California Dairy herds positive for the dairy virus

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be positive for
the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-largest-milk-
producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-three-dairy-cow-herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to just one
herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry farms, but months ago
(before I retired in May) I noted that California had high levels of
influenza virus in the waste water around the bay area. At that time
they had estimated that the virus first infected cattle Sept or Oct
2023, and they hadn't yet found viral sequence from herds infected that
early in Texas. When I looked into the avian influenza cases the Dairy
virus was most similar to one isolated from a Peregrine falcon in
California. California had high levels of influenza virus in their
waste water (associated with infected herds in Texas and Michigan) and
Commercial poultry farms started to go down in the central valley in Oct
2023 (the flocks get infected by the dairy workers). A number of flocks
went down within a few months working their way up North and around the
bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in Georgia, and
tried to get the name of the person that would have the sequence data of
the California samples (they had not been included in any of the dairy
virus studies) but I was told that the USDA did not give out that
information. I told the guy that they needed to check out those
samples, but his comment was that they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley virus they
could identify the region where the initial dairy infection occurred and
it spread from California to Texas. The virus spread rapidly out of
Texas, but it probably came from somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with infected
herds by now if they had acted on the waste water data and the FDA
identification of states with virus positive dairy products. The Dairy
workers are not being protected from being infected in states that
refuse to identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-bird-flu-missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010

There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this person
did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My guess is that it
is person to person transmission. Missouri is one of the states that
has not verified any positive dairy herds (no one has been looking), but
Kansas and Oklahoma have positive dairy herds. They have known that it
was likely human transmission into Kansas and North Dakota from Texas
because neither states got cattle from Texas, but both states got the
virus from Texas. Human to human transmission has probably been going
on for some time, but they never started contact tracing to identify
possibly infected herds nor to determine how the virus was transmitted
to the herds and poultry flocks that have been infected.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-07 19:17:17 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be positive
for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-largest-milk-
producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-three-dairy-cow-herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to just one
herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry farms, but months ago
(before I retired in May) I noted that California had high levels of
influenza virus in the waste water around the bay area. At that time
they had estimated that the virus first infected cattle Sept or Oct
2023, and they hadn't yet found viral sequence from herds infected
that early in Texas. When I looked into the avian influenza cases the
Dairy virus was most similar to one isolated from a Peregrine falcon
in California. California had high levels of influenza virus in their
waste water (associated with infected herds in Texas and Michigan) and
Commercial poultry farms started to go down in the central valley in
Oct 2023 (the flocks get infected by the dairy workers). A number of
flocks went down within a few months working their way up North and
around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in Georgia, and
tried to get the name of the person that would have the sequence data
of the California samples (they had not been included in any of the
dairy virus studies) but I was told that the USDA did not give out
that information. I told the guy that they needed to check out those
samples, but his comment was that they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley virus they
could identify the region where the initial dairy infection occurred
and it spread from California to Texas. The virus spread rapidly out
of Texas, but it probably came from somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with infected
herds by now if they had acted on the waste water data and the FDA
identification of states with virus positive dairy products. The
Dairy workers are not being protected from being infected in states
that refuse to identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-bird-flu-
missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this person
did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My guess is that it
is person to person transmission. Missouri is one of the states that
has not verified any positive dairy herds (no one has been looking), but
Kansas and Oklahoma have positive dairy herds. They have known that it
was likely human transmission into Kansas and North Dakota from Texas
because neither states got cattle from Texas, but both states got the
virus from Texas. Human to human transmission has probably been going
on for some time, but they never started contact tracing to identify
possibly infected herds nor to determine how the virus was transmitted
to the herds and poultry flocks that have been infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy virus. The
article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have positive herds at
this time, but commercial poultry flocks have gone down and that usually
happens when the dairies are infected and dairy workers take it to the
poultry farms. Previous human cases had mild symptoms, but this person
was hospitalized. The USDA and CDC are still not doing anything to
identify all the infected herds in states like Missouri, so nothing much
has been done to minimize the exposure of dairy workers. My guess is
that an infected dairy worker infected this patient, and it is a case of
human to human transmission.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-08 23:55:20 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be positive
for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-largest-milk-
producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-three-dairy-cow-herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to just
one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry farms, but months
ago (before I retired in May) I noted that California had high levels
of influenza virus in the waste water around the bay area. At that
time they had estimated that the virus first infected cattle Sept or
Oct 2023, and they hadn't yet found viral sequence from herds
infected that early in Texas. When I looked into the avian influenza
cases the Dairy virus was most similar to one isolated from a
Peregrine falcon in California. California had high levels of
influenza virus in their waste water (associated with infected herds
in Texas and Michigan) and Commercial poultry farms started to go
down in the central valley in Oct 2023 (the flocks get infected by
the dairy workers). A number of flocks went down within a few months
working their way up North and around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in Georgia, and
tried to get the name of the person that would have the sequence data
of the California samples (they had not been included in any of the
dairy virus studies) but I was told that the USDA did not give out
that information. I told the guy that they needed to check out those
samples, but his comment was that they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley virus
they could identify the region where the initial dairy infection
occurred and it spread from California to Texas. The virus spread
rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came from somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with infected
herds by now if they had acted on the waste water data and the FDA
identification of states with virus positive dairy products. The
Dairy workers are not being protected from being infected in states
that refuse to identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-bird-flu-
missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this person
did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My guess is that
it is person to person transmission. Missouri is one of the states
that has not verified any positive dairy herds (no one has been
looking), but Kansas and Oklahoma have positive dairy herds. They
have known that it was likely human transmission into Kansas and North
Dakota from Texas because neither states got cattle from Texas, but
both states got the virus from Texas. Human to human transmission has
probably been going on for some time, but they never started contact
tracing to identify possibly infected herds nor to determine how the
virus was transmitted to the herds and poultry flocks that have been
infected.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human infection
without contact with animals is worse than can be imagined. They did
not send a team to investigate, and have not started contact tracing and
testing of close contacts. It seems crazy when you think that the
person was hospitalized, and this is obviously a serious case of
infection. What they do not want is the 50% human mortality associated
with the H5N1 virus to become a reality for the dairy virus. The CDC
continues to do nothing but monitor the disease in two states, which is
just nuts. They are actually waiting for it to become a noticeable
problem somewhere else before starting to do anything in other states.

https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-questions-cat-raw-milk/

Ron Okimoto

R

RonO

2024-09-11 17:05:34 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be positive
for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-largest-milk-
producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-three-dairy-cow-
herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to just
one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry farms, but
months ago (before I retired in May) I noted that California had
high levels of influenza virus in the waste water around the bay
area. At that time they had estimated that the virus first infected
cattle Sept or Oct 2023, and they hadn't yet found viral sequence
from herds infected that early in Texas. When I looked into the
avian influenza cases the Dairy virus was most similar to one
isolated from a Peregrine falcon in California. California had high
levels of influenza virus in their waste water (associated with
infected herds in Texas and Michigan) and Commercial poultry farms
started to go down in the central valley in Oct 2023 (the flocks get
infected by the dairy workers). A number of flocks went down within
a few months working their way up North and around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in Georgia,
and tried to get the name of the person that would have the sequence
data of the California samples (they had not been included in any of
the dairy virus studies) but I was told that the USDA did not give
out that information. I told the guy that they needed to check out
those samples, but his comment was that they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley virus
they could identify the region where the initial dairy infection
occurred and it spread from California to Texas. The virus spread
rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came from somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with
infected herds by now if they had acted on the waste water data and
the FDA identification of states with virus positive dairy
products. The Dairy workers are not being protected from being
infected in states that refuse to identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-bird-flu-
missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this person
did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My guess is that
it is person to person transmission. Missouri is one of the states
that has not verified any positive dairy herds (no one has been
looking), but Kansas and Oklahoma have positive dairy herds. They
have known that it was likely human transmission into Kansas and
North Dakota from Texas because neither states got cattle from Texas,
but both states got the virus from Texas. Human to human
transmission has probably been going on for some time, but they never
started contact tracing to identify possibly infected herds nor to
determine how the virus was transmitted to the herds and poultry
flocks that have been infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy virus. The
article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have positive herds at
this time, but commercial poultry flocks have gone down and that
usually happens when the dairies are infected and dairy workers take
it to the poultry farms. Previous human cases had mild symptoms, but
this person was hospitalized. The USDA and CDC are still not doing
anything to identify all the infected herds in states like Missouri,
so nothing much has been done to minimize the exposure of dairy
workers. My guess is that an infected dairy worker infected this
patient, and it is a case of human to human transmission.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human infection
without contact with animals is worse than can be imagined. They did
not send a team to investigate, and have not started contact tracing and
testing of close contacts. It seems crazy when you think that the
person was hospitalized, and this is obviously a serious case of
infection. What they do not want is the 50% human mortality associated
with the H5N1 virus to become a reality for the dairy virus. The CDC
continues to do nothing but monitor the disease in two states, which is
just nuts. They are actually waiting for it to become a noticeable
problem somewhere else before starting to do anything in other states.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-questions-
cat-raw-milk/
Ron Okimoto
R

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-missouri-resident-bird-flu-livestock.html

This ariticle seems to be trying to downplay the possibility of human to
human transmission. The Texas antibody testing of dairy workers have
already come out with evidence for human to human transmission because
one of the workers positive for H5 antibodies did not have contact with
cattle, and only had contact with other dairy workers. There was also
the case of the indoor cat in Colorado that was probably infected by
humans. The states that did not get cattle from affected states, but
still got the dairy virus were likely infected by human dairy workers
migrating to those states. Kansas got infected from Texas, and then
Dakota got infected with the strain in Kansas, and Kansas did not get
cattle from Texas, and South Dakota did not get cattle from Kansas. The
CDC has known this since about the beginning of detecting the infections
in April, but they never started human contact tracing to determine how
all the dairy herds and poultry flocks were being infected.

Humans have been transmitting the virus since the start of this fiasco.
Humans could have brought the virus into Texas. The Texas Dairy worker
that was the first infection had a virus that had branched off earlier
than the strain that infected Texas. They never got the name of that
dairy worker, so they couldn't ask him where he could have been
infected. He could have been infected in the state that was the origin
of the dairy infection. One of his fellow dairy workers could have been
infected in that same state, but brought in the Texas strain (one with
more substitutions than the strain that infected the first dairy worker).

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-12 16:59:52 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be positive
for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-largest-
milk- producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-three-
dairy-cow- herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to just
one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry farms, but
months ago (before I retired in May) I noted that California had
high levels of influenza virus in the waste water around the bay
area. At that time they had estimated that the virus first
infected cattle Sept or Oct 2023, and they hadn't yet found viral
sequence from herds infected that early in Texas. When I looked
into the avian influenza cases the Dairy virus was most similar to
one isolated from a Peregrine falcon in California. California had
high levels of influenza virus in their waste water (associated
with infected herds in Texas and Michigan) and Commercial poultry
farms started to go down in the central valley in Oct 2023 (the
flocks get infected by the dairy workers). A number of flocks went
down within a few months working their way up North and around the
bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in Georgia,
and tried to get the name of the person that would have the
sequence data of the California samples (they had not been included
in any of the dairy virus studies) but I was told that the USDA did
not give out that information. I told the guy that they needed to
check out those samples, but his comment was that they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley virus
they could identify the region where the initial dairy infection
occurred and it spread from California to Texas. The virus spread
rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came from somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with
infected herds by now if they had acted on the waste water data and
the FDA identification of states with virus positive dairy
products. The Dairy workers are not being protected from being
infected in states that refuse to identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-bird-flu-
missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this
person did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My guess
is that it is person to person transmission. Missouri is one of the
states that has not verified any positive dairy herds (no one has
been looking), but Kansas and Oklahoma have positive dairy herds.
They have known that it was likely human transmission into Kansas
and North Dakota from Texas because neither states got cattle from
Texas, but both states got the virus from Texas. Human to human
transmission has probably been going on for some time, but they
never started contact tracing to identify possibly infected herds
nor to determine how the virus was transmitted to the herds and
poultry flocks that have been infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy virus.
The article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have positive herds
at this time, but commercial poultry flocks have gone down and that
usually happens when the dairies are infected and dairy workers take
it to the poultry farms. Previous human cases had mild symptoms, but
this person was hospitalized. The USDA and CDC are still not doing
anything to identify all the infected herds in states like Missouri,
so nothing much has been done to minimize the exposure of dairy
workers. My guess is that an infected dairy worker infected this
patient, and it is a case of human to human transmission.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human infection
without contact with animals is worse than can be imagined. They did
not send a team to investigate, and have not started contact tracing
and testing of close contacts. It seems crazy when you think that the
person was hospitalized, and this is obviously a serious case of
infection. What they do not want is the 50% human mortality
associated with the H5N1 virus to become a reality for the dairy
virus. The CDC continues to do nothing but monitor the disease in two
states, which is just nuts. They are actually waiting for it to
become a noticeable problem somewhere else before starting to do
anything in other states.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-
questions- cat-raw-milk/
Ron Okimoto
R

