The dairy flu is only one mutation away from efficiently binding to the Human receptor

[RonO]

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-12-05/just-one-mutation-can-make-h5n1-a-threat-to-humans

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt0180

The Times is reporting research done in California on the dairy virus.
This research was just published in Science. This study is calling the
virus bovine influenza. That should help wake up the USDA and CDC.
They have been lying about the situation from the beginning. Their
continued use of Avian Influenza has just allowed the cattle industry to
let the virus spread across the nation. Voluntary testing has been an
absolute fiasco. Washington still has not tested their dairy herds, and
are still in denial of how their poultry farm got infected by the dairy
virus. Utah understood immediately where the virus had to have come
from to infect their poultry farm, and quickly identified 8 infected
dairies in the same county that had not self reported the dairy
influenza infection. Utah's problem was they went into denial and did
not implement contact tracing like California, and now poultry farms in
other counties (hundreds of miles from the initial infected county) have
gone down with the dairy virus.

Apparently only a single amino acid change from a glutamine to a leucine
will alter the receptor binding properties of the virus to the human
receptors and stop the virus from being able to use the Avian receptors.
This likely one of the variants that the CDC has been watching out
for. The report indicates that there is a second amino acid
substitution that improves human receptor binding capability, but it
isn't needed like the CDC has been claiming (they claimed the virus was
two substitutions away from using the human receptor).

Just the receptor switch isn't enough to get the virus to transmit
between humans. The current dairy virus has pretty mild symptoms in
humans. Other mammals have not been so lucky. It seems to be lethal to
sea mammals, cats, and animals around the farms like skunks and foxes.
The mortality in dairy cattle has gone up to 10 to 15% of infected in
California when it started out as 1 or 2%.

They did the research on the virus isolated from the first Texas patient
infected. This virus was known to have branched off early in the Dairy
infection, and the current virus in California is likely more closely
related to the virus isolated from the Michigan dairy workers. They
need to repeat the work on a current viral sequence. They did not get a
complete genome sequence from the Missouri patient and that patient had
antigen changing substitutions in the H5 gene so that avaliable H5
antibodies did not bind to it effectively.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by RonO
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-12-05/just-one-mutation-
can-make-h5n1-a-threat-to-humans
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt0180
The Times is reporting research done in California on the dairy virus.
This research was just published in Science.  This study is calling the
virus bovine influenza.  That should help wake up the USDA and CDC. They
have been lying about the situation from the beginning.  Their continued
use of Avian Influenza has just allowed the cattle industry to let the
virus spread across the nation.  Voluntary testing has been an absolute
fiasco.  Washington still has not tested their dairy herds, and are
still in denial of how their poultry farm got infected by the dairy
virus.  Utah understood immediately where the virus had to have come
from to infect their poultry farm, and quickly identified 8 infected
dairies in the same county that had not self reported the dairy
influenza infection.  Utah's problem was they went into denial and did
not implement contact tracing like California, and now poultry farms in
other counties (hundreds of miles from the initial infected county) have
gone down with the dairy virus.
Apparently only a single amino acid change from a glutamine to a leucine
will alter the receptor binding properties of the virus to the human
receptors and stop the virus from being able to use the Avian receptors.
 This likely one of the variants that the CDC has been watching out
for.  The report indicates that there is a second amino acid
substitution that improves human receptor binding capability, but it
isn't needed like the CDC has been claiming (they claimed the virus was
two substitutions away from using the human receptor).
Just the receptor switch isn't enough to get the virus to transmit
between humans.  The current dairy virus has pretty mild symptoms in
humans.  Other mammals have not been so lucky.  It seems to be lethal to
sea mammals, cats, and animals around the farms like skunks and foxes.
The mortality in dairy cattle has gone up to 10 to 15% of infected in
California when it started out as 1 or 2%.
They did the research on the virus isolated from the first Texas patient
infected.  This virus was known to have branched off early in the Dairy
infection, and the current virus in California is likely more closely
related to the virus isolated from the Michigan dairy workers.  They
need to repeat the work on a current viral sequence.  They did not get a
complete genome sequence from the Missouri patient and that patient had
antigen changing substitutions in the H5 gene so that avaliable H5
antibodies did not bind to it effectively.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/h5n1-outbreaks-california-dairy-cattle-top-500-virus-strikes-more-poultry

CIDRAP posted about the increase in California herds to 504. They note
that almost 40% of the California herds have been found to be infected.
What does this say about all the other states that never looked for
their infected herds?

