04/health/video/dr-deborah-birx-interview-pandemic-preparedness-transparent-communication-digvid
Ron Okimoto

An H5N2 avian influenza has killed a person in Mexico. It sounds like a
recombinant with the Eurasian H5N1. H5 has been showing up in wild bird
influenza isolates since 2022 when the Eurasian H5N1 migrated into North
America. The Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant, but retains the two main
antigen designations for the Eurasian strain. The WHO citation notes
that there is also an H5N3 and H5N8 circulating. There are two H5N2
variants circulating in Mexico. One is High Path AI (HPAI) and the
other is low path. The Dairy H5N1 is HPAI. This just means that it is
highly pathological and kills poultry. Low path has a much lower
mortality rate, and can circulate in wild birds and poultry. They don't
know if it is the H5N2 HPAI or the low path that infected the Mexican
patient. They do not know how this person got the virus. He had no
exposure to poultry or other animals.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2024-DON520#:~:text=On%2023%20May%202024%2C%20the,was%20hospitalized%20in%20Mexico%20City.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by vallor

Post by *Hemidactylus*

Post by RonO
The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning
for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu.
  The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the
virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first detections
that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and
contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to other
dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing
results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between
herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for
around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but
we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to
be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus
survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected
by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans likely
took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human cases were
shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the very
beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it.
They
claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers,
so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these red
eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, and they
are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact
tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks
got infected.
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid.
The FDA
tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that came
from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with
H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the
food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When the FDA
finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds
were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed
some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have predicted
the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
also shown flu virus in the waste water.
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have
mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently
tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
high mortality because the virus infected their brains.
Influenza
virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided
to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It
doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to do that
you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently
being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts.
  The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states
with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track down the
dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the counties with
positive waste water (these include multiple sites in
California that
has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites
are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the
contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected
herds in states that are already known to have infected herds.
Once
they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor
those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading
and becoming a pandemic.

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal aliens
and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy owners
were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks that
were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a half
million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
the state.
So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites
around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are
testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that
patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
anyone notices.
One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could
probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My take is
that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
environment around them by sneezing and coughing.
Ron Okimoto

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/
Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk: Study
Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your info...)
(I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)
The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of
evolution. When
the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
_observed fact_ of evolution.

Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has
not started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites
around the bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste
water, as high as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It
looks like the bay area is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but
no one wants to check. Several of those counties have issued
warnings not to drink raw milk, but they don't want to verify that
they have the issue for some stupid reason.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected
by H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known
that the virus in raw milk could infect cats.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows
The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm
The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk
samples 10 days after they released the fact that they had found
the positive samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so
as long as you didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have
contributed to the delay in identifying all the infected herds.
https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai
The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings
and testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk
samples. Both claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self
report, but that obviously is not working.
The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds
because of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be
relying on self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy
herds in the positive waste water counties.
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html
They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy
herds even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and
the waste water data identifies even more, and it identifies some
of the counties that they should be checking.  Not only that, but
the waste water data and positive milk data overlap and identify
the counties that they should check in the positive milk states.
They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the
infected herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and
though the symptoms were mild the more cattle and humans infected
the more chance of the virus evolving into something much worse.
It looks like the USDA and CDC went into denial due to politics
and being burned during Covid.  It is crazy that they have been in
denial that humans took the virus to other dairy herds and the
poultry farms. How else has the virus spread to states that never
got cattle, and then infected poultry farms in those states?
Kansas and South Dakota never got cattle from Texas, but it looks
like Kansas was infected and then the infection spread from Kansas
to South Dakota even though South Dakota did not get cattle from
Texas nor Kansas. Infected people obviously took the virus to
those states.  Influenza is known not to be infective off skin and
clothing for more than a few minutes.  It may survive on clothing
for up to 12 hours, but is only infective for around 30 minutes
once it gets onto clothing. The infected humans were shedding live
virus, and that is obviously how the virus has spread to so many
herds.
This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given
up and are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify
the infected herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but
they have decided to try to contain the influenza after it has
moved off the dairies as something that is killing people.  The
stupid thing is that in order to do this effectively they still
need to identify the infected herds in order to have the best
chance of identifying patient zero that gets a mutated virus from
a cow or dairy worker.
Ron Okimoto

A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers
have already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively
not trying to identify all the infected herds.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html
The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about
because infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not
human to human, but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of
the dairy workers, nor test them and their contacts.  This fact
just means that they have refused to do the work needed to know
that they are wrong. They have known from day one that the other
herds and poultry flocks did not get infected from virus on
clothing or skin of dairy workers or their contacts, and had even
proposed the laughable excuse that the poultry farm could have been
infected by an exchange of equipment.  Who would exchange equipment
between a dairy farm and a 2 million bird layer facility?  The most
likely scenario has always been that people took the virus to the
other herds and poultry farms, and they were likely infected and
shedding virus. They knew from day one that Kansas and South Dakota
had not gotten cattle, but they refused to do dairy worker contact
tracing.  The sequence indicates that someone took the virus to
Kansas from Texas, and then from Kansas to South Dakota. Does
anyone believe that they were exchanging equipment between those
states?  It looks like they have done it on purpose, but it is
likely just denial and stupidity related to politics.
A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health
department wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to
determine how many have been infected.  They should also test the
contacts of the positive dairy workers that they will be
identifying. They should also do contact tracing so that they can
identify more infected herds in Michigan.  More and more herds
Michgan herds are being identified every week, and there are
probably a lot more that they don't know about since they were in
denial of how the virus was spreading between herds.  It is pretty
much a fact that the CDC would know how all the other herds and
poultry flocks got infected if they had just instituted testing and
contact tracing two months ago. There are obviously a lot more
states and a lot more infected herds than we currently have
identified, and all of them are infecting dairy workers, and likely
the dairy worker contacts.
Ron Okimoto

A vaccine manufaturer has announced that it has been tasked to
produce 5 million H5 antigen flu vaccines for this summer.  They
likely need them now.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-06-03/u-s-will-make-millions-of-bird-flu-vaccines-this-summer
There have already been recommendations that they start to vaccinate
dairy workers.  It is obvious that they are getting infected, and
the last case had respiratory symptoms and was more easily spreading
the virus into the environment than the previous eye infections.
The CDC is still in denial even though they are only monitoring some
of the infected herds in Texas and Michigan.  The dairy workers are
likely getting infected in all the states that have infected herds,
but there is still no movement by the USDA and CDC to identify all
the infected herds and dairy workers.  Both are continuing to rely
on "self reporting", and there is no doubt that, that is not
working. This is really not the way to prevent the next pandemic.
The Michigan health department wants to do antibody testing for the
H5 antigen among the dairy workers so that they can get a handle on
how many have been infected and no longer are showing symptoms.
That should likely be done in both states (Texas and Michigan) that
the CDC has bothered to monitor.  9 states currently are known to
have infected herds, and the  actual number is likely twice that if
not more.
Ron Okimoto