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-missouri-resident-bird-flu-
livestock.html
This ariticle seems to be trying to downplay the possibility of human to
human transmission. The Texas antibody testing of dairy workers have
already come out with evidence for human to human transmission because
one of the workers positive for H5 antibodies did not have contact with
cattle, and only had contact with other dairy workers. There was also
the case of the indoor cat in Colorado that was probably infected by
humans. The states that did not get cattle from affected states, but
still got the dairy virus were likely infected by human dairy workers
migrating to those states. Kansas got infected from Texas, and then
Dakota got infected with the strain in Kansas, and Kansas did not get
cattle from Texas, and South Dakota did not get cattle from Kansas. The
CDC has known this since about the beginning of detecting the infections
in April, but they never started human contact tracing to determine how
all the dairy herds and poultry flocks were being infected.
Humans have been transmitting the virus since the start of this fiasco.
Humans could have brought the virus into Texas. The Texas Dairy worker
that was the first infection had a virus that had branched off earlier
than the strain that infected Texas. They never got the name of that
dairy worker, so they couldn't ask him where he could have been
infected. He could have been infected in the state that was the origin
of the dairy infection. One of his fellow dairy workers could have been
infected in that same state, but brought in the Texas strain (one with
more substitutions than the strain that infected the first dairy worker).
Ron Okimoto

New Texas Waste water data indicates that H5N1 seems to have started to
be detected in 10 Texas cities monitored in March 2024 (when the Texas
Dairy infections were first detected) but were not found in samples
taken earlier in the year. This study used a detection method that uses
a probe to pull out the influenza RNA from the waste water, so they can
get the sequence of RNA and determine what strain of influenza they are
picking up. Even though there was no indication of human infections (no
increase in influenza cases) the waste water for these cities were
positive. The high levels of influenza in various Texas county's waste
water has been attributed to dairy farms, but these samples were from
city waste water. It could still be due to milk products in the waste
water, but it might also mean that there were undetected human
infections (the letter claims waste water results are due to "multiple
animal" infections). Most of the infected humans have had mild
symptoms, and the infection was not respiratory, but involved their
eyes. The virus was not detected in nasal swabs, and only in eye swab
samples.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2405937

It could be that human infection was already wide spread in March.
Since contact tracing and testing was never implemented, no one knows
how wide spread the human infections have been and how much they have
contributed to the infection of dairy herds and poultry flocks. One
dairy worker that did not have contact with cattle was found to have
been infected by the dairy virus, and may have been infected by human
contact (the antibody positive dairy worker worked in the dairy
cafeteria). My take is that the infections may have gone unnoticed
because the symptoms are just itchy eyes, and it was the spring pollen
season. People touching infected surfaces and then rubbing their eyes
would be infected.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-14 22:09:15 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be
positive for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-largest-
milk- producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-three-
dairy-cow- herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to just
one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry farms, but
months ago (before I retired in May) I noted that California had
high levels of influenza virus in the waste water around the bay
area. At that time they had estimated that the virus first
infected cattle Sept or Oct 2023, and they hadn't yet found viral
sequence from herds infected that early in Texas. When I looked
into the avian influenza cases the Dairy virus was most similar to
one isolated from a Peregrine falcon in California. California
had high levels of influenza virus in their waste water
(associated with infected herds in Texas and Michigan) and
Commercial poultry farms started to go down in the central valley
in Oct 2023 (the flocks get infected by the dairy workers). A
number of flocks went down within a few months working their way
up North and around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in Georgia,
and tried to get the name of the person that would have the
sequence data of the California samples (they had not been
included in any of the dairy virus studies) but I was told that
the USDA did not give out that information. I told the guy that
they needed to check out those samples, but his comment was that
they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley virus
they could identify the region where the initial dairy infection
occurred and it spread from California to Texas. The virus spread
rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came from somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with
infected herds by now if they had acted on the waste water data
and the FDA identification of states with virus positive dairy
products. The Dairy workers are not being protected from being
infected in states that refuse to identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-bird-
flu- missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this
person did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My guess
is that it is person to person transmission. Missouri is one of
the states that has not verified any positive dairy herds (no one
has been looking), but Kansas and Oklahoma have positive dairy
herds. They have known that it was likely human transmission into
Kansas and North Dakota from Texas because neither states got
cattle from Texas, but both states got the virus from Texas. Human
to human transmission has probably been going on for some time, but
they never started contact tracing to identify possibly infected
herds nor to determine how the virus was transmitted to the herds
and poultry flocks that have been infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy virus.
The article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have positive
herds at this time, but commercial poultry flocks have gone down and
that usually happens when the dairies are infected and dairy workers
take it to the poultry farms. Previous human cases had mild
symptoms, but this person was hospitalized. The USDA and CDC are
still not doing anything to identify all the infected herds in
states like Missouri, so nothing much has been done to minimize the
exposure of dairy workers. My guess is that an infected dairy
worker infected this patient, and it is a case of human to human
transmission.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human infection
without contact with animals is worse than can be imagined. They did
not send a team to investigate, and have not started contact tracing
and testing of close contacts. It seems crazy when you think that
the person was hospitalized, and this is obviously a serious case of
infection. What they do not want is the 50% human mortality
associated with the H5N1 virus to become a reality for the dairy
virus. The CDC continues to do nothing but monitor the disease in
two states, which is just nuts. They are actually waiting for it to
become a noticeable problem somewhere else before starting to do
anything in other states.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-
questions- cat-raw-milk/
Ron Okimoto
R

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-missouri-resident-bird-flu-
livestock.html
This ariticle seems to be trying to downplay the possibility of human
to human transmission. The Texas antibody testing of dairy workers
have already come out with evidence for human to human transmission
because one of the workers positive for H5 antibodies did not have
contact with cattle, and only had contact with other dairy workers.
There was also the case of the indoor cat in Colorado that was
probably infected by humans. The states that did not get cattle from
affected states, but still got the dairy virus were likely infected by
human dairy workers migrating to those states. Kansas got infected
from Texas, and then Dakota got infected with the strain in Kansas,
and Kansas did not get cattle from Texas, and South Dakota did not get
cattle from Kansas. The CDC has known this since about the beginning
of detecting the infections in April, but they never started human
contact tracing to determine how all the dairy herds and poultry
flocks were being infected.
Humans have been transmitting the virus since the start of this
fiasco. Humans could have brought the virus into Texas. The Texas
Dairy worker that was the first infection had a virus that had
branched off earlier than the strain that infected Texas. They never
got the name of that dairy worker, so they couldn't ask him where he
could have been infected. He could have been infected in the state
that was the origin of the dairy infection. One of his fellow dairy
workers could have been infected in that same state, but brought in
the Texas strain (one with more substitutions than the strain that
infected the first dairy worker).
Ron Okimoto

New Texas Waste water data indicates that H5N1 seems to have started to
be detected in 10 Texas cities monitored in March 2024 (when the Texas
Dairy infections were first detected) but were not found in samples
taken earlier in the year. This study used a detection method that uses
a probe to pull out the influenza RNA from the waste water, so they can
get the sequence of RNA and determine what strain of influenza they are
picking up. Even though there was no indication of human infections (no
increase in influenza cases) the waste water for these cities were
positive. The high levels of influenza in various Texas county's waste
water has been attributed to dairy farms, but these samples were from
city waste water. It could still be due to milk products in the waste
water, but it might also mean that there were undetected human
infections (the letter claims waste water results are due to "multiple
animal" infections). Most of the infected humans have had mild
symptoms, and the infection was not respiratory, but involved their
eyes. The virus was not detected in nasal swabs, and only in eye swab
samples.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2405937
It could be that human infection was already wide spread in March. Since
contact tracing and testing was never implemented, no one knows how wide
spread the human infections have been and how much they have contributed
to the infection of dairy herds and poultry flocks. One dairy worker
that did not have contact with cattle was found to have been infected by
the dairy virus, and may have been infected by human contact (the
antibody positive dairy worker worked in the dairy cafeteria). My take
is that the infections may have gone unnoticed because the symptoms are
just itchy eyes, and it was the spring pollen season. People touching
infected surfaces and then rubbing their eyes would be infected.
Ron Okimoto

Other close contacts to the Missouri case showed symptoms. One
recovered and was in the same household as the positive patient, but was
not tested. A second health care worker showed symptoms, but tested
negative. The issue is that the health care worker was likely tested by
local medical and not the CDC so the collection was not done as it
should have been. The CDC knows that the patients eyes should be
tested, but the Missouri doctors likely only tested them by taking the
usual nasal or bucal swabs.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-says-no-clear-source-bird-flu-infection-missouri-patient-rcna170871

They do not think that the Missouri patient had a severe case of
influenza because she did not have the usual symptoms, but she did have
Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and weakness that have been symptoms
exhibited by the humans infected with the Asian H5N1 high mortality
virus. They do not acknowledge that fact in claiming that the patient
did not have the usual influenza symptoms. This almost seems like some
type of cover up instead of trying to get the answers that need to be
gotten out of Missouri. The CDC still does not have a team in Missouri
running down contacts, and trying to get to the source of the infection.
They only admitted that someone else in the household may have been
infected, and would have likely been infected by the hospital patient.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-14 22:23:13 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be
positive for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-largest-
milk- producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-three-
dairy-cow- herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to just
one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry farms, but
months ago (before I retired in May) I noted that California had
high levels of influenza virus in the waste water around the bay
area. At that time they had estimated that the virus first
infected cattle Sept or Oct 2023, and they hadn't yet found viral
sequence from herds infected that early in Texas. When I looked
into the avian influenza cases the Dairy virus was most similar to
one isolated from a Peregrine falcon in California. California
had high levels of influenza virus in their waste water
(associated with infected herds in Texas and Michigan) and
Commercial poultry farms started to go down in the central valley
in Oct 2023 (the flocks get infected by the dairy workers). A
number of flocks went down within a few months working their way
up North and around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in Georgia,
and tried to get the name of the person that would have the
sequence data of the California samples (they had not been
included in any of the dairy virus studies) but I was told that
the USDA did not give out that information. I told the guy that
they needed to check out those samples, but his comment was that
they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley virus
they could identify the region where the initial dairy infection
occurred and it spread from California to Texas. The virus spread
rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came from somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with
infected herds by now if they had acted on the waste water data
and the FDA identification of states with virus positive dairy
products. The Dairy workers are not being protected from being
infected in states that refuse to identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-bird-
flu- missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this
person did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My guess
is that it is person to person transmission. Missouri is one of
the states that has not verified any positive dairy herds (no one
has been looking), but Kansas and Oklahoma have positive dairy
herds. They have known that it was likely human transmission into
Kansas and North Dakota from Texas because neither states got
cattle from Texas, but both states got the virus from Texas. Human
to human transmission has probably been going on for some time, but
they never started contact tracing to identify possibly infected
herds nor to determine how the virus was transmitted to the herds
and poultry flocks that have been infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy virus.
The article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have positive
herds at this time, but commercial poultry flocks have gone down and
that usually happens when the dairies are infected and dairy workers
take it to the poultry farms. Previous human cases had mild
symptoms, but this person was hospitalized. The USDA and CDC are
still not doing anything to identify all the infected herds in
states like Missouri, so nothing much has been done to minimize the
exposure of dairy workers. My guess is that an infected dairy
worker infected this patient, and it is a case of human to human
transmission.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human infection
without contact with animals is worse than can be imagined. They did
not send a team to investigate, and have not started contact tracing
and testing of close contacts. It seems crazy when you think that
the person was hospitalized, and this is obviously a serious case of
infection. What they do not want is the 50% human mortality
associated with the H5N1 virus to become a reality for the dairy
virus. The CDC continues to do nothing but monitor the disease in
two states, which is just nuts. They are actually waiting for it to
become a noticeable problem somewhere else before starting to do
anything in other states.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-
questions- cat-raw-milk/
Ron Okimoto
R

