Post by Bob CasanovaOn Tue, 10 Dec 2024 13:54:12 -0600, the following appeared
Post by RonOPost by RonOhttps://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-12-h5n1-bird-flu-case-california.html
They haven't confirmed that it is the Dairy virus, but it seems to be
H5N1. Marin County is North of San Francisco. The first child was in
Alameda that is South of San Francisco. The child has no known exposure
to animals. If it is the dairy virus they have to start testing the
milk supply. That is the direct contact that these kids have with dairy
cows, but they did not test the milk supply after the first child
because it is bad for the dairy industry. Pasteurized milk is supposed
to be safe, but the CDC's own research indicated that the virus could
survive the most common pasteurization method and could survive in whole
milk for 4 days. The FDA claimed that it was doing further tests on the
milk supply after that study, but nothing has been published about their
results (Project started in early Nov.) and they were doing the study
incorrectly. They were asking for volunteers and claimed that they
would keep the dairies anonymous. The processing plants that did not
volunteer are the ones that you want to test as the most likely to have
issues with their pasteurization. The method may be 100% effective when
within specifications, but how often are those specifications not met?
That is the main question that the FDA has to answer.
Ron Okimoto
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-12092024.html
The CDC has just released that the virus that infected the first
California child was genotype B3.13 and is the virus that has infected
dairy cattle and dairy workers in California.
In their follow-up actions they continue to make the claim that there is
no evidence for human to human infection, and refuse to acknowledge that
the only contact to the dairy virus that this kid had was the dairy
products that they ingested. How can they keep ignoring the most likely
avenue of infection? They refuse to acknowledge their own research
indicating that the virus can survive the most common form of
pasteurization, and do not recommend testing of the California milk
supply. They are in denial even though a second California child has
likely been infected by the dairy virus. They should stop calling it
avian influenza when it is being spread by dairy cattle and dairy
workers. These kids are likely getting infected by the dairy cattle
somehow, and dairy products are what they have been consuming.
*Is* there any evidence that it's "...being spread by dairy
cattle and dairy workers."? Were the infected children in
direct contact with dairy workers? Or are they being
infected by ingestion of dairy products? If that's the case,
then the claim that there's no evidence of human-to-human
infection seems justified.
The first dairy worker found to be infected in Texas was found to be
shedding live infective virus that they were able to culture and it
became the standard test virus even though the sequence indicates that
it branched off early in the dairy infection. Poultry farms started to
go down (+million bird layer flocks) in both Texas and Michigan in March
and April. Both states found that around 7% of dairy workers on
infected farms also worked on poultry farms. Dairy work is part time at
most dairies so the Dairy workers work at more than one dairy or at
other farms like poultry farms. They Have known this since May, but no
one ever started contact tracing to determine how the poultry farms are
being infected except Utah that after their layer flock went down they
started testing the nearby dairies and found 8 infected herds in the
same county as the layer flock. None of those 8 dairies had self
reported being infected so the dairy workers were free to move from farm
to farm.
The USDA and CDC have known from the beginning that the virus is viable
and infective off skin and clothing for less than 30 minutes, so they
proposed that equipment was exchanged between dairy and poultry farms,
but no such equipment exchange was ever verified. Influenza virus can
survive as infectious virus for 24 hours on a smooth surface. The only
verification was that dairy workers from infected farms also worked on
Poultry farms. Infected dairy workers were known to be shedding live
virus, but the CDC kept claiming that there was no human to human
transmission mainly because they never tested for it, and they ignored
the possibility that the dairy workers were taking live virus to poultry
farms and other dairies. Dairy workers are the only way that dairy
cattle got infected in states that never got infected cattle. Kansas
and South Dakota were both infected by the same lineage of the Dairy
virus that was one lineage most closely related to some Texas dairy
herds, but they never got Texas cattle. The only way that they could
have been infected is if a dairy worker was infected in Texas and shed
virus in those states, but they never implemented contact tracing in any
state with infected cattle. My guess is that a migrant dairy worker
left one of the infected dairy herds in Texas, and worked in Kansas for
a bit before moving on to South Dakota or another infected worker in
Kansas took the virus to South Dakota, but Kansas and South Dakota never
tried to identify all their infected herds, nor did they implement
contact tracing.
California is the only state that implemented contact tracing of dairy
workers, and equipment and started identifying a boat load of infected
herds. They also identified a lot of infected dairy workers (total 31),
and for some reason they stopped testing dairy workers after the first
20 were confirmed. The CDC may still be working on the first batch of
39 samples sent to them by California before November. The CDC has
claimed to have confirmed 31 with one failure to confirm, so far.