It should be noted that this is a recombinant virus.  When the
Eurasian strain of H5N1 got into North America it recombined with a
North American strain of avian influenza.  It isn't fully the
Eurasian virus that has a 50% mortality rate among infected humans.
At least 4 humans have been infected by the dairy H5N1 (the first
before it was a dairy virus) and they have all had mild symptoms.
The fear is that it will mutate or recombine again with a human
influenza A and become more infective with more severe symptoms.
They really want to keep this virus off of pig farms because a swine
influenza recombinant could be more deadly to humans.  The sad fact
is that by not identifying and quarantining the infected dairy herds
they are just making it more possible to transfer the virus to pig
farms. They already know that humans are likely taking it to poultry
farms, so they need to identify all the infected dairies and make
sure that the workers and their contacts do not go to other farms.
At this time the CDC and USDA are still only "recommending" that
dairy workers at infected farms and their contacts do not go to other
farms.  They should make it more than a recommendation.
The dairy virus has the HA and NA (H5N1) antigen genes of the
Eurasian virus.  It also has the PA and M gene segments (sort of RNA
chromosomes) of the Eurasian H5N1.  The PB1, PB2, NP and NS gene
segments are from another wild bird influenza virus.  In the news the
HA clade 2.3.4.4b HPAI A(H5N1) name is used.  This is it's H5 gene
clade designation, but it is genotype (full genome) B3.13 of that clade.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-analysis-texas.htm
Ron Okimoto

Deborah Birx is claiming that we are making the same mistakes with the
dairy flu as we did with Covid.  She claims that we should be testing
every cow and every dairy worker.  I agree with her.  They know that
there are a lot more states with positive herds than have come
forward, and they know that there are a lot more postive herds in the
states that already know they have positive herds because we keep
identifying more every week, and we aren't even trying to find them.
They likely understand by now that it was infected humans that took
the virus to these other states and herds, so they really do need to
start testing all the dairy workers if they want to have a chance at
limiting the spread, but they should have started doing it 2 months ago.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/04/health/video/dr-deborah-birx-interview-pandemic-preparedness-transparent-communication-digvid
Ron Okimoto

An H5N2 avian influenza has killed a person in Mexico.  It sounds like a
recombinant with the Eurasian H5N1.  H5 has been showing up in wild bird
influenza isolates since 2022 when the Eurasian H5N1 migrated into North
America.  The Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant, but retains the two main
antigen designations for the Eurasian strain.  The WHO citation notes
that there is also an H5N3 and H5N8 circulating.  There are two H5N2
variants circulating in Mexico.  One is High Path AI (HPAI) and the
other is low path.  The Dairy H5N1 is HPAI.  This just means that it is
highly pathological and kills poultry.  Low path has a much lower
mortality rate, and can circulate in wild birds and poultry.  They don't
know if it is the H5N2 HPAI or the low path that infected the Mexican
patient.  They do not know how this person got the virus.  He had no
exposure to poultry or other animals.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2024-DON520#:~:text=On%2023%20May%202024%2C%20the,was%20hospitalized%20in%20Mexico%20City.
Ron Okimoto

It is now coming out that dozens of cattle have died or been sent to
slaughter because they did not recover from the Dairy flu. Apparently,
5 states are claiming cattle mortality. This should be more incentive
to identify the infected herds so that the spread to more Dairy farms
can be dealt with more effectively than now. At the current time it is
only a recommendation that anyone that comes in contact with an infected
animal and their human contacts do not go to another farm, but it is
only a recommendation, and obviously doesn't apply to farms that refuse
to be tested so that they do not know they have infected animals. The
farms needed to be identified and quarantined months ago.

The same article claims that Minnesota and Iowa (two states with
positive dairy products identified by the FDA back in early May) have
come forward and admitted that they have positive dairy herds. 7 other
states were identified by the FDA as producing H5N1 positive dairy
products, but had not had any identified infected herds back in early
May. These states still do not claim to have infected herds. I should
also mention that poultry flocks in Iowa and Minnesota have been
infected by the dairy virus. Just like in the other states the dairy
flu has likely been spread by dairy workers and their contacts, but no
one wants to admit to that. People are spreading the virus to states
like Iowa and Minnesota that did not get cattle from Texas, and people
are spreading the virus to the poultry farms from the infected dairy farms.

The CDC updated their page June 6th, but did not include the Iowa and
Minnesota herds. The CDC and USDA need to start testing dairy herds in
the positive waste water counties. Florida is a prime example of a
state that should have their cattle tested. It is far from known
infected states, but the FDA found H5N1 in milk products produced by
Florida and it has high levels of influenza at some waste water
collection sites.

https://www.ntd.com/cows-with-bird-flu-have-died-in-5-us-states-officials_998183.html

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/

Scientific American has an opinion piece stating what I have been going
on about. For some stupid reason the USDA and CDC decided to rely on
"self reporting" instead of going in and testing the herds and states
that likely had infected herds. It has just allowed the virus to spread
to more dairy herds, and they have no idea of the extent of the
infection because the CDC chose to "monitor" only a few herds in two states.

It has been sad and the opinion piece notes that the poultry industry
has suffered because of it. When the price of poultry products start
going up it is the USDA's and CDC's fault for not acting as they should
have acted. You can't keep the avian flu off a poultry farm if changing
clothing and even showering in, as is required at some commercial
breeding facilities, when the worker is infected and shedding live
virus. For a poultry farm the infected flock is depopulated (killed
off) and poultry within a mile radius of the infected flock are also
disposed of. Several 2 million bird layer flocks have had to be
depopulated in several states, and they were infected by the dairy
cattle with a likely human intermediate.

They knew from day one that dairy workers were likely taking the virus
to other farms and infecting other herds, and poultry flocks, but they
only "recommended" that dairy workers and their contacts not go to other
farms if they have come into contact with infected cattle. The kicker
is that they refused to identify all the infected herds so most of the
dairy workers in contact with infected cattle were not under the
"recommendation". It has been sad and should never have unfolded as it has.

The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans
will be infected.

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

Post by RonO
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/
Scientific American has an opinion piece stating what I have been going
on about. For some stupid reason the USDA and CDC decided to rely on
"self reporting" instead of going in and testing the herds and states
that likely had infected herds. It has just allowed the virus to spread
to more dairy herds, and they have no idea of the extent of the
infection because the CDC chose to "monitor" only a few herds in two states.
It has been sad and the opinion piece notes that the poultry industry
has suffered because of it. When the price of poultry products start
going up it is the USDA's and CDC's fault for not acting as they should
have acted. You can't keep the avian flu off a poultry farm if changing
clothing and even showering in, as is required at some commercial
breeding facilities, when the worker is infected and shedding live
virus. For a poultry farm the infected flock is depopulated (killed
off) and poultry within a mile radius of the infected flock are also
disposed of. Several 2 million bird layer flocks have had to be
depopulated in several states, and they were infected by the dairy
cattle with a likely human intermediate.
They knew from day one that dairy workers were likely taking the virus
to other farms and infecting other herds, and poultry flocks, but they
only "recommended" that dairy workers and their contacts not go to other
farms if they have come into contact with infected cattle. The kicker
is that they refused to identify all the infected herds so most of the
dairy workers in contact with infected cattle were not under the
"recommendation". It has been sad and should never have unfolded as it has.
The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans
will be infected.
Ron Okimoto

I wonder if the current policies you mention above aren't consequences
of a lack of funding and a lack of political support, due to
conspiracies fallout from the Covid pandemic.