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-missouri-resident-bird-flu-
livestock.html
This ariticle seems to be trying to downplay the possibility of human
to human transmission. The Texas antibody testing of dairy workers
have already come out with evidence for human to human transmission
because one of the workers positive for H5 antibodies did not have
contact with cattle, and only had contact with other dairy workers.
There was also the case of the indoor cat in Colorado that was
probably infected by humans. The states that did not get cattle from
affected states, but still got the dairy virus were likely infected by
human dairy workers migrating to those states. Kansas got infected
from Texas, and then Dakota got infected with the strain in Kansas,
and Kansas did not get cattle from Texas, and South Dakota did not get
cattle from Kansas. The CDC has known this since about the beginning
of detecting the infections in April, but they never started human
contact tracing to determine how all the dairy herds and poultry
flocks were being infected.
Humans have been transmitting the virus since the start of this
fiasco. Humans could have brought the virus into Texas. The Texas
Dairy worker that was the first infection had a virus that had
branched off earlier than the strain that infected Texas. They never
got the name of that dairy worker, so they couldn't ask him where he
could have been infected. He could have been infected in the state
that was the origin of the dairy infection. One of his fellow dairy
workers could have been infected in that same state, but brought in
the Texas strain (one with more substitutions than the strain that
infected the first dairy worker).
Ron Okimoto

New Texas Waste water data indicates that H5N1 seems to have started to
be detected in 10 Texas cities monitored in March 2024 (when the Texas
Dairy infections were first detected) but were not found in samples
taken earlier in the year. This study used a detection method that uses
a probe to pull out the influenza RNA from the waste water, so they can
get the sequence of RNA and determine what strain of influenza they are
picking up. Even though there was no indication of human infections (no
increase in influenza cases) the waste water for these cities were
positive. The high levels of influenza in various Texas county's waste
water has been attributed to dairy farms, but these samples were from
city waste water. It could still be due to milk products in the waste
water, but it might also mean that there were undetected human
infections (the letter claims waste water results are due to "multiple
animal" infections). Most of the infected humans have had mild
symptoms, and the infection was not respiratory, but involved their
eyes. The virus was not detected in nasal swabs, and only in eye swab
samples.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2405937
It could be that human infection was already wide spread in March. Since
contact tracing and testing was never implemented, no one knows how wide
spread the human infections have been and how much they have contributed
to the infection of dairy herds and poultry flocks. One dairy worker
that did not have contact with cattle was found to have been infected by
the dairy virus, and may have been infected by human contact (the
antibody positive dairy worker worked in the dairy cafeteria). My take
is that the infections may have gone unnoticed because the symptoms are
just itchy eyes, and it was the spring pollen season. People touching
infected surfaces and then rubbing their eyes would be infected.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/health/missouri-bird-flu-h5n1/index.html

The CDC has admitted that the Missouri H5 virus is closely related to
dairy virus and is likely part of the spread of the dairy H5N1, but they
did not release any phylogenetic analysis which is pretty much done when
you do the sequence comparison, so we do not know where the dairy virus
may have come from. The Colorado virus that infected all the farm
workers in that state was most closely related to the virus isolated
from a Michigan farm worker. So somehow that virus got from Michigan to
Colorado, and some dairy worker or their close contact likely was
infected and took it to Colorado. The virus doesn't survive on
equipment or clothing long enough to make the trip. The CDC is trying
to down play the possiblity of human transmission, but it has likely
been going on since the start of the dairy virus fiasco. They have
known since Texas and Michigan that human dairy workers likely took the
virus to poultry farms because it doesn't survive on clothing long
enough to go from farm to farm and no one takes equipment from a dairy
farm to a poultry farm, and they found that some dairy workers and or
their close contacts also worked on commercial poultry farms. The most
likely scenario was that these dairy workers were infected and took the
virus to the other farms, but this has been downplayed from the beginning.

Ron Okimoto

2024-09-14 23:12:30 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be
positive for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-largest-
milk- producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-three-
dairy-cow- herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to
just one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry farms,
but months ago (before I retired in May) I noted that California
had high levels of influenza virus in the waste water around the
bay area. At that time they had estimated that the virus first
infected cattle Sept or Oct 2023, and they hadn't yet found viral
sequence from herds infected that early in Texas. When I looked
into the avian influenza cases the Dairy virus was most similar
to one isolated from a Peregrine falcon in California.
California had high levels of influenza virus in their waste
water (associated with infected herds in Texas and Michigan) and
Commercial poultry farms started to go down in the central valley
in Oct 2023 (the flocks get infected by the dairy workers). A
number of flocks went down within a few months working their way
up North and around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in Georgia,
and tried to get the name of the person that would have the
sequence data of the California samples (they had not been
included in any of the dairy virus studies) but I was told that
the USDA did not give out that information. I told the guy that
they needed to check out those samples, but his comment was that
they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley virus
they could identify the region where the initial dairy infection
occurred and it spread from California to Texas. The virus
spread rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came from somewhere
else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with
infected herds by now if they had acted on the waste water data
and the FDA identification of states with virus positive dairy
products. The Dairy workers are not being protected from being
infected in states that refuse to identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-bird-
flu- missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this
person did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My
guess is that it is person to person transmission. Missouri is
one of the states that has not verified any positive dairy herds
(no one has been looking), but Kansas and Oklahoma have positive
dairy herds. They have known that it was likely human transmission
into Kansas and North Dakota from Texas because neither states got
cattle from Texas, but both states got the virus from Texas.
Human to human transmission has probably been going on for some
time, but they never started contact tracing to identify possibly
infected herds nor to determine how the virus was transmitted to
the herds and poultry flocks that have been infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy virus.
The article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have positive
herds at this time, but commercial poultry flocks have gone down
and that usually happens when the dairies are infected and dairy
workers take it to the poultry farms. Previous human cases had
mild symptoms, but this person was hospitalized. The USDA and CDC
are still not doing anything to identify all the infected herds in
states like Missouri, so nothing much has been done to minimize the
exposure of dairy workers. My guess is that an infected dairy
worker infected this patient, and it is a case of human to human
transmission.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human
infection without contact with animals is worse than can be
imagined. They did not send a team to investigate, and have not
started contact tracing and testing of close contacts. It seems
crazy when you think that the person was hospitalized, and this is
obviously a serious case of infection. What they do not want is the
50% human mortality associated with the H5N1 virus to become a
reality for the dairy virus. The CDC continues to do nothing but
monitor the disease in two states, which is just nuts. They are
actually waiting for it to become a noticeable problem somewhere
else before starting to do anything in other states.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-
questions- cat-raw-milk/
Ron Okimoto
R

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-missouri-resident-bird-flu-
livestock.html
This ariticle seems to be trying to downplay the possibility of human
to human transmission. The Texas antibody testing of dairy workers
have already come out with evidence for human to human transmission
because one of the workers positive for H5 antibodies did not have
contact with cattle, and only had contact with other dairy workers.
There was also the case of the indoor cat in Colorado that was
probably infected by humans. The states that did not get cattle from
affected states, but still got the dairy virus were likely infected
by human dairy workers migrating to those states. Kansas got
infected from Texas, and then Dakota got infected with the strain in
Kansas, and Kansas did not get cattle from Texas, and South Dakota
did not get cattle from Kansas. The CDC has known this since about
the beginning of detecting the infections in April, but they never
started human contact tracing to determine how all the dairy herds
and poultry flocks were being infected.
Humans have been transmitting the virus since the start of this
fiasco. Humans could have brought the virus into Texas. The Texas
Dairy worker that was the first infection had a virus that had
branched off earlier than the strain that infected Texas. They never
got the name of that dairy worker, so they couldn't ask him where he
could have been infected. He could have been infected in the state
that was the origin of the dairy infection. One of his fellow dairy
workers could have been infected in that same state, but brought in
the Texas strain (one with more substitutions than the strain that
infected the first dairy worker).
Ron Okimoto

New Texas Waste water data indicates that H5N1 seems to have started
to be detected in 10 Texas cities monitored in March 2024 (when the
Texas Dairy infections were first detected) but were not found in
samples taken earlier in the year. This study used a detection method
that uses a probe to pull out the influenza RNA from the waste water,
so they can get the sequence of RNA and determine what strain of
influenza they are picking up. Even though there was no indication of
human infections (no increase in influenza cases) the waste water for
these cities were positive. The high levels of influenza in various
Texas county's waste water has been attributed to dairy farms, but
these samples were from city waste water. It could still be due to
milk products in the waste water, but it might also mean that there
were undetected human infections (the letter claims waste water
results are due to "multiple animal" infections). Most of the
infected humans have had mild symptoms, and the infection was not
respiratory, but involved their eyes. The virus was not detected in
nasal swabs, and only in eye swab samples.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2405937
It could be that human infection was already wide spread in March.
Since contact tracing and testing was never implemented, no one knows
how wide spread the human infections have been and how much they have
contributed to the infection of dairy herds and poultry flocks. One
dairy worker that did not have contact with cattle was found to have
been infected by the dairy virus, and may have been infected by human
contact (the antibody positive dairy worker worked in the dairy
cafeteria). My take is that the infections may have gone unnoticed
because the symptoms are just itchy eyes, and it was the spring pollen
season. People touching infected surfaces and then rubbing their eyes
would be infected.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/health/missouri-bird-flu-h5n1/index.html
The CDC has admitted that the Missouri H5 virus is closely related to
dairy virus and is likely part of the spread of the dairy H5N1, but they
did not release any phylogenetic analysis which is pretty much done when
you do the sequence comparison, so we do not know where the dairy virus
may have come from. The Colorado virus that infected all the farm
workers in that state was most closely related to the virus isolated
from a Michigan farm worker. So somehow that virus got from Michigan to
Colorado, and some dairy worker or their close contact likely was
infected and took it to Colorado. The virus doesn't survive on
equipment or clothing long enough to make the trip. The CDC is trying
to down play the possiblity of human transmission, but it has likely
been going on since the start of the dairy virus fiasco. They have
known since Texas and Michigan that human dairy workers likely took the
virus to poultry farms because it doesn't survive on clothing long
enough to go from farm to farm and no one takes equipment from a dairy
farm to a poultry farm, and they found that some dairy workers and or
their close contacts also worked on commercial poultry farms. The most
likely scenario was that these dairy workers were infected and took the
virus to the other farms, but this has been downplayed from the beginning.
Ron Okimoto

Is there any reason why this might be different
from other types of flu?

Is there any reason why it would be difficult to
add to the next flu shot?

Is there any reason why they might not bother doing
that?

Are you purposefully suppressing the word 'influenza'
as a joke?

Am I confused. Is this a totally different type of
virus?