CIDRAP also notes multiple poultry flocks going down in California,
Kansas and Utah. Kansas was one of the first states infected by the
Dairy virus, but they did not get cattle from Texas, and the claims were
that how they got infected was unknown even though everyone knew that
Dairy workers were a source of infection. They stopped finding infected
herds months ago, but it looks like they still have the dairy virus.
Another poultry flock went down in Utah. It may be the same county or
near to it that recently had a flock infection. Utah also has more
infected herds than they have admitted to having.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Post by RonO

Post by RonO
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-12-05/just-one-
mutation- can-make-h5n1-a-threat-to-humans
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt0180
The Times is reporting research done in California on the dairy virus.
This research was just published in Science.  This study is calling
the virus bovine influenza.  That should help wake up the USDA and
CDC. They have been lying about the situation from the beginning.
Their continued use of Avian Influenza has just allowed the cattle
industry to let the virus spread across the nation.  Voluntary testing
has been an absolute fiasco.  Washington still has not tested their
dairy herds, and are still in denial of how their poultry farm got
infected by the dairy virus.  Utah understood immediately where the
virus had to have come from to infect their poultry farm, and quickly
identified 8 infected dairies in the same county that had not self
reported the dairy influenza infection.  Utah's problem was they went
into denial and did not implement contact tracing like California, and
now poultry farms in other counties (hundreds of miles from the
initial infected county) have gone down with the dairy virus.
Apparently only a single amino acid change from a glutamine to a
leucine will alter the receptor binding properties of the virus to the
human receptors and stop the virus from being able to use the Avian
receptors.   This likely one of the variants that the CDC has been
watching out for.  The report indicates that there is a second amino
acid substitution that improves human receptor binding capability, but
it isn't needed like the CDC has been claiming (they claimed the virus
was two substitutions away from using the human receptor).
Just the receptor switch isn't enough to get the virus to transmit
between humans.  The current dairy virus has pretty mild symptoms in
humans.  Other mammals have not been so lucky.  It seems to be lethal
to sea mammals, cats, and animals around the farms like skunks and
foxes. The mortality in dairy cattle has gone up to 10 to 15% of
infected in California when it started out as 1 or 2%.
They did the research on the virus isolated from the first Texas
patient infected.  This virus was known to have branched off early in
the Dairy infection, and the current virus in California is likely
more closely related to the virus isolated from the Michigan dairy
workers.  They need to repeat the work on a current viral sequence.
They did not get a complete genome sequence from the Missouri patient
and that patient had antigen changing substitutions in the H5 gene so
that avaliable H5 antibodies did not bind to it effectively.
Ron Okimoto

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/h5n1-outbreaks-
california-dairy-cattle-top-500-virus-strikes-more-poultry
CIDRAP posted about the increase in California herds to 504.  They note
that almost 40% of the California herds have been found to be infected.
What does this say about all the other states that never looked for
their infected herds?
CIDRAP also notes multiple poultry flocks going down in California,
Kansas and Utah.  Kansas was one of the first states infected by the
Dairy virus, but they did not get cattle from Texas, and the claims were
that how they got infected was unknown even though everyone knew that
Dairy workers were a source of infection.  They stopped finding infected
herds months ago, but it looks like they still have the dairy virus.
Another poultry flock went down in Utah.  It may be the same county or
near to it that recently had a flock infection.  Utah also has more
infected herds than they have admitted to having.
Ron Okimoto

The USDA added 2 more California herds (506 total) to their data sheet
today, but there are more in the pipeline because the sample number of
one of the positive samples was an older sample (CA 485) and the other
sample was CA 428 when their previous highest confirmed positive sample
was CA 413. I had thought that they had caught up because they seemed
to be struggling to confirm around 60 samples a week when they likely
had a backlog of hundreds of samples. They likely should have stated
how many samples are being submitted for confirmation. California
stopped saying how many samples they had submitted after they said that
they had submitted over 200 samples when only around 100 had been confirmed.

Ron Okimoto