--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge

[RonO]

Post by jillery

Post by RonO
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/
Scientific American has an opinion piece stating what I have been going
on about. For some stupid reason the USDA and CDC decided to rely on
"self reporting" instead of going in and testing the herds and states
that likely had infected herds. It has just allowed the virus to spread
to more dairy herds, and they have no idea of the extent of the
infection because the CDC chose to "monitor" only a few herds in two states.
It has been sad and the opinion piece notes that the poultry industry
has suffered because of it. When the price of poultry products start
going up it is the USDA's and CDC's fault for not acting as they should
have acted. You can't keep the avian flu off a poultry farm if changing
clothing and even showering in, as is required at some commercial
breeding facilities, when the worker is infected and shedding live
virus. For a poultry farm the infected flock is depopulated (killed
off) and poultry within a mile radius of the infected flock are also
disposed of. Several 2 million bird layer flocks have had to be
depopulated in several states, and they were infected by the dairy
cattle with a likely human intermediate.
They knew from day one that dairy workers were likely taking the virus
to other farms and infecting other herds, and poultry flocks, but they
only "recommended" that dairy workers and their contacts not go to other
farms if they have come into contact with infected cattle. The kicker
is that they refused to identify all the infected herds so most of the
dairy workers in contact with infected cattle were not under the
"recommendation". It has been sad and should never have unfolded as it has.
The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans
will be infected.
Ron Okimoto

I wonder if the current policies you mention above aren't consequences
of a lack of funding and a lack of political support, due to
conspiracies fallout from the Covid pandemic.

The USDA was given 800 million to control the dairy outbreak, but both
the CDC and the USDA claimed that it was not their policy to require
testing, so neither ever attempted to determine the extent of the spread
of the virus, nor track dairy workers and their contacts. It is obvious
that most of the Dairies were infected by dairy workers or their
contacts going to those other farms. Early infections in states like
Kansas, New Mexico, and South Dakota all claimed that they had not
gotten any cattle from Texas, but herds in those states got infected.
They have had a very good idea that the infection was being spread by
humans, because of what is known about influenza survival on surfaces
like clothing and skin (it remains infectious for less than 30 minutes)
and remains infectious on hard surfaces like door nobs for up to 24
hours. The infected human was shedding live virus, and would have been
an obvious vector to take the virus to other farms. They have done
nothing but "recommend" that dairy workers and their contacts exposed to
infected cattle not go to other farms, but they never started a program
to identify all the infected herds so that the workers would know not to
go to other farms. They should have started testing and contact tracing
immediately, but they did not, and have not started. If they had
started contact tracing they would already have a good idea of how all
the herds got infected. Only one county in Michigan got infected cattle
from Texas, but now 9 counties have infected herds. People are the
obvious vector. 2 people have been confirmed to have been infected in
Michigan, and there have likely been a lot more. They were shedding
live virus and could have infected their human contacts, and if they or
their contacts went to other dairy farms they would have been shedding
virus. It would not need to survive on their skin or clothing.

Both the USDA and CDC have been screwing up by the numbers on this one.

Ron Okimoto

Post by jillery
--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge

[RonO]

Post by RonO

Post by jillery

Post by RonO
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/
Scientific American has an opinion piece stating what I have been going
on about.  For some stupid reason the USDA and CDC decided to rely on
"self reporting" instead of going in and testing the herds and states
that likely had infected herds.  It has just allowed the virus to spread
to more dairy herds, and they have no idea of the extent of the
infection because the CDC chose to "monitor" only a few herds in two states.
It has been sad and the opinion piece notes that the poultry industry
has suffered because of it.  When the price of poultry products start
going up it is the USDA's and CDC's fault for not acting as they should
have acted.  You can't keep the avian flu off a poultry farm if changing
clothing and even showering in, as is required at some commercial
breeding facilities, when the worker is infected and shedding live
virus.  For a poultry farm the infected flock is depopulated (killed
off) and poultry within a mile radius of the infected flock are also
disposed of.  Several 2 million bird layer flocks have had to be
depopulated in several states, and they were infected by the dairy
cattle with a likely human intermediate.
They knew from day one that dairy workers were likely taking the virus
to other farms and infecting other herds, and poultry flocks, but they
only "recommended" that dairy workers and their contacts not go to other
farms if they have come into contact with infected cattle.  The kicker
is that they refused to identify all the infected herds so most of the
dairy workers in contact with infected cattle were not under the
"recommendation".  It has been sad and should never have unfolded as
it has.
The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans
will be infected.
Ron Okimoto

I wonder if the current policies you mention above aren't consequences
of a lack of funding and a lack of political support, due to
conspiracies fallout from the Covid pandemic.

The USDA was given 800 million to control the dairy outbreak, but both
the CDC and the USDA claimed that it was not their policy to require
testing, so neither ever attempted to determine the extent of the spread
of the virus, nor track dairy workers and their contacts.  It is obvious
that most of the Dairies were infected by dairy workers or their
contacts going to those other farms.  Early infections in states like
Kansas, New Mexico, and South Dakota all claimed that they had not
gotten any cattle from Texas, but herds in those states got infected.
They have had a very good idea that the infection was being spread by
humans, because of what is known about influenza survival on surfaces
like clothing and skin (it remains infectious for less than 30 minutes)
and remains infectious on hard surfaces like door nobs for up to 24
hours.  The infected human was shedding live virus, and would have been
an obvious vector to take the virus to other farms.  They have done
nothing but "recommend" that dairy workers and their contacts exposed to
infected cattle not go to other farms, but they never started a program
to identify all the infected herds so that the workers would know not to
go to other farms.  They should have started testing and contact tracing
immediately, but they did not, and have not started.  If they had
started contact tracing they would already have a good idea of how all
the herds got infected.  Only one county in Michigan got infected cattle
from Texas, but now 9 counties have infected herds.  People are the
obvious vector.  2 people have been confirmed to have been infected in
Michigan, and there have likely been a lot more.  They were shedding
live virus and could have infected their human contacts, and if they or
their contacts went to other dairy farms they would have been shedding
virus.  It would not need to survive on their skin or clothing.
Both the USDA and CDC have been screwing up by the numbers on this one.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/hpai-h5n1-dairy-cattle-mi-epi-invest.pdf

This report is dated June 13th. They finally did what they should have
done at the very beginning in terms of verifying the links between
infected herds.

QUOTE:
Shared personnel between premises
o 20% of affected dairies’ employees and 7% of dairies’ employees family
members work on other dairy premises
o 7% of affected dairies’ employees also work on poultry premises; 13%
of affected dairies’ employees have family members who work on poultry
premises
o 31% of dairies have employees who own livestock or poultry at their
personal residence
END QUOTE:

QUOTE:
Based on the epidemiological findings, the majority of links between
affected dairy premises, and between dairy and poultry premises, are
indirect from shared people, vehicles, and equipment. As such, HPAI
disease spread between dairy and poultry premises can be mitigated by
identifying potential interconnections between operations (people,
conveyances, etc.) and increasing biosecurity practices on all premises
and associated animal businesses (e.g., milk haulers, deadstock/contract
haulers and other shared vehicles/trailers between premises, livestock
markets). Identifying as many affected herds as possible will assist in
assessing the scope of the event and allow decision-makers to better
manage the response.
END QUOTE:

It should be noted that people take the vehicles and equipment to other
farms, and people are known to be infected by the virus, and the known
infected humans were shedding live virus.