RonO

2024-09-15 01:27:20 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be
positive for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-largest-
milk- producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-three-
dairy-cow- herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to
just one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry farms,
but months ago (before I retired in May) I noted that California
had high levels of influenza virus in the waste water around the
bay area. At that time they had estimated that the virus first
infected cattle Sept or Oct 2023, and they hadn't yet found
viral sequence from herds infected that early in Texas. When I
looked into the avian influenza cases the Dairy virus was most
similar to one isolated from a Peregrine falcon in California.
California had high levels of influenza virus in their waste
water (associated with infected herds in Texas and Michigan) and
Commercial poultry farms started to go down in the central
valley in Oct 2023 (the flocks get infected by the dairy
workers). A number of flocks went down within a few months
working their way up North and around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in
Georgia, and tried to get the name of the person that would have
the sequence data of the California samples (they had not been
included in any of the dairy virus studies) but I was told that
the USDA did not give out that information. I told the guy that
they needed to check out those samples, but his comment was that
they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley
virus they could identify the region where the initial dairy
infection occurred and it spread from California to Texas. The
virus spread rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came from
somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with
infected herds by now if they had acted on the waste water data
and the FDA identification of states with virus positive dairy
products. The Dairy workers are not being protected from being
infected in states that refuse to identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-bird-
flu- missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this
person did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My
guess is that it is person to person transmission. Missouri is
one of the states that has not verified any positive dairy herds
(no one has been looking), but Kansas and Oklahoma have positive
dairy herds. They have known that it was likely human
transmission into Kansas and North Dakota from Texas because
neither states got cattle from Texas, but both states got the
virus from Texas. Human to human transmission has probably been
going on for some time, but they never started contact tracing to
identify possibly infected herds nor to determine how the virus
was transmitted to the herds and poultry flocks that have been
infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy virus.
The article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have positive
herds at this time, but commercial poultry flocks have gone down
and that usually happens when the dairies are infected and dairy
workers take it to the poultry farms. Previous human cases had
mild symptoms, but this person was hospitalized. The USDA and CDC
are still not doing anything to identify all the infected herds in
states like Missouri, so nothing much has been done to minimize
the exposure of dairy workers. My guess is that an infected dairy
worker infected this patient, and it is a case of human to human
transmission.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human
infection without contact with animals is worse than can be
imagined. They did not send a team to investigate, and have not
started contact tracing and testing of close contacts. It seems
crazy when you think that the person was hospitalized, and this is
obviously a serious case of infection. What they do not want is
the 50% human mortality associated with the H5N1 virus to become a
reality for the dairy virus. The CDC continues to do nothing but
monitor the disease in two states, which is just nuts. They are
actually waiting for it to become a noticeable problem somewhere
else before starting to do anything in other states.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-
questions- cat-raw-milk/
Ron Okimoto
R

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-missouri-resident-bird-flu-
livestock.html
This ariticle seems to be trying to downplay the possibility of
human to human transmission. The Texas antibody testing of dairy
workers have already come out with evidence for human to human
transmission because one of the workers positive for H5 antibodies
did not have contact with cattle, and only had contact with other
dairy workers. There was also the case of the indoor cat in Colorado
that was probably infected by humans. The states that did not get
cattle from affected states, but still got the dairy virus were
likely infected by human dairy workers migrating to those states.
Kansas got infected from Texas, and then Dakota got infected with
the strain in Kansas, and Kansas did not get cattle from Texas, and
South Dakota did not get cattle from Kansas. The CDC has known this
since about the beginning of detecting the infections in April, but
they never started human contact tracing to determine how all the
dairy herds and poultry flocks were being infected.
Humans have been transmitting the virus since the start of this
fiasco. Humans could have brought the virus into Texas. The Texas
Dairy worker that was the first infection had a virus that had
branched off earlier than the strain that infected Texas. They
never got the name of that dairy worker, so they couldn't ask him
where he could have been infected. He could have been infected in
the state that was the origin of the dairy infection. One of his
fellow dairy workers could have been infected in that same state,
but brought in the Texas strain (one with more substitutions than
the strain that infected the first dairy worker).
Ron Okimoto

New Texas Waste water data indicates that H5N1 seems to have started
to be detected in 10 Texas cities monitored in March 2024 (when the
Texas Dairy infections were first detected) but were not found in
samples taken earlier in the year. This study used a detection
method that uses a probe to pull out the influenza RNA from the waste
water, so they can get the sequence of RNA and determine what strain
of influenza they are picking up. Even though there was no
indication of human infections (no increase in influenza cases) the
waste water for these cities were positive. The high levels of
influenza in various Texas county's waste water has been attributed
to dairy farms, but these samples were from city waste water. It
could still be due to milk products in the waste water, but it might
also mean that there were undetected human infections (the letter
claims waste water results are due to "multiple animal" infections).
Most of the infected humans have had mild symptoms, and the infection
was not respiratory, but involved their eyes. The virus was not
detected in nasal swabs, and only in eye swab samples.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2405937
It could be that human infection was already wide spread in March.
Since contact tracing and testing was never implemented, no one knows
how wide spread the human infections have been and how much they have
contributed to the infection of dairy herds and poultry flocks. One
dairy worker that did not have contact with cattle was found to have
been infected by the dairy virus, and may have been infected by human
contact (the antibody positive dairy worker worked in the dairy
cafeteria). My take is that the infections may have gone unnoticed
because the symptoms are just itchy eyes, and it was the spring
pollen season. People touching infected surfaces and then rubbing
their eyes would be infected.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/health/missouri-bird-flu-h5n1/index.html
The CDC has admitted that the Missouri H5 virus is closely related to
dairy virus and is likely part of the spread of the dairy H5N1, but
they did not release any phylogenetic analysis which is pretty much
done when you do the sequence comparison, so we do not know where the
dairy virus may have come from. The Colorado virus that infected all
the farm workers in that state was most closely related to the virus
isolated from a Michigan farm worker. So somehow that virus got from
Michigan to Colorado, and some dairy worker or their close contact
likely was infected and took it to Colorado. The virus doesn't
survive on equipment or clothing long enough to make the trip. The
CDC is trying to down play the possiblity of human transmission, but
it has likely been going on since the start of the dairy virus
fiasco. They have known since Texas and Michigan that human dairy
workers likely took the virus to poultry farms because it doesn't
survive on clothing long enough to go from farm to farm and no one
takes equipment from a dairy farm to a poultry farm, and they found
that some dairy workers and or their close contacts also worked on
commercial poultry farms. The most likely scenario was that these
dairy workers were infected and took the virus to the other farms, but
this has been downplayed from the beginning.
Ron Okimoto

Is there any reason why this might be different
from other types of flu?

This is influenza A, but it has not fully adapted to infecting mammals
at this time, and is still considered to be an Avian Influenza, but all
human influenza A strains were once Avian Influenzas. The dairy H5N1
strain that infected the Colorado workers seems to more easily infect
humans, but it is claimed that it still lacks the usual mutations needed
to become a human infectious virus.

The Dairy H5N1 is related to the Asian Avian H5N1 virus that is
associated with 50% mortality in the humans that it has infected, but
the Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant. It does have the same H5 and N1 genes
as the Asian strain, but half of it's genome comes from a North American
strain of Avian influenza. Instead of having a 50% mortality in humans
the dairy H5N1 has, so far, exhibited only mild symptoms in those
infected. The major fear is that it will coinfect with a human
influenza A strain and recombine to become more of a hazard.

Post by x
Is there any reason why it would be difficult to
add to the next flu shot?

They can add it to the next flu shot, but at this time they do not know
what the sequence will be if it adapts to humans. A current H5 vaccine
strain of the virus does make neutralizing antibodies to the H5 antigen
of the Dairy virus, but this latest Missouri strain has 2 additional
amino acid substitutions in it that may compromise the neutralizing
ability of that H5 vaccine strain.

Post by x
Is there any reason why they might not bother doing
that?

They are already planning to make a vaccine, as soon as the virus adapts
to humans and they know what they need to make a vaccine against.

Post by x
Are you purposefully suppressing the word 'influenza'
as a joke?

Everyone should know that bird flu or dairy flu is influenza.

Post by x
Am I confused. Is this a totally different type of
virus?

It is currently classified as an H5N1 Avian Influenza virus, but it can
obviously infect mammals. As I noted before all human influenza A
strains evolved from Avian influenza strains. That is where the "A"
comes from. H5 and N1 are just allele designations of the two main viral
antigens used to classify viral subtypes. The Dairy virus H5 gene is
the same clade (2.3.4.4b) as the H5N1 Asian avian influenza virus that
has killed 800 people (50% mortality), but it is genotype B3.13 because
part of it's genome comes from another Avian influenza virus. We are
lucky that this is the case because, so far, there hasn't been any
mortality among the infected humans (high mortality among infected cats)
and only mild symptoms.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-17 01:18:12 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be
positive for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-largest-
milk- producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-three-
dairy-cow- herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to
just one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry farms,
but months ago (before I retired in May) I noted that
California had high levels of influenza virus in the waste
water around the bay area. At that time they had estimated
that the virus first infected cattle Sept or Oct 2023, and they
hadn't yet found viral sequence from herds infected that early
in Texas. When I looked into the avian influenza cases the
Dairy virus was most similar to one isolated from a Peregrine
falcon in California. California had high levels of influenza
virus in their waste water (associated with infected herds in
Texas and Michigan) and Commercial poultry farms started to go
down in the central valley in Oct 2023 (the flocks get infected
by the dairy workers). A number of flocks went down within a
few months working their way up North and around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in
Georgia, and tried to get the name of the person that would
have the sequence data of the California samples (they had not
been included in any of the dairy virus studies) but I was told
that the USDA did not give out that information. I told the
guy that they needed to check out those samples, but his
comment was that they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley
virus they could identify the region where the initial dairy
infection occurred and it spread from California to Texas. The
virus spread rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came from
somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with
infected herds by now if they had acted on the waste water data
and the FDA identification of states with virus positive dairy
products. The Dairy workers are not being protected from being
infected in states that refuse to identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-bird-
flu- missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this
person did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My
guess is that it is person to person transmission. Missouri is
one of the states that has not verified any positive dairy herds
(no one has been looking), but Kansas and Oklahoma have positive
dairy herds. They have known that it was likely human
transmission into Kansas and North Dakota from Texas because
neither states got cattle from Texas, but both states got the
virus from Texas. Human to human transmission has probably been
going on for some time, but they never started contact tracing
to identify possibly infected herds nor to determine how the
virus was transmitted to the herds and poultry flocks that have
been infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy virus.
The article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have positive
herds at this time, but commercial poultry flocks have gone down
and that usually happens when the dairies are infected and dairy
workers take it to the poultry farms. Previous human cases had
mild symptoms, but this person was hospitalized. The USDA and
CDC are still not doing anything to identify all the infected
herds in states like Missouri, so nothing much has been done to
minimize the exposure of dairy workers. My guess is that an
infected dairy worker infected this patient, and it is a case of
human to human transmission.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human
infection without contact with animals is worse than can be
imagined. They did not send a team to investigate, and have not
started contact tracing and testing of close contacts. It seems
crazy when you think that the person was hospitalized, and this is
obviously a serious case of infection. What they do not want is
the 50% human mortality associated with the H5N1 virus to become a
reality for the dairy virus. The CDC continues to do nothing but
monitor the disease in two states, which is just nuts. They are
actually waiting for it to become a noticeable problem somewhere
else before starting to do anything in other states.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-
questions- cat-raw-milk/
Ron Okimoto
R

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-missouri-resident-bird-flu-
livestock.html
This ariticle seems to be trying to downplay the possibility of
human to human transmission. The Texas antibody testing of dairy
workers have already come out with evidence for human to human
transmission because one of the workers positive for H5 antibodies
did not have contact with cattle, and only had contact with other
dairy workers. There was also the case of the indoor cat in
Colorado that was probably infected by humans. The states that did
not get cattle from affected states, but still got the dairy virus
were likely infected by human dairy workers migrating to those
states. Kansas got infected from Texas, and then Dakota got
infected with the strain in Kansas, and Kansas did not get cattle
from Texas, and South Dakota did not get cattle from Kansas. The
CDC has known this since about the beginning of detecting the
infections in April, but they never started human contact tracing
to determine how all the dairy herds and poultry flocks were being
infected.
Humans have been transmitting the virus since the start of this
fiasco. Humans could have brought the virus into Texas. The Texas
Dairy worker that was the first infection had a virus that had
branched off earlier than the strain that infected Texas. They
never got the name of that dairy worker, so they couldn't ask him
where he could have been infected. He could have been infected in
the state that was the origin of the dairy infection. One of his
fellow dairy workers could have been infected in that same state,
but brought in the Texas strain (one with more substitutions than
the strain that infected the first dairy worker).
Ron Okimoto

New Texas Waste water data indicates that H5N1 seems to have started
to be detected in 10 Texas cities monitored in March 2024 (when the
Texas Dairy infections were first detected) but were not found in
samples taken earlier in the year. This study used a detection
method that uses a probe to pull out the influenza RNA from the
waste water, so they can get the sequence of RNA and determine what
strain of influenza they are picking up. Even though there was no
indication of human infections (no increase in influenza cases) the
waste water for these cities were positive. The high levels of
influenza in various Texas county's waste water has been attributed
to dairy farms, but these samples were from city waste water. It
could still be due to milk products in the waste water, but it might
also mean that there were undetected human infections (the letter
claims waste water results are due to "multiple animal" infections).
Most of the infected humans have had mild symptoms, and the
infection was not respiratory, but involved their eyes. The virus
was not detected in nasal swabs, and only in eye swab samples.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2405937
It could be that human infection was already wide spread in March.
Since contact tracing and testing was never implemented, no one
knows how wide spread the human infections have been and how much
they have contributed to the infection of dairy herds and poultry
flocks. One dairy worker that did not have contact with cattle was
found to have been infected by the dairy virus, and may have been
infected by human contact (the antibody positive dairy worker worked
in the dairy cafeteria). My take is that the infections may have
gone unnoticed because the symptoms are just itchy eyes, and it was
the spring pollen season. People touching infected surfaces and
then rubbing their eyes would be infected.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/health/missouri-bird-flu-h5n1/index.html
The CDC has admitted that the Missouri H5 virus is closely related to
dairy virus and is likely part of the spread of the dairy H5N1, but
they did not release any phylogenetic analysis which is pretty much
done when you do the sequence comparison, so we do not know where the
dairy virus may have come from. The Colorado virus that infected all
the farm workers in that state was most closely related to the virus
isolated from a Michigan farm worker. So somehow that virus got from
Michigan to Colorado, and some dairy worker or their close contact
likely was infected and took it to Colorado. The virus doesn't
survive on equipment or clothing long enough to make the trip. The
CDC is trying to down play the possiblity of human transmission, but
it has likely been going on since the start of the dairy virus
fiasco. They have known since Texas and Michigan that human dairy
workers likely took the virus to poultry farms because it doesn't
survive on clothing long enough to go from farm to farm and no one
takes equipment from a dairy farm to a poultry farm, and they found
that some dairy workers and or their close contacts also worked on
commercial poultry farms. The most likely scenario was that these
dairy workers were infected and took the virus to the other farms,
but this has been downplayed from the beginning.
Ron Okimoto

Is there any reason why this might be different
from other types of flu?