I predicted early on that it would only take around 5% of the dairy
workers to be infected to account for the spread and infection to the
nearby poultry flocks. The study that should have been done months
before was finally put out late October where they found 7% of the dairy
workers tested had been infected with the virus, but had not been tested
previously. 39 samples included in that study were the initial samples
that Michigan collected from dairy workers that had never shown
symptoms, and they found them all the be negative, so there were only
around 80 samples in the study that had been collected randomly (as they
came to the workers whether they had shown symptoms or not) so the 8
positives they found made the findings closer to 10% than the 7%
claimed. Only 2 of the 8 positives claimed to have not had symptoms.
Texas had previously only tested 13 dairy workers that had shown
symptoms and had found 2 antibody positives in July (one of the
positives had not had contact with cattle, and had only contact with
other dairy workers). So it was already known that the positives could
be a significant number of dairy workers, and that the virus was
infecting people that did not have direct contact with animals. The
Texas study claimed that it was evidence for person to person infection
(the two positives worked on the same farm) but the CDC has never
acknowledged these results, and still do not list them as dairy workers
that have been infected by the virus. It seems to be policy to not
include any antibody positive results in the number of infected humans.
They have not included the Colorado and Michigan study positives nor the
Missouri close contact that was found to be antibody positive.
The CDC and USDA continue to deny that the dairy workers are responsible
for a significant portion of the spread of the dairy virus, but
California and all the infected poultry farms are telling them that they
are lying to themselves. There is very little chance that live virus is
coming onto poultry farms on the workers skin and clothing. The
infected dairy workers are shedding live virus, and can obviously infect
other cattle and the birds that they work with. The USDA and CDC want
to deny this simple fact because they do not want to admit that there
has likely been human to human transmission between close contacts of
dairy workers, and they have refused to test the close contacts to find
out. They haven't even tested the dairy workers to find out if they
were infected in order to test their contacts. California wanted to
test the close contacts of the positive dairy workers, but that never
seems to have happened. In October California claimed that they wanted
to test the close contacts of the dairy workers, but they either never
started, and they seem to have quit testing dairy workers. After the
Colorado and Michigan antibody results and the fact that asymptomatic
workers had been infected the CDC claims to have implemented some
testing scheme for dairy workers so that the infected can be identified
and treated with antivirals to reduce the virus production in those
individuals, but no results have been released at this time. They
should also be testing the close contacts of the dairy workers they find
to be infected.
They have waited too long to test for antibodies. The current virus is
significantly different from their test strain that they isolated from
the first dairy worker. The CDC had to make a synthetic antigen to test
for antibodies to the virus that infected the Missouri patient, and
still 2 or the 3 tests failed.
The only contact that the children had with dairy cattle was the milk
that they drank. The CDC claims that they can find no means of
infection. None of the contacts of the children had bird or dairy
cattle contact. They ignore their own results that the most common
method of pasteurization did not kill all the virus and that infective
virus could survive 4 days in refrigerated milk. It is mind boggling
that no news outlets have picked up on the pasteurization findings by
the CDC. The FDA responded immediately with the claim that they were
going to start looking for "volunteers" to check out the safety of the
milk supply. This was late October and nothing has come out of their
efforts. The CDC published the results in their November Newsletter
that they put out in October, but the CDC never made a big deal about
the issue, and just recommended that the safety of the milk supply
should be evaluated. The FDA is supposed to be doing that reevaluation,
but their published protocol is stupid and inadequate to test the
system. They are looking for volunteer dairies and processing plants
when the ones that will likely show issues are the ones that are not
volunteering. Dairy farms are supposed to take sick cows out of the
milk supply, but it is the dairies still milking infected cattle whose
milk that they want to test. They need to go to, probably, a hundred
plants in states with known infected herds and start testing the milk as
it comes into the plant and after pasteurization. They need to review
any issues the process might have with shift changes and equipment
maintenence. This is an issue where the process can be 99% effective,
but it is that 1% of the time that can cause serious issues where a few
gallons that do not pass spec can be an issue for some kid somewhere.
It is likely going to be children that have not had influenza nor been
vaccinated that are most likely to be infected because they would have
no antibodies against influenza A (H5N1 is an influenza A virus). The
current vaccine strains are expected to have little effect on the dairy
virus, but they are expected to have some general effect as they do
against any influenza A it is just usually not enough to not be infected
by some strains of human adapted influenza A. H5N1 dairy virus hasn't
yet adapted to infect humans effectively.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/30/11/24-0772_article
QUOTE:
Abstract
Highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) detected in dairy cows raises
concerns about milk safety. The effects of pasteurization-like
temperatures on influenza viruses in retail and unpasteurized milk
revealed virus resilience under certain conditions. Although
pasteurization contributes to viral inactivation, influenza A virus,
regardless of strain, displayed remarkable stability in pasteurized milk.
END QUOTE:
They found that infective virus could survive the 72 degree C
pasteurization method and would be stable in refrigerated milk for at
least 4 days.
The 72 degree C treatment for 15 to 20 seconds is the most common
pasteurization method in use in the US.
They have known from the beginning that cats could be infected by
ingesting raw milk. It has since been found that mice can also be
infected by drinking infected milk.
Ron Okimoto