This is what I have been claiming from the beginning, but neither the
USDA nor the CDC acted on what they should have been doing. We will
have to wait to see if the USDA and CDC finally get their act together
and start looking for all the infected herds and start doing the contact
tracing that they should have been doing from day one.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by jillery

Post by RonO
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/
Scientific American has an opinion piece stating what I have been going
on about.  For some stupid reason the USDA and CDC decided to rely on
"self reporting" instead of going in and testing the herds and states
that likely had infected herds.  It has just allowed the virus to spread
to more dairy herds, and they have no idea of the extent of the
infection because the CDC chose to "monitor" only a few herds in two states.
It has been sad and the opinion piece notes that the poultry industry
has suffered because of it.  When the price of poultry products start
going up it is the USDA's and CDC's fault for not acting as they should
have acted.  You can't keep the avian flu off a poultry farm if changing
clothing and even showering in, as is required at some commercial
breeding facilities, when the worker is infected and shedding live
virus.  For a poultry farm the infected flock is depopulated (killed
off) and poultry within a mile radius of the infected flock are also
disposed of.  Several 2 million bird layer flocks have had to be
depopulated in several states, and they were infected by the dairy
cattle with a likely human intermediate.
They knew from day one that dairy workers were likely taking the virus
to other farms and infecting other herds, and poultry flocks, but they
only "recommended" that dairy workers and their contacts not go to other
farms if they have come into contact with infected cattle.  The kicker
is that they refused to identify all the infected herds so most of the
dairy workers in contact with infected cattle were not under the
"recommendation".  It has been sad and should never have unfolded as
it has.
The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans
will be infected.
Ron Okimoto

I wonder if the current policies you mention above aren't consequences
of a lack of funding and a lack of political support, due to
conspiracies fallout from the Covid pandemic.

The USDA was given 800 million to control the dairy outbreak, but both
the CDC and the USDA claimed that it was not their policy to require
testing, so neither ever attempted to determine the extent of the
spread of the virus, nor track dairy workers and their contacts.  It
is obvious that most of the Dairies were infected by dairy workers or
their contacts going to those other farms.  Early infections in states
like Kansas, New Mexico, and South Dakota all claimed that they had
not gotten any cattle from Texas, but herds in those states got
infected. They have had a very good idea that the infection was being
spread by humans, because of what is known about influenza survival on
surfaces like clothing and skin (it remains infectious for less than
30 minutes) and remains infectious on hard surfaces like door nobs for
up to 24 hours.  The infected human was shedding live virus, and would
have been an obvious vector to take the virus to other farms.  They
have done nothing but "recommend" that dairy workers and their
contacts exposed to infected cattle not go to other farms, but they
never started a program to identify all the infected herds so that the
workers would know not to go to other farms.  They should have started
testing and contact tracing immediately, but they did not, and have
not started.  If they had started contact tracing they would already
have a good idea of how all the herds got infected.  Only one county
in Michigan got infected cattle from Texas, but now 9 counties have
infected herds.  People are the obvious vector.  2 people have been
confirmed to have been infected in Michigan, and there have likely
been a lot more.  They were shedding live virus and could have
infected their human contacts, and if they or their contacts went to
other dairy farms they would have been shedding virus.  It would not
need to survive on their skin or clothing.
Both the USDA and CDC have been screwing up by the numbers on this one.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/hpai-h5n1-dairy-cattle-mi-epi-invest.pdf
This report is dated June 13th.  They finally did what they should have
done at the very beginning in terms of verifying the links between
infected herds.
Shared personnel between premises
o 20% of affected dairies’ employees and 7% of dairies’ employees family
members work on other dairy premises
o 7% of affected dairies’ employees also work on poultry premises; 13%
of affected dairies’ employees have family members who work on poultry
premises
o 31% of dairies have employees who own livestock or poultry at their
personal residence
Based on the epidemiological findings, the majority of links between
affected dairy premises, and between dairy and poultry premises, are
indirect from shared people, vehicles, and equipment. As such, HPAI
disease spread between dairy and poultry premises can be mitigated by
identifying potential interconnections between operations (people,
conveyances, etc.) and increasing biosecurity practices on all premises
and associated animal businesses (e.g., milk haulers, deadstock/contract
haulers and other shared vehicles/trailers between premises, livestock
markets). Identifying as many affected herds as possible will assist in
assessing the scope of the event and allow decision-makers to better
manage the response.
It should be noted that people take the vehicles and equipment to other
farms, and people are known to be infected by the virus, and the known
infected humans were shedding live virus.
This is what I have been claiming from the beginning, but neither the
USDA nor the CDC acted on what they should have been doing.  We will
have to wait to see if the USDA and CDC finally get their act together
and start looking for all the infected herds and start doing the contact
tracing that they should have been doing from day one.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-06142024.html?ACSTrackingID=USCDC_7_3-DM130439&ACSTrackingLabel=Update%20on%20CDC%E2%80%99s%20Avian%20Influenza%20A(H5N1)%20%E2%80%9CBird%20Flu%E2%80%9D%20Response%20Activities%20June%2014%2C%202024&deliveryName=USCDC_7_3-DM130439

This link seems to be long because the CDC is in the process of changing
web sites for the information that they are releasing.

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/study-ferrets-eye-exposure.html

The first link is the CDC's latest update and the second link is the new
publication that they are talking about

Their latest research just verified that the H5N1 variant can readily
infect mammals through their eyes. It has been known for decades that
people are often infected by touching infected surfaces and then rubbing
their eyes or nose within around 5 minutes (the virus isn't infectious
on skin for very long only a few minutes). So they have verified how
the humans got infected and why the first two dairy virus patients were
only infected in their eyes (nasal swabs were negative).

The kicker is that they are still claiming that the risk is low even
though they now know that a lot more humans were likely infected than
they previously knew about. They have still only tested 45 people for
H5N1 (three of the 45 were obviously positive), but this number includes
the first over 30 individuals tested in Texas, but they were not tested
correctly. Only nasal swabs were tested, and the one Texas positive and
one Michigan positive were negative for nasal swabs, and only positive
(shedding live virus) from their eyes. So over 30 tests were expected
to not show anything even if the people had been infected. The
situation really has been that bad in terms of CDC screw ups.

So even though they don't make the claim their ferret research indicates
that a lot more humans than have currently been identified could have
been infected through their eyes, and likely spread the virus (because
they were obviously shedding live virus) to other farms and could have
likely infected their human contacts if those contacts rubbed their eyes
after touching surfaces contaminated by dairy workers infected by the
cattle.