This is influenza A, but it has not fully adapted to infecting mammals
at this time, and is still considered to be an Avian Influenza, but all
human influenza A strains were once Avian Influenzas. The dairy H5N1
strain that infected the Colorado workers seems to more easily infect
humans, but it is claimed that it still lacks the usual mutations needed
to become a human infectious virus.
The Dairy H5N1 is related to the Asian Avian H5N1 virus that is
associated with 50% mortality in the humans that it has infected, but
the Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant. It does have the same H5 and N1 genes
as the Asian strain, but half of it's genome comes from a North American
strain of Avian influenza. Instead of having a 50% mortality in humans
the dairy H5N1 has, so far, exhibited only mild symptoms in those
infected. The major fear is that it will coinfect with a human
influenza A strain and recombine to become more of a hazard.

Post by x
Is there any reason why it would be difficult to
add to the next flu shot?

Post by x
Is there any reason why they might not bother doing
that?

They are already planning to make a vaccine, as soon as the virus adapts
to humans and they know what they need to make a vaccine against.

Post by x
Are you purposefully suppressing the word 'influenza'
as a joke?

Everyone should know that bird flu or dairy flu is influenza.

Post by x
Am I confused. Is this a totally different type of
virus?

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-09-04/bird-flu-outbreaks-confirmed-in-three-california-dairy-farms

The California dairy influenza is reportedly most closely related to the
Colorado virus (which is most closely related to the virus isolated from
one of the Michigan dairy workers). Doesn't this mean that it is more
likely that an infected dairy worker brought the virus from Colorado?
They claim that it is due to transfer of cattle, but all lactating
cattle have to be tested before interstate transfer. Later in the
article they claim that transfer of newborn calves is common, and my
guess is that they do not fall under the new USDA guidelines for
testing. The calves could be infected if they are fed contaminated milk
before shipping them out.

I thought that they may have picked up evidence of earlier infection in
the California herds, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-17 01:30:40 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be
positive for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-
largest- milk- producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks-
in-three- dairy-cow- herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to
just one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry
farms, but months ago (before I retired in May) I noted that
California had high levels of influenza virus in the waste
water around the bay area. At that time they had estimated
that the virus first infected cattle Sept or Oct 2023, and
they hadn't yet found viral sequence from herds infected that
early in Texas. When I looked into the avian influenza cases
the Dairy virus was most similar to one isolated from a
Peregrine falcon in California. California had high levels of
influenza virus in their waste water (associated with infected
herds in Texas and Michigan) and Commercial poultry farms
started to go down in the central valley in Oct 2023 (the
flocks get infected by the dairy workers). A number of flocks
went down within a few months working their way up North and
around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in
Georgia, and tried to get the name of the person that would
have the sequence data of the California samples (they had not
been included in any of the dairy virus studies) but I was
told that the USDA did not give out that information. I told
the guy that they needed to check out those samples, but his
comment was that they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley
virus they could identify the region where the initial dairy
infection occurred and it spread from California to Texas.
The virus spread rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came
from somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with
infected herds by now if they had acted on the waste water
data and the FDA identification of states with virus positive
dairy products. The Dairy workers are not being protected
from being infected in states that refuse to identify their
infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-
bird- flu- missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this
person did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My
guess is that it is person to person transmission. Missouri is
one of the states that has not verified any positive dairy
herds (no one has been looking), but Kansas and Oklahoma have
positive dairy herds. They have known that it was likely human
transmission into Kansas and North Dakota from Texas because
neither states got cattle from Texas, but both states got the
virus from Texas. Human to human transmission has probably been
going on for some time, but they never started contact tracing
to identify possibly infected herds nor to determine how the
virus was transmitted to the herds and poultry flocks that have
been infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy
virus. The article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have
positive herds at this time, but commercial poultry flocks have
gone down and that usually happens when the dairies are infected
and dairy workers take it to the poultry farms. Previous human
cases had mild symptoms, but this person was hospitalized. The
USDA and CDC are still not doing anything to identify all the
infected herds in states like Missouri, so nothing much has been
done to minimize the exposure of dairy workers. My guess is
that an infected dairy worker infected this patient, and it is a
case of human to human transmission.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human
infection without contact with animals is worse than can be
imagined. They did not send a team to investigate, and have not
started contact tracing and testing of close contacts. It seems
crazy when you think that the person was hospitalized, and this
is obviously a serious case of infection. What they do not want
is the 50% human mortality associated with the H5N1 virus to
become a reality for the dairy virus. The CDC continues to do
nothing but monitor the disease in two states, which is just
nuts. They are actually waiting for it to become a noticeable
problem somewhere else before starting to do anything in other states.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-
questions- cat-raw-milk/
Ron Okimoto
R

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-missouri-resident-bird-flu-
livestock.html
This ariticle seems to be trying to downplay the possibility of
human to human transmission. The Texas antibody testing of dairy
workers have already come out with evidence for human to human
transmission because one of the workers positive for H5 antibodies
did not have contact with cattle, and only had contact with other
dairy workers. There was also the case of the indoor cat in
Colorado that was probably infected by humans. The states that
did not get cattle from affected states, but still got the dairy
virus were likely infected by human dairy workers migrating to
those states. Kansas got infected from Texas, and then Dakota got
infected with the strain in Kansas, and Kansas did not get cattle
from Texas, and South Dakota did not get cattle from Kansas. The
CDC has known this since about the beginning of detecting the
infections in April, but they never started human contact tracing
to determine how all the dairy herds and poultry flocks were being
infected.
Humans have been transmitting the virus since the start of this
fiasco. Humans could have brought the virus into Texas. The Texas
Dairy worker that was the first infection had a virus that had
branched off earlier than the strain that infected Texas. They
never got the name of that dairy worker, so they couldn't ask him
where he could have been infected. He could have been infected in
the state that was the origin of the dairy infection. One of his
fellow dairy workers could have been infected in that same state,
but brought in the Texas strain (one with more substitutions than
the strain that infected the first dairy worker).
Ron Okimoto

New Texas Waste water data indicates that H5N1 seems to have
started to be detected in 10 Texas cities monitored in March 2024
(when the Texas Dairy infections were first detected) but were not
found in samples taken earlier in the year. This study used a
detection method that uses a probe to pull out the influenza RNA
from the waste water, so they can get the sequence of RNA and
determine what strain of influenza they are picking up. Even
though there was no indication of human infections (no increase in
influenza cases) the waste water for these cities were positive.
The high levels of influenza in various Texas county's waste water
has been attributed to dairy farms, but these samples were from
city waste water. It could still be due to milk products in the
waste water, but it might also mean that there were undetected
human infections (the letter claims waste water results are due to
"multiple animal" infections). Most of the infected humans have had
mild symptoms, and the infection was not respiratory, but involved
their eyes. The virus was not detected in nasal swabs, and only in
eye swab samples.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2405937
It could be that human infection was already wide spread in March.
Since contact tracing and testing was never implemented, no one
knows how wide spread the human infections have been and how much
they have contributed to the infection of dairy herds and poultry
flocks. One dairy worker that did not have contact with cattle was
found to have been infected by the dairy virus, and may have been
infected by human contact (the antibody positive dairy worker
worked in the dairy cafeteria). My take is that the infections may
have gone unnoticed because the symptoms are just itchy eyes, and
it was the spring pollen season. People touching infected surfaces
and then rubbing their eyes would be infected.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/health/missouri-bird-flu-h5n1/index.html
The CDC has admitted that the Missouri H5 virus is closely related
to dairy virus and is likely part of the spread of the dairy H5N1,
but they did not release any phylogenetic analysis which is pretty
much done when you do the sequence comparison, so we do not know
where the dairy virus may have come from. The Colorado virus that
infected all the farm workers in that state was most closely related
to the virus isolated from a Michigan farm worker. So somehow that
virus got from Michigan to Colorado, and some dairy worker or their
close contact likely was infected and took it to Colorado. The
virus doesn't survive on equipment or clothing long enough to make
the trip. The CDC is trying to down play the possiblity of human
transmission, but it has likely been going on since the start of the
dairy virus fiasco. They have known since Texas and Michigan that
human dairy workers likely took the virus to poultry farms because
it doesn't survive on clothing long enough to go from farm to farm
and no one takes equipment from a dairy farm to a poultry farm, and
they found that some dairy workers and or their close contacts also
worked on commercial poultry farms. The most likely scenario was
that these dairy workers were infected and took the virus to the
other farms, but this has been downplayed from the beginning.
Ron Okimoto

Is there any reason why this might be different
from other types of flu?

This is influenza A, but it has not fully adapted to infecting mammals
at this time, and is still considered to be an Avian Influenza, but
all human influenza A strains were once Avian Influenzas. The dairy
H5N1 strain that infected the Colorado workers seems to more easily
infect humans, but it is claimed that it still lacks the usual
mutations needed to become a human infectious virus.
The Dairy H5N1 is related to the Asian Avian H5N1 virus that is
associated with 50% mortality in the humans that it has infected, but
the Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant. It does have the same H5 and N1
genes as the Asian strain, but half of it's genome comes from a North
American strain of Avian influenza. Instead of having a 50% mortality
in humans the dairy H5N1 has, so far, exhibited only mild symptoms in
those infected. The major fear is that it will coinfect with a human
influenza A strain and recombine to become more of a hazard.

Post by x
Is there any reason why it would be difficult to
add to the next flu shot?

They can add it to the next flu shot, but at this time they do not
know what the sequence will be if it adapts to humans. A current H5
vaccine strain of the virus does make neutralizing antibodies to the
H5 antigen of the Dairy virus, but this latest Missouri strain has 2
additional amino acid substitutions in it that may compromise the
neutralizing ability of that H5 vaccine strain.

Post by x
Is there any reason why they might not bother doing
that?

They are already planning to make a vaccine, as soon as the virus
adapts to humans and they know what they need to make a vaccine against.

Post by x
Are you purposefully suppressing the word 'influenza'
as a joke?

Everyone should know that bird flu or dairy flu is influenza.

Post by x
Am I confused. Is this a totally different type of
virus?