Ron Okimoto

[*Hemidactylus*]

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by jillery

Post by RonO
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/
Scientific American has an opinion piece stating what I have been going
on about.  For some stupid reason the USDA and CDC decided to rely on
"self reporting" instead of going in and testing the herds and states
that likely had infected herds.  It has just allowed the virus to spread
to more dairy herds, and they have no idea of the extent of the
infection because the CDC chose to "monitor" only a few herds in two states.
It has been sad and the opinion piece notes that the poultry industry
has suffered because of it.  When the price of poultry products start
going up it is the USDA's and CDC's fault for not acting as they should
have acted.  You can't keep the avian flu off a poultry farm if changing
clothing and even showering in, as is required at some commercial
breeding facilities, when the worker is infected and shedding live
virus.  For a poultry farm the infected flock is depopulated (killed
off) and poultry within a mile radius of the infected flock are also
disposed of.  Several 2 million bird layer flocks have had to be
depopulated in several states, and they were infected by the dairy
cattle with a likely human intermediate.
They knew from day one that dairy workers were likely taking the virus
to other farms and infecting other herds, and poultry flocks, but they
only "recommended" that dairy workers and their contacts not go to other
farms if they have come into contact with infected cattle.  The kicker
is that they refused to identify all the infected herds so most of the
dairy workers in contact with infected cattle were not under the
"recommendation".  It has been sad and should never have unfolded as
it has.
The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans
will be infected.
Ron Okimoto

I wonder if the current policies you mention above aren't consequences
of a lack of funding and a lack of political support, due to
conspiracies fallout from the Covid pandemic.

The USDA was given 800 million to control the dairy outbreak, but both
the CDC and the USDA claimed that it was not their policy to require
testing, so neither ever attempted to determine the extent of the
spread of the virus, nor track dairy workers and their contacts.  It
is obvious that most of the Dairies were infected by dairy workers or
their contacts going to those other farms.  Early infections in states
like Kansas, New Mexico, and South Dakota all claimed that they had
not gotten any cattle from Texas, but herds in those states got
infected. They have had a very good idea that the infection was being
spread by humans, because of what is known about influenza survival on
surfaces like clothing and skin (it remains infectious for less than
30 minutes) and remains infectious on hard surfaces like door nobs for
up to 24 hours.  The infected human was shedding live virus, and would
have been an obvious vector to take the virus to other farms.  They
have done nothing but "recommend" that dairy workers and their
contacts exposed to infected cattle not go to other farms, but they
never started a program to identify all the infected herds so that the
workers would know not to go to other farms.  They should have started
testing and contact tracing immediately, but they did not, and have
not started.  If they had started contact tracing they would already
have a good idea of how all the herds got infected.  Only one county
in Michigan got infected cattle from Texas, but now 9 counties have
infected herds.  People are the obvious vector.  2 people have been
confirmed to have been infected in Michigan, and there have likely
been a lot more.  They were shedding live virus and could have
infected their human contacts, and if they or their contacts went to
other dairy farms they would have been shedding virus.  It would not
need to survive on their skin or clothing.
Both the USDA and CDC have been screwing up by the numbers on this one.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/hpai-h5n1-dairy-cattle-mi-epi-invest.pdf
This report is dated June 13th.  They finally did what they should have
done at the very beginning in terms of verifying the links between
infected herds.
Shared personnel between premises
o 20% of affected dairies’ employees and 7% of dairies’ employees family
members work on other dairy premises
o 7% of affected dairies’ employees also work on poultry premises; 13%
of affected dairies’ employees have family members who work on poultry
premises
o 31% of dairies have employees who own livestock or poultry at their
personal residence
Based on the epidemiological findings, the majority of links between
affected dairy premises, and between dairy and poultry premises, are
indirect from shared people, vehicles, and equipment. As such, HPAI
disease spread between dairy and poultry premises can be mitigated by
identifying potential interconnections between operations (people,
conveyances, etc.) and increasing biosecurity practices on all premises
and associated animal businesses (e.g., milk haulers, deadstock/contract
haulers and other shared vehicles/trailers between premises, livestock
markets). Identifying as many affected herds as possible will assist in
assessing the scope of the event and allow decision-makers to better
manage the response.
It should be noted that people take the vehicles and equipment to other
farms, and people are known to be infected by the virus, and the known
infected humans were shedding live virus.
This is what I have been claiming from the beginning, but neither the
USDA nor the CDC acted on what they should have been doing.  We will
have to wait to see if the USDA and CDC finally get their act together
and start looking for all the infected herds and start doing the contact
tracing that they should have been doing from day one.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-06142024.html?ACSTrackingID=USCDC_7_3-DM130439&ACSTrackingLabel=Update%20on%20CDC%E2%80%99s%20Avian%20Influenza%20A(H5N1)%20%E2%80%9CBird%20Flu%E2%80%9D%20Response%20Activities%20June%2014%2C%202024&deliveryName=USCDC_7_3-DM130439
This link seems to be long because the CDC is in the process of changing
web sites for the information that they are releasing.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/study-ferrets-eye-exposure.html
The first link is the CDC's latest update and the second link is the new
publication that they are talking about
Their latest research just verified that the H5N1 variant can readily
infect mammals through their eyes. It has been known for decades that
people are often infected by touching infected surfaces and then rubbing
their eyes or nose within around 5 minutes (the virus isn't infectious
on skin for very long only a few minutes). So they have verified how
the humans got infected and why the first two dairy virus patients were
only infected in their eyes (nasal swabs were negative).
The kicker is that they are still claiming that the risk is low even
though they now know that a lot more humans were likely infected than
they previously knew about. They have still only tested 45 people for
H5N1 (three of the 45 were obviously positive), but this number includes
the first over 30 individuals tested in Texas, but they were not tested
correctly. Only nasal swabs were tested, and the one Texas positive and
one Michigan positive were negative for nasal swabs, and only positive
(shedding live virus) from their eyes. So over 30 tests were expected
to not show anything even if the people had been infected. The
situation really has been that bad in terms of CDC screw ups.
So even though they don't make the claim their ferret research indicates
that a lot more humans than have currently been identified could have
been infected through their eyes, and likely spread the virus (because
they were obviously shedding live virus) to other farms and could have
likely infected their human contacts if those contacts rubbed their eyes
after touching surfaces contaminated by dairy workers infected by the
cattle.

I wash my hands regularly and don’t associate with cattle. I worry when
cleaning bird poop off my car and wonder about the squirrels I see running
around as they inhabit the same tree limbs as birds.

Do you think H5N1 might attenuate per humans by passing through cattle (ie-
reducing our kill rate)?

I guess face masks won’t protect you from getting virus particles in your
eyes.

I still wonder what ill effects a highly litigious industry may have on
public health awareness about the prospects of H5 in livestock. Also there
are those pesky food disparagement laws.

That said I still enjoy my cheese and wondered if drinking pasteurized milk
with inactivated H5 fragments might yield some degree of mucosal immunity
in humans. I drink soy or mostly use it for my oatmeal so I don’t consume
cattle milk.

Definitely wouldn’t drink raw milk myself, though that seems to be the new
Trump cult costly signal of tribal allegiance. How risky might that
behavior be?