It is currently classified as an H5N1 Avian Influenza virus, but it
can obviously infect mammals. As I noted before all human influenza A
strains evolved from Avian influenza strains. That is where the "A"
comes from. H5 and N1 are just allele designations of the two main
viral antigens used to classify viral subtypes. The Dairy virus H5
gene is the same clade (2.3.4.4b) as the H5N1 Asian avian influenza
virus that has killed 800 people (50% mortality), but it is genotype
B3.13 because part of it's genome comes from another Avian influenza
virus. We are lucky that this is the case because, so far, there
hasn't been any mortality among the infected humans (high mortality
among infected cats) and only mild symptoms.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-09-04/bird-flu-outbreaks-
confirmed-in-three-california-dairy-farms
The California dairy influenza is reportedly most closely related to the
Colorado virus (which is most closely related to the virus isolated from
one of the Michigan dairy workers). Doesn't this mean that it is more
likely that an infected dairy worker brought the virus from Colorado?
They claim that it is due to transfer of cattle, but all lactating
cattle have to be tested before interstate transfer. Later in the
article they claim that transfer of newborn calves is common, and my
guess is that they do not fall under the new USDA guidelines for
testing. The calves could be infected if they are fed contaminated milk
before shipping them out.
I thought that they may have picked up evidence of earlier infection in
the California herds, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What the article does not mention is that 10 (11 if you count the
Michigan dairy worker with the same strain) of the 14 known human
infection cases were infected by the Colorado strain of the virus. That
should be an important consideration when they consider the possible
infection of the California dairy workers. Probably 1/5 of the dairy
cattle in the US are in California. The impact on human infections
could be something to worry about.

Ron Okimoto

2024-09-17 18:18:16 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be
positive for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-
largest- milk-
producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-outbreaks- in-three-
dairy-cow- herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated to
just one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry
farms, but months ago (before I retired in May) I noted that
California had high levels of influenza virus in the waste
water around the bay area. At that time they had estimated
that the virus first infected cattle Sept or Oct 2023, and
they hadn't yet found viral sequence from herds infected that
early in Texas. When I looked into the avian influenza cases
the Dairy virus was most similar to one isolated from a
Peregrine falcon in California. California had high levels of
influenza virus in their waste water (associated with
infected herds in Texas and Michigan) and Commercial poultry
farms started to go down in the central valley in Oct 2023
(the flocks get infected by the dairy workers). A number of
flocks went down within a few months working their way up
North and around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in
Georgia, and tried to get the name of the person that would
have the sequence data of the California samples (they had
not been included in any of the dairy virus studies) but I
was told that the USDA did not give out that information. I
told the guy that they needed to check out those samples, but
his comment was that they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley
virus they could identify the region where the initial dairy
infection occurred and it spread from California to Texas.
The virus spread rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came
from somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with
infected herds by now if they had acted on the waste water
data and the FDA identification of states with virus positive
dairy products. The Dairy workers are not being protected
from being infected in states that refuse to identify their
infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-
bird- flu- missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but this
person did not have contact with poultry or dairy cattle. My
guess is that it is person to person transmission. Missouri
is one of the states that has not verified any positive dairy
herds (no one has been looking), but Kansas and Oklahoma have
positive dairy herds. They have known that it was likely human
transmission into Kansas and North Dakota from Texas because
neither states got cattle from Texas, but both states got the
virus from Texas. Human to human transmission has probably
been going on for some time, but they never started contact
tracing to identify possibly infected herds nor to determine
how the virus was transmitted to the herds and poultry flocks
that have been infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy
virus. The article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have
positive herds at this time, but commercial poultry flocks have
gone down and that usually happens when the dairies are
infected and dairy workers take it to the poultry farms.
Previous human cases had mild symptoms, but this person was
hospitalized. The USDA and CDC are still not doing anything to
identify all the infected herds in states like Missouri, so
nothing much has been done to minimize the exposure of dairy
workers. My guess is that an infected dairy worker infected
this patient, and it is a case of human to human transmission.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human
infection without contact with animals is worse than can be
imagined. They did not send a team to investigate, and have not
started contact tracing and testing of close contacts. It seems
crazy when you think that the person was hospitalized, and this
is obviously a serious case of infection. What they do not want
is the 50% human mortality associated with the H5N1 virus to
become a reality for the dairy virus. The CDC continues to do
nothing but monitor the disease in two states, which is just
nuts. They are actually waiting for it to become a noticeable
problem somewhere else before starting to do anything in other states.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-
questions- cat-raw-milk/
Ron Okimoto
R

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-missouri-resident-bird-flu- livestock.html
This ariticle seems to be trying to downplay the possibility of
human to human transmission. The Texas antibody testing of dairy
workers have already come out with evidence for human to human
transmission because one of the workers positive for H5
antibodies did not have contact with cattle, and only had contact
with other dairy workers. There was also the case of the indoor
cat in Colorado that was probably infected by humans. The states
that did not get cattle from affected states, but still got the
dairy virus were likely infected by human dairy workers migrating
to those states. Kansas got infected from Texas, and then Dakota
got infected with the strain in Kansas, and Kansas did not get
cattle from Texas, and South Dakota did not get cattle from
Kansas. The CDC has known this since about the beginning of
detecting the infections in April, but they never started human
contact tracing to determine how all the dairy herds and poultry
flocks were being infected.
Humans have been transmitting the virus since the start of this
fiasco. Humans could have brought the virus into Texas. The
Texas Dairy worker that was the first infection had a virus that
had branched off earlier than the strain that infected Texas.
They never got the name of that dairy worker, so they couldn't
ask him where he could have been infected. He could have been
infected in the state that was the origin of the dairy
infection. One of his fellow dairy workers could have been
infected in that same state, but brought in the Texas strain (one
with more substitutions than the strain that infected the first
dairy worker).
Ron Okimoto

New Texas Waste water data indicates that H5N1 seems to have
started to be detected in 10 Texas cities monitored in March 2024
(when the Texas Dairy infections were first detected) but were not
found in samples taken earlier in the year. This study used a
detection method that uses a probe to pull out the influenza RNA
from the waste water, so they can get the sequence of RNA and
determine what strain of influenza they are picking up. Even
though there was no indication of human infections (no increase in
influenza cases) the waste water for these cities were positive.
The high levels of influenza in various Texas county's waste water
has been attributed to dairy farms, but these samples were from
city waste water. It could still be due to milk products in the
waste water, but it might also mean that there were undetected
human infections (the letter claims waste water results are due to
"multiple animal" infections). Most of the infected humans have
had mild symptoms, and the infection was not respiratory, but
involved their eyes. The virus was not detected in nasal swabs,
and only in eye swab samples.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2405937
It could be that human infection was already wide spread in March.
Since contact tracing and testing was never implemented, no one
knows how wide spread the human infections have been and how much
they have contributed to the infection of dairy herds and poultry
flocks. One dairy worker that did not have contact with cattle
was found to have been infected by the dairy virus, and may have
been infected by human contact (the antibody positive dairy worker
worked in the dairy cafeteria). My take is that the infections
may have gone unnoticed because the symptoms are just itchy eyes,
and it was the spring pollen season. People touching infected
surfaces and then rubbing their eyes would be infected.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/health/missouri-bird-flu-h5n1/index.html
The CDC has admitted that the Missouri H5 virus is closely related
to dairy virus and is likely part of the spread of the dairy H5N1,
but they did not release any phylogenetic analysis which is pretty
much done when you do the sequence comparison, so we do not know
where the dairy virus may have come from. The Colorado virus that
infected all the farm workers in that state was most closely
related to the virus isolated from a Michigan farm worker. So
somehow that virus got from Michigan to Colorado, and some dairy
worker or their close contact likely was infected and took it to
Colorado. The virus doesn't survive on equipment or clothing long
enough to make the trip. The CDC is trying to down play the
possiblity of human transmission, but it has likely been going on
since the start of the dairy virus fiasco. They have known since
Texas and Michigan that human dairy workers likely took the virus
to poultry farms because it doesn't survive on clothing long enough
to go from farm to farm and no one takes equipment from a dairy
farm to a poultry farm, and they found that some dairy workers and
or their close contacts also worked on commercial poultry farms.
The most likely scenario was that these dairy workers were infected
and took the virus to the other farms, but this has been downplayed
from the beginning.
Ron Okimoto

Is there any reason why this might be different
from other types of flu?

This is influenza A, but it has not fully adapted to infecting
mammals at this time, and is still considered to be an Avian
Influenza, but all human influenza A strains were once Avian
Influenzas. The dairy H5N1 strain that infected the Colorado workers
seems to more easily infect humans, but it is claimed that it still
lacks the usual mutations needed to become a human infectious virus.
The Dairy H5N1 is related to the Asian Avian H5N1 virus that is
associated with 50% mortality in the humans that it has infected, but
the Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant. It does have the same H5 and N1
genes as the Asian strain, but half of it's genome comes from a North
American strain of Avian influenza. Instead of having a 50%
mortality in humans the dairy H5N1 has, so far, exhibited only mild
symptoms in those infected. The major fear is that it will coinfect
with a human influenza A strain and recombine to become more of a
hazard.

Post by x
Is there any reason why it would be difficult to
add to the next flu shot?

They can add it to the next flu shot, but at this time they do not
know what the sequence will be if it adapts to humans. A current H5
vaccine strain of the virus does make neutralizing antibodies to the
H5 antigen of the Dairy virus, but this latest Missouri strain has 2
additional amino acid substitutions in it that may compromise the
neutralizing ability of that H5 vaccine strain.

Post by x
Is there any reason why they might not bother doing
that?

They are already planning to make a vaccine, as soon as the virus
adapts to humans and they know what they need to make a vaccine against.

Post by x
Are you purposefully suppressing the word 'influenza'
as a joke?

Everyone should know that bird flu or dairy flu is influenza.

Post by x
Am I confused. Is this a totally different type of
virus?

It is currently classified as an H5N1 Avian Influenza virus, but it
can obviously infect mammals. As I noted before all human influenza
A strains evolved from Avian influenza strains. That is where the
"A" comes from. H5 and N1 are just allele designations of the two
main viral antigens used to classify viral subtypes. The Dairy virus
H5 gene is the same clade (2.3.4.4b) as the H5N1 Asian avian
influenza virus that has killed 800 people (50% mortality), but it is
genotype B3.13 because part of it's genome comes from another Avian
influenza virus. We are lucky that this is the case because, so far,
there hasn't been any mortality among the infected humans (high
mortality among infected cats) and only mild symptoms.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-09-04/bird-flu-outbreaks- confirmed-in-three-california-dairy-farms
The California dairy influenza is reportedly most closely related to
the Colorado virus (which is most closely related to the virus
isolated from one of the Michigan dairy workers). Doesn't this mean
that it is more likely that an infected dairy worker brought the virus
from Colorado? They claim that it is due to transfer of cattle, but
all lactating cattle have to be tested before interstate transfer.
Later in the article they claim that transfer of newborn calves is
common, and my guess is that they do not fall under the new USDA
guidelines for testing. The calves could be infected if they are fed
contaminated milk before shipping them out.
I thought that they may have picked up evidence of earlier infection
in the California herds, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Ok. Sorry to have implied that about a joke.

What is going on with the flu strains with a 50% fatality rate?

Is that something involving low numbers of infected and statistics
or is that something real about the nature of those flu strains?

Does that involve differences in antigen presentation?

Do they have symptoms similar to other flu but more severe
or can they have vastly different symptom sets in comparison
with other colds or flus?

RonO

2024-09-17 18:57:05 UTC

Post by RonO
3 herds in California central valley have been found to be
positive for the dairy virus.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/29/california-nations-
largest- milk- producer-discloses-possible-bird-flu-
outbreaks- in-three- dairy-cow- herds/
They claim that California workers are "usually" dedicated
to just one herd so do not pick up shifts at nearby poultry
farms, but months ago (before I retired in May) I noted that
California had high levels of influenza virus in the waste
water around the bay area. At that time they had estimated
that the virus first infected cattle Sept or Oct 2023, and
they hadn't yet found viral sequence from herds infected
that early in Texas. When I looked into the avian influenza
cases the Dairy virus was most similar to one isolated from
a Peregrine falcon in California. California had high levels
of influenza virus in their waste water (associated with
infected herds in Texas and Michigan) and Commercial poultry
farms started to go down in the central valley in Oct 2023
(the flocks get infected by the dairy workers). A number of
flocks went down within a few months working their way up
North and around the bay area.
I contacted a person at the Avian disease ARS station in
Georgia, and tried to get the name of the person that would
have the sequence data of the California samples (they had
not been included in any of the dairy virus studies) but I
was told that the USDA did not give out that information. I
told the guy that they needed to check out those samples,
but his comment was that they were busy.
My prediction is that when they sequence the central valley
virus they could identify the region where the initial dairy
infection occurred and it spread from California to Texas.
The virus spread rapidly out of Texas, but it probably came
from somewhere else.
The CDC and USDA would have identified many more states with
infected herds by now if they had acted on the waste water
data and the FDA identification of states with virus
positive dairy products. The Dairy workers are not being
protected from being infected in states that refuse to
identify their infected herds.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-infected-
bird- flu- missouri-no-contact-animals-know-rcna170010
There has been a case of H5N1 in a human in Missouri, but
this person did not have contact with poultry or dairy
cattle. My guess is that it is person to person
transmission. Missouri is one of the states that has not
verified any positive dairy herds (no one has been looking),
but Kansas and Oklahoma have positive dairy herds. They have
known that it was likely human transmission into Kansas and
North Dakota from Texas because neither states got cattle
from Texas, but both states got the virus from Texas. Human
to human transmission has probably been going on for some
time, but they never started contact tracing to identify
possibly infected herds nor to determine how the virus was
transmitted to the herds and poultry flocks that have been
infected.
Ron Okimoto

The virus is H5, but hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy
virus. The article notes that Missouri hasn't claimed to have
positive herds at this time, but commercial poultry flocks
have gone down and that usually happens when the dairies are
infected and dairy workers take it to the poultry farms.
Previous human cases had mild symptoms, but this person was
hospitalized. The USDA and CDC are still not doing anything
to identify all the infected herds in states like Missouri, so
nothing much has been done to minimize the exposure of dairy
workers. My guess is that an infected dairy worker infected
this patient, and it is a case of human to human transmission.
Ron Okimoto

As stupid as it may be the CDC response to the latest human
infection without contact with animals is worse than can be
imagined. They did not send a team to investigate, and have
not started contact tracing and testing of close contacts. It
seems crazy when you think that the person was hospitalized,
and this is obviously a serious case of infection. What they
do not want is the 50% human mortality associated with the H5N1
virus to become a reality for the dairy virus. The CDC
continues to do nothing but monitor the disease in two states,
which is just nuts. They are actually waiting for it to become
a noticeable problem somewhere else before starting to do
anything in other states.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/missouri-h5-bird-flu-case-
questions- cat-raw-milk/
Ron Okimoto
R

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-missouri-resident-bird-
flu- livestock.html
This ariticle seems to be trying to downplay the possibility of
human to human transmission. The Texas antibody testing of
dairy workers have already come out with evidence for human to
human transmission because one of the workers positive for H5
antibodies did not have contact with cattle, and only had
contact with other dairy workers. There was also the case of the
indoor cat in Colorado that was probably infected by humans.
The states that did not get cattle from affected states, but
still got the dairy virus were likely infected by human dairy
workers migrating to those states. Kansas got infected from
Texas, and then Dakota got infected with the strain in Kansas,
and Kansas did not get cattle from Texas, and South Dakota did
not get cattle from Kansas. The CDC has known this since about
the beginning of detecting the infections in April, but they
never started human contact tracing to determine how all the
dairy herds and poultry flocks were being infected.
Humans have been transmitting the virus since the start of this
fiasco. Humans could have brought the virus into Texas. The
Texas Dairy worker that was the first infection had a virus that
had branched off earlier than the strain that infected Texas.
They never got the name of that dairy worker, so they couldn't
ask him where he could have been infected. He could have been
infected in the state that was the origin of the dairy
infection. One of his fellow dairy workers could have been
infected in that same state, but brought in the Texas strain
(one with more substitutions than the strain that infected the
first dairy worker).
Ron Okimoto

New Texas Waste water data indicates that H5N1 seems to have
started to be detected in 10 Texas cities monitored in March 2024
(when the Texas Dairy infections were first detected) but were
not found in samples taken earlier in the year. This study used
a detection method that uses a probe to pull out the influenza
RNA from the waste water, so they can get the sequence of RNA and
determine what strain of influenza they are picking up. Even
though there was no indication of human infections (no increase
in influenza cases) the waste water for these cities were
positive. The high levels of influenza in various Texas county's
waste water has been attributed to dairy farms, but these samples
were from city waste water. It could still be due to milk
products in the waste water, but it might also mean that there
were undetected human infections (the letter claims waste water
results are due to "multiple animal" infections). Most of the
infected humans have had mild symptoms, and the infection was not
respiratory, but involved their eyes. The virus was not detected
in nasal swabs, and only in eye swab samples.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2405937
It could be that human infection was already wide spread in
March. Since contact tracing and testing was never implemented,
no one knows how wide spread the human infections have been and
how much they have contributed to the infection of dairy herds
and poultry flocks. One dairy worker that did not have contact
with cattle was found to have been infected by the dairy virus,
and may have been infected by human contact (the antibody
positive dairy worker worked in the dairy cafeteria). My take is
that the infections may have gone unnoticed because the symptoms
are just itchy eyes, and it was the spring pollen season. People
touching infected surfaces and then rubbing their eyes would be
infected.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/health/missouri-bird-flu-h5n1/
index.html
The CDC has admitted that the Missouri H5 virus is closely related
to dairy virus and is likely part of the spread of the dairy H5N1,
but they did not release any phylogenetic analysis which is pretty
much done when you do the sequence comparison, so we do not know
where the dairy virus may have come from. The Colorado virus that
infected all the farm workers in that state was most closely
related to the virus isolated from a Michigan farm worker. So
somehow that virus got from Michigan to Colorado, and some dairy
worker or their close contact likely was infected and took it to
Colorado. The virus doesn't survive on equipment or clothing long
enough to make the trip. The CDC is trying to down play the
possiblity of human transmission, but it has likely been going on
since the start of the dairy virus fiasco. They have known since
Texas and Michigan that human dairy workers likely took the virus
to poultry farms because it doesn't survive on clothing long
enough to go from farm to farm and no one takes equipment from a
dairy farm to a poultry farm, and they found that some dairy
workers and or their close contacts also worked on commercial
poultry farms. The most likely scenario was that these dairy
workers were infected and took the virus to the other farms, but
this has been downplayed from the beginning.
Ron Okimoto

Is there any reason why this might be different
from other types of flu?

This is influenza A, but it has not fully adapted to infecting
mammals at this time, and is still considered to be an Avian
Influenza, but all human influenza A strains were once Avian
Influenzas. The dairy H5N1 strain that infected the Colorado
workers seems to more easily infect humans, but it is claimed that
it still lacks the usual mutations needed to become a human
infectious virus.
The Dairy H5N1 is related to the Asian Avian H5N1 virus that is
associated with 50% mortality in the humans that it has infected,
but the Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant. It does have the same H5 and
N1 genes as the Asian strain, but half of it's genome comes from a
North American strain of Avian influenza. Instead of having a 50%
mortality in humans the dairy H5N1 has, so far, exhibited only mild
symptoms in those infected. The major fear is that it will coinfect
with a human influenza A strain and recombine to become more of a
hazard.

Post by x
Is there any reason why it would be difficult to
add to the next flu shot?

They can add it to the next flu shot, but at this time they do not
know what the sequence will be if it adapts to humans. A current H5
vaccine strain of the virus does make neutralizing antibodies to the
H5 antigen of the Dairy virus, but this latest Missouri strain has 2
additional amino acid substitutions in it that may compromise the
neutralizing ability of that H5 vaccine strain.

Post by x
Is there any reason why they might not bother doing
that?

They are already planning to make a vaccine, as soon as the virus
adapts to humans and they know what they need to make a vaccine against.

Post by x
Are you purposefully suppressing the word 'influenza'
as a joke?

Everyone should know that bird flu or dairy flu is influenza.

Post by x
Am I confused. Is this a totally different type of
virus?

It is currently classified as an H5N1 Avian Influenza virus, but it
can obviously infect mammals. As I noted before all human influenza
A strains evolved from Avian influenza strains. That is where the
"A" comes from. H5 and N1 are just allele designations of the two
main viral antigens used to classify viral subtypes. The Dairy
virus H5 gene is the same clade (2.3.4.4b) as the H5N1 Asian avian
influenza virus that has killed 800 people (50% mortality), but it
is genotype B3.13 because part of it's genome comes from another
Avian influenza virus. We are lucky that this is the case because,
so far, there hasn't been any mortality among the infected humans
(high mortality among infected cats) and only mild symptoms.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-09-04/bird-flu-
outbreaks- confirmed-in-three-california-dairy-farms
The California dairy influenza is reportedly most closely related to
the Colorado virus (which is most closely related to the virus
isolated from one of the Michigan dairy workers). Doesn't this mean
that it is more likely that an infected dairy worker brought the
virus from Colorado? They claim that it is due to transfer of cattle,
but all lactating cattle have to be tested before interstate
transfer. Later in the article they claim that transfer of newborn
calves is common, and my guess is that they do not fall under the new
USDA guidelines for testing. The calves could be infected if they
are fed contaminated milk before shipping them out.
I thought that they may have picked up evidence of earlier infection
in the California herds, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What the article does not mention is that 10 (11 if you count the
Michigan dairy worker with the same strain) of the 14 known human
infection cases were infected by the Colorado strain of the virus.
That should be an important consideration when they consider the
possible infection of the California dairy workers. Probably 1/5 of
the dairy cattle in the US are in California. The impact on human
infections could be something to worry about.
Ron Okimoto

Ok. Sorry to have implied that about a joke.
What is going on with the flu strains with a 50% fatality rate?

There is an Asian and European H5N1 strain of avian influenza that has
been responsible for over 800 human deaths (50% mortality of known
infected humans). Infection is not a common occurrence and requires
contact with infected birds. Wild bird migration brought this virus to
North America, but the virus that infected the Dairy cattle was a
recombinant with another North American avian influenza strain. It
inherited the H5 and N1 antigen genes from the Asian virus, but around
half of it's genome comes from another influenza virus. This is likely
why it doesn't have a 50% mortality when it infects humans. So far
humans have only exhibited mild symptoms, but the worry is that the
virus will mutate to better infect humans and become more pathogenic.

Is that something involving low numbers of infected and statistics
or is that something real about the nature of those flu strains?

As noted above the Asian H5N1 has infected fewer than 2,000 people in
Asia and Europe, but over 800 of them died due to the infection.

Does that involve differences in antigen presentation?

Due to the recombinant half, the dairy virus is antigenically different
than the Asian H5N1, but initially the H5 antigen was neutralized by
related H5 virus that the CDC had already banked for vaccine use. One
thing that they are not making a big deal about is that the latest human
case (without known animal contact) in Missouri has a couple of amino
acid substitutions relative to the original dairy H5 and the Missouri H5
can avoid the existing H5 antibodies, and those antibodies are now 10 to
100 times less effective in neutralizing an infection. This just means
that they have to start working up a vaccine strain with the new H5
mutations.

Do they have symptoms similar to other flu but more severe
or can they have vastly different symptom sets in comparison
with other colds or flus?

Most of the humans infected with the dairy virus have mild symptoms with
most of them having only itchy eyes. The virus was not isolated from
nasal swabs so the infection had not become respiratory. Virus has been
isolated from eye swabs of infected individuals. The latest Missouri
example is different. Apparently the virus was detected in samples
taken normally to check for respiratory infections, but the patient was
not exhibiting the normal respiratory symptoms. Instead the patient had
"nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and weakness". The CDC has noted that these
are not the normal respiratory symptoms of influenza, but they do not
note that these are symptoms that have been associated with the H5N1
Asian virus with a high human mortality. The CDC seems to have the goal
of downplaying how bad things probably are.

Ron Okimoto

*Hemidactylus*

2024-09-18 16:11:29 UTC

[snip]

Ok. Sorry to have implied that about a joke.
What is going on with the flu strains with a 50% fatality rate?

Is that something involving low numbers of infected and statistics
or is that something real about the nature of those flu strains?

As noted above the Asian H5N1 has infected fewer than 2,000 people in
Asia and Europe, but over 800 of them died due to the infection.

Does that involve differences in antigen presentation?

Do they have symptoms similar to other flu but more severe
or can they have vastly different symptom sets in comparison
with other colds or flus?

So the common misnomer of “stomach flu” applied to norovirus would actually
apply in cases where influenza infection actually does result in digestive
symptoms?

So if someone says “I have stomach flu” I would now reply “I sure hope
you’re wrongly calling noro that, because actual H5 stomach flu is much
worse!”

RonO

2024-09-18 17:58:25 UTC

Ok. Sorry to have implied that about a joke.
What is going on with the flu strains with a 50% fatality rate?

Is that something involving low numbers of infected and statistics
or is that something real about the nature of those flu strains?

As noted above the Asian H5N1 has infected fewer than 2,000 people in
Asia and Europe, but over 800 of them died due to the infection.