[RonO]

Post by *Hemidactylus*

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by jillery

Post by RonO
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/
Scientific American has an opinion piece stating what I have been going
on about.  For some stupid reason the USDA and CDC decided to rely on
"self reporting" instead of going in and testing the herds and states
that likely had infected herds.  It has just allowed the virus to spread
to more dairy herds, and they have no idea of the extent of the
infection because the CDC chose to "monitor" only a few herds in two states.
It has been sad and the opinion piece notes that the poultry industry
has suffered because of it.  When the price of poultry products start
going up it is the USDA's and CDC's fault for not acting as they should
have acted.  You can't keep the avian flu off a poultry farm if changing
clothing and even showering in, as is required at some commercial
breeding facilities, when the worker is infected and shedding live
virus.  For a poultry farm the infected flock is depopulated (killed
off) and poultry within a mile radius of the infected flock are also
disposed of.  Several 2 million bird layer flocks have had to be
depopulated in several states, and they were infected by the dairy
cattle with a likely human intermediate.
They knew from day one that dairy workers were likely taking the virus
to other farms and infecting other herds, and poultry flocks, but they
only "recommended" that dairy workers and their contacts not go to other
farms if they have come into contact with infected cattle.  The kicker
is that they refused to identify all the infected herds so most of the
dairy workers in contact with infected cattle were not under the
"recommendation".  It has been sad and should never have unfolded as
it has.
The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans
will be infected.
Ron Okimoto

I wonder if the current policies you mention above aren't consequences
of a lack of funding and a lack of political support, due to
conspiracies fallout from the Covid pandemic.

The USDA was given 800 million to control the dairy outbreak, but both
the CDC and the USDA claimed that it was not their policy to require
testing, so neither ever attempted to determine the extent of the
spread of the virus, nor track dairy workers and their contacts.  It
is obvious that most of the Dairies were infected by dairy workers or
their contacts going to those other farms.  Early infections in states
like Kansas, New Mexico, and South Dakota all claimed that they had
not gotten any cattle from Texas, but herds in those states got
infected. They have had a very good idea that the infection was being
spread by humans, because of what is known about influenza survival on
surfaces like clothing and skin (it remains infectious for less than
30 minutes) and remains infectious on hard surfaces like door nobs for
up to 24 hours.  The infected human was shedding live virus, and would
have been an obvious vector to take the virus to other farms.  They
have done nothing but "recommend" that dairy workers and their
contacts exposed to infected cattle not go to other farms, but they
never started a program to identify all the infected herds so that the
workers would know not to go to other farms.  They should have started
testing and contact tracing immediately, but they did not, and have
not started.  If they had started contact tracing they would already
have a good idea of how all the herds got infected.  Only one county
in Michigan got infected cattle from Texas, but now 9 counties have
infected herds.  People are the obvious vector.  2 people have been
confirmed to have been infected in Michigan, and there have likely
been a lot more.  They were shedding live virus and could have
infected their human contacts, and if they or their contacts went to
other dairy farms they would have been shedding virus.  It would not
need to survive on their skin or clothing.
Both the USDA and CDC have been screwing up by the numbers on this one.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/hpai-h5n1-dairy-cattle-mi-epi-invest.pdf
This report is dated June 13th.  They finally did what they should have
done at the very beginning in terms of verifying the links between
infected herds.
Shared personnel between premises
o 20% of affected dairies’ employees and 7% of dairies’ employees family
members work on other dairy premises
o 7% of affected dairies’ employees also work on poultry premises; 13%
of affected dairies’ employees have family members who work on poultry
premises
o 31% of dairies have employees who own livestock or poultry at their
personal residence
Based on the epidemiological findings, the majority of links between
affected dairy premises, and between dairy and poultry premises, are
indirect from shared people, vehicles, and equipment. As such, HPAI
disease spread between dairy and poultry premises can be mitigated by
identifying potential interconnections between operations (people,
conveyances, etc.) and increasing biosecurity practices on all premises
and associated animal businesses (e.g., milk haulers, deadstock/contract
haulers and other shared vehicles/trailers between premises, livestock
markets). Identifying as many affected herds as possible will assist in
assessing the scope of the event and allow decision-makers to better
manage the response.
It should be noted that people take the vehicles and equipment to other
farms, and people are known to be infected by the virus, and the known
infected humans were shedding live virus.
This is what I have been claiming from the beginning, but neither the
USDA nor the CDC acted on what they should have been doing.  We will
have to wait to see if the USDA and CDC finally get their act together
and start looking for all the infected herds and start doing the contact
tracing that they should have been doing from day one.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-06142024.html?ACSTrackingID=USCDC_7_3-DM130439&ACSTrackingLabel=Update%20on%20CDC%E2%80%99s%20Avian%20Influenza%20A(H5N1)%20%E2%80%9CBird%20Flu%E2%80%9D%20Response%20Activities%20June%2014%2C%202024&deliveryName=USCDC_7_3-DM130439
This link seems to be long because the CDC is in the process of changing
web sites for the information that they are releasing.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/study-ferrets-eye-exposure.html
The first link is the CDC's latest update and the second link is the new
publication that they are talking about
Their latest research just verified that the H5N1 variant can readily
infect mammals through their eyes. It has been known for decades that
people are often infected by touching infected surfaces and then rubbing
their eyes or nose within around 5 minutes (the virus isn't infectious
on skin for very long only a few minutes). So they have verified how
the humans got infected and why the first two dairy virus patients were
only infected in their eyes (nasal swabs were negative).
The kicker is that they are still claiming that the risk is low even
though they now know that a lot more humans were likely infected than
they previously knew about. They have still only tested 45 people for
H5N1 (three of the 45 were obviously positive), but this number includes
the first over 30 individuals tested in Texas, but they were not tested
correctly. Only nasal swabs were tested, and the one Texas positive and
one Michigan positive were negative for nasal swabs, and only positive
(shedding live virus) from their eyes. So over 30 tests were expected
to not show anything even if the people had been infected. The
situation really has been that bad in terms of CDC screw ups.
So even though they don't make the claim their ferret research indicates
that a lot more humans than have currently been identified could have
been infected through their eyes, and likely spread the virus (because
they were obviously shedding live virus) to other farms and could have
likely infected their human contacts if those contacts rubbed their eyes
after touching surfaces contaminated by dairy workers infected by the
cattle.

I wash my hands regularly and don’t associate with cattle. I worry when
cleaning bird poop off my car and wonder about the squirrels I see running
around as they inhabit the same tree limbs as birds.
Do you think H5N1 might attenuate per humans by passing through cattle (ie-
reducing our kill rate)?

What the CDC has not emphasized is that this is not fully the same H5N1
Eurasian influenza A that has killed half of over 800 infected humans
(over 400 dead). Influenza is an RNA virus that has multiple gene
groups (RNA chromosomes with genes on them). The Dairy H5N1 has the H
and N (H5 and N1) antigen genes of the Eurasian virus, but about half of
it's gene groups come from another wild bird influenza, so it is a
recombinant that occurs when two different strains of influenza coinfect
an individual.

The details have not been clarified, and this virus may only be
partially the same as the H5N1 that has been killing sea mammals in
South America. All the H5N1 virus circulating in America do share the
H5 and N1 Eurasian gene lineages, but the version that infected dairy
cattle is a recombinant with about half of it's genome coming from
another strain.

The 3 people that have been infected by the dairy H5N1 have not shown
the lethal symptoms that have been observed in Europe and Asia when
humans were infected by the Eurasian H5N1. The fear is that the Dairy
strain will mutate or recombine with a circulating human influenza A and
become lethal. The more humans that it infects, the more likely that
those mutations will be selected for or it can coinfect with a human
strain and transfer to humans as a recombinant. That is why it was and
is so important to identify all the infected herds and minimize the
spread, so that human infections can be minimized, but neither the USDA,
nor CDC have done what needed to be done in order to do that. So as it
stands more humans are being exposed to the virus because they have
allowed the virus to spread unchecked in the dairy herd for the past two
months.

Post by *Hemidactylus*
I guess face masks won’t protect you from getting virus particles in your
eyes.

The CDC has been recommending goggles or gas mask-like face protection
from their initial recommendations. They knew that humans were getting
eye infections. They knew that humans were being infected, but didn't
want to admit to how many, and never looked to determine the extent of
infection. They still have not done that. Michigan claims that they
are going to start testing the dairy workers and their families (close
contacts), so we might have some answers that we should have had months ago.

You pretty much need someone to sneeze in your face. The Michigan dairy
worker got milk in his eyes. Influenza has been known for decades to
infect through the eyes, nose and mouth, but the proposal has been that
you need to touch a contaminated surface and then rub your eyes or nose
within a few minutes to initiate an infection. Covid needed less virus
and was an airborne infection. Face masking, social distancing, and
surface disinfection (and hand sanitizing) pretty much stopped influenza
infection during that period of time. Those measures were very
effective against influenza, but you needed better face mask protection
for covid.

Post by *Hemidactylus*
I still wonder what ill effects a highly litigious industry may have on
public health awareness about the prospects of H5 in livestock. Also there
are those pesky food disparagement laws.

Initially the cattle industry was resistant to cooperating and solving
the issue. The USDA and CDC bungles at the beginning and the bungling
that continues has some political basis. The cattle industry has a lot
of votes, so the poultry industry can suffer as long as the dairy and
beef markets are not upset. Large layer facilities are going down in
states with the dairy virus, and they are getting it from dairy cattle
via the people that work with the cattle, but having egg prices go up
again is better than identifying all the states with infected cattle and
alarming the consumers.

When the FDA tested the dairy products from 34 states and found 15 more
states producing infected dairy products than the 9 that had already
been identified, they initially refused to release the names of the
states with infected products because they claimed that all they were
interested in was food safety and they had found no live virus in the
milk products and pasteurization had killed the virus. They concluded
that as long as you consumed pasteurized milk products that the food was
safe.

In terms of trying to prevent the next pandemic this was just stupid.
They needed to identify all the infected herds as soon as they could so
that they could reduce the spread and infection of humans. The sad
thing is that 10 days later the FDA did release the names of the states,
but the USDA and CDC refused to use that information to identify the
infected herds in those states.

Post by *Hemidactylus*
That said I still enjoy my cheese and wondered if drinking pasteurized milk
with inactivated H5 fragments might yield some degree of mucosal immunity
in humans. I drink soy or mostly use it for my oatmeal so I don’t consume
cattle milk.

You apparently have to check to see if pasteurized milk was used to make
the cheese at this time. I wouldn't think that the virus could survive
any aging process.

We ingest a lot of potential antigens, and we do make antibodies against
some of them, but the immune response is geared to respond and make
antibodies to an active infection (microbes replicating within the
patient). It takes multiple rounds of selection to produce effective
antiviral antibodies.

Post by *Hemidactylus*
Definitely wouldn’t drink raw milk myself, though that seems to be the new
Trump cult costly signal of tribal allegiance. How risky might that
behavior be?

The cats (most of them died) were fed raw milk. What is scary is that
the virus infected their brains and killed them. Influenza is usually a
gut and respiratory virus, but somehow it infected the cat brains. That
should put off anyone from drinking raw milk from a dairy that has not
been verified to be uninfected. The NIH also did a mouse study and
found that feeding mice with infected milk also infected the rodents.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by RonO

Post by jillery

Post by RonO
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/
Scientific American has an opinion piece stating what I have been going
on about.  For some stupid reason the USDA and CDC decided to rely on
"self reporting" instead of going in and testing the herds and states
that likely had infected herds.  It has just allowed the virus to spread
to more dairy herds, and they have no idea of the extent of the
infection because the CDC chose to "monitor" only a few herds in two states.
It has been sad and the opinion piece notes that the poultry industry
has suffered because of it.  When the price of poultry products start
going up it is the USDA's and CDC's fault for not acting as they should
have acted.  You can't keep the avian flu off a poultry farm if changing
clothing and even showering in, as is required at some commercial
breeding facilities, when the worker is infected and shedding live
virus.  For a poultry farm the infected flock is depopulated (killed
off) and poultry within a mile radius of the infected flock are also
disposed of.  Several 2 million bird layer flocks have had to be
depopulated in several states, and they were infected by the dairy
cattle with a likely human intermediate.
They knew from day one that dairy workers were likely taking the virus
to other farms and infecting other herds, and poultry flocks, but they
only "recommended" that dairy workers and their contacts not go to other
farms if they have come into contact with infected cattle.  The kicker
is that they refused to identify all the infected herds so most of the
dairy workers in contact with infected cattle were not under the
"recommendation".  It has been sad and should never have unfolded
as it has.
The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans
will be infected.
Ron Okimoto

I wonder if the current policies you mention above aren't consequences
of a lack of funding and a lack of political support, due to
conspiracies fallout from the Covid pandemic.