Does that involve differences in antigen presentation?

Do they have symptoms similar to other flu but more severe
or can they have vastly different symptom sets in comparison
with other colds or flus?

So the common misnomer of “stomach flu” applied to norovirus would actually
apply in cases where influenza infection actually does result in digestive
symptoms?

Yes, influenza virus can be associated with "stomach flu" symptoms, and
as I noted the H5N1 avian influenza virus that has a high mortality in
humans has produced these symptoms.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22401-bird-flu

Until the Missouri case the dairy H5N1 had not been associated with
those symptoms, but they have occurred in the high mortality cases of
humans infected by the Asian strain of H5N1.

Post by *Hemidactylus*
So if someone says “I have stomach flu” I would now reply “I sure hope
you’re wrongly calling noro that, because actual H5 stomach flu is much
worse!”

The Asian H5N1 has a 50% mortality in humans. As I have noted the Dairy
H5N1 is a recombinant and around half of it's genome comes from another
avian influenza virus. The Dairy H5N1 had only been associated with
mild symptoms until the Missouri case, and the CDC is trying to claim
that the Missouri patients symptoms were due to something else other
than the dairy virus. They are probably wrong because another person
(close contact of the hospitalized patient) exhibited the same symptoms
but was never tested.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-19 12:52:51 UTC

Ok. Sorry to have implied that about a joke.
What is going on with the flu strains with a 50% fatality rate?

Is that something involving low numbers of infected and statistics
or is that something real about the nature of those flu strains?

As noted above the Asian H5N1 has infected fewer than 2,000 people in
Asia and Europe, but over 800 of them died due to the infection.

Does that involve differences in antigen presentation?

Do they have symptoms similar to other flu but more severe
or can they have vastly different symptom sets in comparison
with other colds or flus?

So the common misnomer of “stomach flu” applied to norovirus would actually
apply in cases where influenza infection actually does result in digestive
symptoms?

Yes, influenza virus can be associated with "stomach flu" symptoms, and
as I noted the H5N1 avian influenza virus that has a high mortality in
humans has produced these symptoms.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22401-bird-flu
Until the Missouri case the dairy H5N1 had not been associated with
those symptoms, but they have occurred in the high mortality cases of
humans infected by the Asian strain of H5N1.

Post by *Hemidactylus*
So if someone says “I have stomach flu” I would now reply “I sure hope
you’re wrongly calling noro that, because actual H5 stomach flu is much
worse!”

What should be noted on TO is that the CDC is trying to downplay how bad
the current situation is by using a common creationist tactic. It is
the lie of omission. It is the truth that the patient did not have the
usual influenza symptoms, and the symptoms associated with the dairy
virus, but they know that the symptoms that were expressed have been
associated with the Asian H5N1 human infections that resulted in a high
mortality among those infected. Instead of being nothing to worry about
and the claims that it is a "one off" type of infection. These symptoms
could be evidence that the virus is changing to become more pathogenic
in humans, and is evidence for human to human transmission because this
patient did not have contact with farm animals.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-21 14:04:27 UTC

Ok. Sorry to have implied that about a joke.
What is going on with the flu strains with a 50% fatality rate?

Is that something involving low numbers of infected and statistics
or is that something real about the nature of those flu strains?

As noted above the Asian H5N1 has infected fewer than 2,000 people in
Asia and Europe, but over 800 of them died due to the infection.

Does that involve differences in antigen presentation?

Do they have symptoms similar to other flu but more severe
or can they have vastly different symptom sets in comparison
with other colds or flus?

So the common misnomer of “stomach flu” applied to norovirus would actually
apply in cases where influenza infection actually does result in digestive
symptoms?

Yes, influenza virus can be associated with "stomach flu" symptoms,
and as I noted the H5N1 avian influenza virus that has a high
mortality in humans has produced these symptoms.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22401-bird-flu
Until the Missouri case the dairy H5N1 had not been associated with
those symptoms, but they have occurred in the high mortality cases of
humans infected by the Asian strain of H5N1.

Post by *Hemidactylus*
So if someone says “I have stomach flu” I would now reply “I sure hope
you’re wrongly calling noro that, because actual H5 stomach flu is much
worse!”

The Asian H5N1 has a 50% mortality in humans. As I have noted the
Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant and around half of it's genome comes from
another avian influenza virus. The Dairy H5N1 had only been
associated with mild symptoms until the Missouri case, and the CDC is
trying to claim that the Missouri patients symptoms were due to
something else other than the dairy virus. They are probably wrong
because another person (close contact of the hospitalized patient)
exhibited the same symptoms but was never tested.
Ron Okimoto

California seems to have an expanding situation. They thought that they
had it contained to a few herds, but 10 more herds have been detected
since the first couple of positive test results. It looks like
California has at least 16 total cases so far. They thought that they
had detected it early, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It seems
to have been more wide spread before they detected the first cases.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-22 14:15:51 UTC

Ok. Sorry to have implied that about a joke.
What is going on with the flu strains with a 50% fatality rate?

Is that something involving low numbers of infected and statistics
or is that something real about the nature of those flu strains?

As noted above the Asian H5N1 has infected fewer than 2,000 people in
Asia and Europe, but over 800 of them died due to the infection.

Does that involve differences in antigen presentation?

Do they have symptoms similar to other flu but more severe
or can they have vastly different symptom sets in comparison
with other colds or flus?

So the common misnomer of “stomach flu” applied to norovirus would actually
apply in cases where influenza infection actually does result in digestive
symptoms?

Yes, influenza virus can be associated with "stomach flu" symptoms,
and as I noted the H5N1 avian influenza virus that has a high
mortality in humans has produced these symptoms.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22401-bird-flu
Until the Missouri case the dairy H5N1 had not been associated with
those symptoms, but they have occurred in the high mortality cases of
humans infected by the Asian strain of H5N1.

Post by *Hemidactylus*
So if someone says “I have stomach flu” I would now reply “I sure hope
you’re wrongly calling noro that, because actual H5 stomach flu is much
worse!”

The Asian H5N1 has a 50% mortality in humans. As I have noted the
Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant and around half of it's genome comes from
another avian influenza virus. The Dairy H5N1 had only been
associated with mild symptoms until the Missouri case, and the CDC is
trying to claim that the Missouri patients symptoms were due to
something else other than the dairy virus. They are probably wrong
because another person (close contact of the hospitalized patient)
exhibited the same symptoms but was never tested.
Ron Okimoto

What should be noted on TO is that the CDC is trying to downplay how
bad the current situation is by using a common creationist tactic. It
is the lie of omission. It is the truth that the patient did not have
the usual influenza symptoms, and the symptoms associated with the
dairy virus, but they know that the symptoms that were expressed have
been associated with the Asian H5N1 human infections that resulted in
a high mortality among those infected. Instead of being nothing to
worry about and the claims that it is a "one off" type of infection.
These symptoms could be evidence that the virus is changing to become
more pathogenic in humans, and is evidence for human to human
transmission because this patient did not have contact with farm animals.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/22/missouri-bird-flu-case-no-animal-contact

This Guardian article claims that only 240 people have been tested for
H5N1 infection. This number is pathetically low considering the number
of dairies and poultry farms that have had exposed workers, and the fact
that contact tracing and testing should have been going on from the
first identified human case. 14 of the 240 have tested positive (5.8%).
Does anyone remember the claims that 5% was the point for positive
covid tests that indicated that things were bad enough to call it a
pandemic and that infection risk in the area was high? They were
dealing with hundreds of thousands of tests by then, but testing never
started for the Dairy virus.

A lot of cases have likely gone undetected. Texas did an antibody test
for H5N1 on 14 dairy workers and 2 of them were positive for H5
antibodies (had been previously infected). One of the dairy workers had
not had contact with cattle (worked in the dairy cafeteria) and was
evidence of human to human spread. That was in August when the results
were released.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-23 16:06:30 UTC

Ok. Sorry to have implied that about a joke.
What is going on with the flu strains with a 50% fatality rate?

Is that something involving low numbers of infected and statistics
or is that something real about the nature of those flu strains?

As noted above the Asian H5N1 has infected fewer than 2,000 people in
Asia and Europe, but over 800 of them died due to the infection.

Does that involve differences in antigen presentation?

Due to the recombinant half, the dairy virus is antigenically different
than the Asian H5N1, but initially the H5 antigen was neutralized by
related H5 virus that the CDC had already banked for vaccine use.
One
thing that they are not making a big deal about is that the latest human
case (without known animal contact) in Missouri has a couple of amino
acid substitutions relative to the original dairy H5 and the Missouri H5
can avoid the existing H5 antibodies, and those antibodies are now 10 to
100 times less effective in neutralizing an infection. This just means
that they have to start working up a vaccine strain with the new H5
mutations.

Do they have symptoms similar to other flu but more severe
or can they have vastly different symptom sets in comparison
with other colds or flus?

So the common misnomer of “stomach flu” applied to norovirus would actually
apply in cases where influenza infection actually does result in digestive
symptoms?

Yes, influenza virus can be associated with "stomach flu" symptoms,
and as I noted the H5N1 avian influenza virus that has a high
mortality in humans has produced these symptoms.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22401-bird-flu
Until the Missouri case the dairy H5N1 had not been associated with
those symptoms, but they have occurred in the high mortality cases
of humans infected by the Asian strain of H5N1.

Post by *Hemidactylus*
So if someone says “I have stomach flu” I would now reply “I sure hope
you’re wrongly calling noro that, because actual H5 stomach flu is much
worse!”

The Asian H5N1 has a 50% mortality in humans. As I have noted the
Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant and around half of it's genome comes
from another avian influenza virus. The Dairy H5N1 had only been
associated with mild symptoms until the Missouri case, and the CDC
is trying to claim that the Missouri patients symptoms were due to
something else other than the dairy virus. They are probably wrong
because another person (close contact of the hospitalized patient)
exhibited the same symptoms but was never tested.
Ron Okimoto

What should be noted on TO is that the CDC is trying to downplay how
bad the current situation is by using a common creationist tactic.
It is the lie of omission. It is the truth that the patient did not
have the usual influenza symptoms, and the symptoms associated with
the dairy virus, but they know that the symptoms that were expressed
have been associated with the Asian H5N1 human infections that
resulted in a high mortality among those infected. Instead of being
nothing to worry about and the claims that it is a "one off" type of
infection. These symptoms could be evidence that the virus is
changing to become more pathogenic in humans, and is evidence for
human to human transmission because this patient did not have contact
with farm animals.
Ron Okimoto

California seems to have an expanding situation. They thought that
they had it contained to a few herds, but 10 more herds have been
detected since the first couple of positive test results. It looks
like California has at least 16 total cases so far. They thought that
they had detected it early, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It
seems to have been more wide spread before they detected the first cases.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/22/missouri-bird-flu-case-
no-animal-contact
This Guardian article claims that only 240 people have been tested for
H5N1 infection. This number is pathetically low considering the number
of dairies and poultry farms that have had exposed workers, and the fact
that contact tracing and testing should have been going on from the
first identified human case. 14 of the 240 have tested positive (5.8%).
Does anyone remember the claims that 5% was the point for positive
covid tests that indicated that things were bad enough to call it a
pandemic and that infection risk in the area was high? They were
dealing with hundreds of thousands of tests by then, but testing never
started for the Dairy virus.
A lot of cases have likely gone undetected. Texas did an antibody test
for H5N1 on 14 dairy workers and 2 of them were positive for H5
antibodies (had been previously infected). One of the dairy workers had
not had contact with cattle (worked in the dairy cafeteria) and was
evidence of human to human spread. That was in August when the results
were released.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/california-confirms-more-avian-flu-dairy-herds-poultry

Poultry farms are starting to go down in California again. I noted that
Poultry farms started to go down in the Central valley and moved up into
the bay area Oct. 2023 when the dairy virus was supposed to have first
infected cattle. That infectious cycle supposedly died out by June
2024, but now after possibly reintroducing the dairy virus poultry farms
are starting to go down again.

The FDA is also starting to look into what the components will be for an
H5 human vaccine. The recent Missouri case had 2 mutations in the H5
gene that reduced existing H5 antibody neutralization by 10 to 100 fold,
so my take is that they need to look for how the dairy virus is mutating
before figuring out what then need in the vaccine.

Ron Okimoto

RonO

2024-09-24 14:00:26 UTC