The USDA was given 800 million to control the dairy outbreak, but
both the CDC and the USDA claimed that it was not their policy to
require testing, so neither ever attempted to determine the extent of
the spread of the virus, nor track dairy workers and their contacts.
It is obvious that most of the Dairies were infected by dairy workers
or their contacts going to those other farms.  Early infections in
states like Kansas, New Mexico, and South Dakota all claimed that
they had not gotten any cattle from Texas, but herds in those states
got infected. They have had a very good idea that the infection was
being spread by humans, because of what is known about influenza
survival on surfaces like clothing and skin (it remains infectious
for less than 30 minutes) and remains infectious on hard surfaces
like door nobs for up to 24 hours.  The infected human was shedding
live virus, and would have been an obvious vector to take the virus
to other farms.  They have done nothing but "recommend" that dairy
workers and their contacts exposed to infected cattle not go to other
farms, but they never started a program to identify all the infected
herds so that the workers would know not to go to other farms.  They
should have started testing and contact tracing immediately, but they
did not, and have not started.  If they had started contact tracing
they would already have a good idea of how all the herds got
infected.  Only one county in Michigan got infected cattle from
Texas, but now 9 counties have infected herds.  People are the
obvious vector.  2 people have been confirmed to have been infected
in Michigan, and there have likely been a lot more.  They were
shedding live virus and could have infected their human contacts, and
if they or their contacts went to other dairy farms they would have
been shedding virus.  It would not need to survive on their skin or
clothing.
Both the USDA and CDC have been screwing up by the numbers on this one.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/hpai-h5n1-dairy-cattle-mi-epi-invest.pdf
This report is dated June 13th.  They finally did what they should
have done at the very beginning in terms of verifying the links
between infected herds.
Shared personnel between premises
o 20% of affected dairies’ employees and 7% of dairies’ employees
family members work on other dairy premises
o 7% of affected dairies’ employees also work on poultry premises; 13%
of affected dairies’ employees have family members who work on poultry
premises
o 31% of dairies have employees who own livestock or poultry at their
personal residence
Based on the epidemiological findings, the majority of links between
affected dairy premises, and between dairy and poultry premises, are
indirect from shared people, vehicles, and equipment. As such, HPAI
disease spread between dairy and poultry premises can be mitigated by
identifying potential interconnections between operations (people,
conveyances, etc.) and increasing biosecurity practices on all
premises and associated animal businesses (e.g., milk haulers,
deadstock/contract haulers and other shared vehicles/trailers between
premises, livestock markets). Identifying as many affected herds as
possible will assist in assessing the scope of the event and allow
decision-makers to better manage the response.
It should be noted that people take the vehicles and equipment to
other farms, and people are known to be infected by the virus, and the
known infected humans were shedding live virus.
This is what I have been claiming from the beginning, but neither the
USDA nor the CDC acted on what they should have been doing.  We will
have to wait to see if the USDA and CDC finally get their act together
and start looking for all the infected herds and start doing the
contact tracing that they should have been doing from day one.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-06142024.html?ACSTrackingID=USCDC_7_3-DM130439&ACSTrackingLabel=Update%20on%20CDC%E2%80%99s%20Avian%20Influenza%20A(H5N1)%20%E2%80%9CBird%20Flu%E2%80%9D%20Response%20Activities%20June%2014%2C%202024&deliveryName=USCDC_7_3-DM130439
This link seems to be long because the CDC is in the process of changing
web sites for the information that they are releasing.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/study-ferrets-eye-exposure.html
The first link is the CDC's latest update and the second link is the new
publication that they are talking about
Their latest research just verified that the H5N1 variant can readily
infect mammals through their eyes.  It has been known for decades that
people are often infected by touching infected surfaces and then rubbing
their eyes or nose within around 5 minutes (the virus isn't infectious
on skin for very long only a few minutes).  So they have verified how
the humans got infected and why the first two dairy virus patients were
only infected in their eyes (nasal swabs were negative).
The kicker is that they are still claiming that the risk is low even
though they now know that a lot more humans were likely infected than
they previously knew about.  They have still only tested 45 people for
H5N1 (three of the 45 were obviously positive), but this number includes
the first over 30 individuals tested in Texas, but they were not tested
correctly.  Only nasal swabs were tested, and the one Texas positive and
one Michigan positive were negative for nasal swabs, and only positive
(shedding live virus) from their eyes.  So over 30 tests were expected
to not show anything even if the people had been infected.  The
situation really has been that bad in terms of CDC screw ups.
So even though they don't make the claim their ferret research indicates
that a lot more humans than have currently been identified could have
been infected through their eyes, and likely spread the virus (because
they were obviously shedding live virus) to other farms and could have
likely infected their human contacts if those contacts rubbed their eyes
after touching surfaces contaminated by dairy workers infected by the
cattle.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/14/bird-flu-testing-cdc

The CDC is starting to make excuses for not doing what they should have
been doing from day one.

QUOTE:
“We would like to be doing more tests,” Shah said. “We’d like to be
testing particularly not just symptomatic workers, but anyone on a farm
who is exposed.”
END QUOTE:

They should have been doing contact tracing from day one. Now the dairy
virus has spread to many more states and spreading within those states.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

On 6/15/2024 2:22 PM, RonO wrote:

Today several news sources are claiming that Redfield (ex CDC director)
is predicting that there will be a bird flu pandemic. What Redfield
seems to be claiming is that a pandemic involving Avian influenza is
inevitable (it will happen at some time). Currently human influenza A
is derived from avian influenza (that is what the "A" designation is
for). Humans likely got influenza A from an intermediate like pigs.
Swine flu is influenza A. The Dairy virus needs 5 mutations to make it
as infectious to humans as the current human influenza A strains, but it
could get those mutations via a coinfection with a human influenza A
strain. That is one of the reasons that we need to minimize human
infections, and why they want to keep the dairy virus off of pig farms.
Coinfection with a human or swine influenza could result in a deadly
recombinant virus.

The initial sequencing results of the first batch of dairy strains
identified several lineages that had some of the mutations that would
make them more infective to humans, but they seemed to be minor
lineages, and no lineage had all the mutations needed. The fact is that
human infection would obviously select for variants that could more
easily infect humans. This is just another reason to identify all the
infected herds and try to minimize human infections.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/health/ex-cdc-director-bird-flu-pandemic/

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by RonO
Today several news sources are claiming that Redfield (ex CDC director)
is predicting that there will be a bird flu pandemic.  What Redfield
seems to be claiming is that a pandemic involving Avian influenza is
inevitable (it will happen at some time).  Currently human influenza A
is derived from avian influenza (that is what the "A" designation is
for).  Humans likely got influenza A from an intermediate like pigs.
Swine flu is influenza A.  The Dairy virus needs 5 mutations to make it
as infectious to humans as the current human influenza A strains, but it
could get those mutations via a coinfection with a human influenza A
strain.  That is one of the reasons that we need to minimize human
infections, and why they want to keep the dairy virus off of pig farms.
Coinfection with a human or swine influenza could result in a deadly
recombinant virus.
The initial sequencing results of the first batch of dairy strains
identified several lineages that had some of the mutations that would
make them more infective to humans, but they seemed to be minor
lineages, and no lineage had all the mutations needed.  The fact is that
human infection would obviously select for variants that could more
easily infect humans.  This is just another reason to identify all the
infected herds and try to minimize human infections.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/health/ex-cdc-director-bird-flu-pandemic/
Ron Okimoto

Something seems to be screwy with the wastewater data. The CDC is
claiming one result and others are claiming something else. The CDC
data shows only "low" levels of influenza in the Michigan wastewater
sites that they are testing, but Wastewater SCAN is claiming that 6
sites in Michigan have the highest levels of virus in the nation.

https://data.wastewaterscan.org/tracker/?charts=CmEQAUgAUgY3MWJhZTdSBmI5ZTMyMlIGNmMwNTdiUgZhNGUzOTRSBjVjZmVmZFIGMDY1MjgyWgdJbmZBX0g1cgoyMDI0LTA1LTIwcgoyMDI0LTA2LTEwigEGOGFlMmY2uAEl&selectedChartId=8ae2f6

CDC data:
https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html#:~:text=Current%20wastewater%20monitoring%20methods%20detect,of%20the%20influenza%20A%20virus.

They have issues explaining the high wastewater levels in Michigan
because several of the collection sites do not claim to have infected
dairy herds. It could mean that the infection has spread further in
Michigan than they think. Wastewater Scan is testing specifically for
H5N1 while the CDC claims to be testing for influenza in general

https://www.freep.com/story/news/health/2024/06/17/bird-flu-michigan-wastewater/74047810007/

Ron Okimoto