Post by FromTheRaftersPost by RonOPost by Martin HarranPost by RonOhttps://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/third-avian-flu-
spillover-reported-arizona-dairy-herd-raw-pet-food-sickens
They are claiming that sequence results indicate that the Arizona dairy
D1.1 infection is not related to the D1.1 dairy infection in Nevada.
This would mean that avian influenza has transferred to cattle 3
independent events. Texas (B3.13), Nevada (D1.1), and now Arizona
(D1.1)
Two more cats in Oregon were infected by contaminated raw pet food made
in Washington state. They identified H5N1 in the cats that needed
to be
put down, and the pet food that both cats had eaten (the same brand).
They now have a consumer alert on Wild Coast Raw, pet food. A bunch of
commercial and backyard poultry flocks have been hit by H5N1 in 4
states, but like the cats they aren't stating what genotype they were
infected with. Two large layer farms went down in Indiana. Over 57
million birds affected since just Nov. 2024, 162 million since 2022.
It should be noted that they only detected the Nevada and Arizona
infections due to the recent USDA testing program. The claim is that
the herds were not showing symptoms until after they turned out
positive. They would have never been tested under the old volunteer
testing program.
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/AHFSS/Animal_Health/HPAI.html
California is claiming that 281 of the 745 infected herds have cleared
the virus already. This likely means that the virus likely has
infected
most of the herds in other states and they are likely fully
recovered by
the time that the USDA is finally testing them. 9 states were
identified to have produced virus positive milk samples by the FDA, but
they would not test their dairy herds back in May 2024. 3 of those
states eventually claimed at least one infected herd, but the others
remained in denial. The virus likely burned through all the herds in
those states by now, and the herds would have recovered months ago.
The
D1.1 dairy infections is the second wave for these states. Nevada had
an older case of dairy virus infection, but they only claimed one
infected herd, now they have half a dozen herds infected with D1.1, and
none detected with B3.13. The D1.1 virus likely spread through the
Nevada herds the same way that the B3.13 virus spread (cattle and people
shared between farms). Now we even have evidence (3 infected
veterinarians) that vets could have taken the virus from farm to farm,
and not even known that they were infected.
"About 64,000 birds are being culled in County Tyrone after suspected
avian flu was reported at a commercial poultry premises.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgm28zp82zo
"Northern Ireland in eight-week provincewide bird lockdown as battle
against avian flu outbreak continues."
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/northern-ireland-in-eight-week-
provincewide-bird-lockdown-as-battle-against-avian-flu-outbreak-
continues/ar-AA1zdYBM
With a very large beef and dairy industry throughout Ireland, I'd
guess a lot of famers are very worried right now about this spreading
to cattle.
The protocol that they are not revealing in the US is that once a
flock goes down with high path avian influenza all poultry flocks
within a mile radius are depopulated. That is why when a 3 million
bird layer flock goes down they depopulate the whole farm even if only
one of the layer houses is infected. These facilities have at least 5
very large layer houses that house birds of different ages so they
always have most of their birds at near peak production.
It isn't lockdown, but depopulation of the living birds.
I do not know what they do in Ireland.
It looks like it can spread to cattle via the farm workers, my guess
is that if they did the contact tracing at the infected dairy farms in
Nevada, that they would find that the D1.1 infection came from one of
the infected poultry flocks that shared workers with dairy farms, and
that some of the half dozen infected dairies were also infected by
shared dairy workers. It spread to half a dozen farms too quickly for
it to be due to transfer of cattle.
If you look at the data poultry workers are easily infected working
with infected birds, and some of these poultry workers also work on
dairy farms. Most of the commercial poultry farms have been infected
by the B3.13 virus from nearby dairies, and there is little doubt that
it came onto the farms with dairy workers. The first cases in
Michigan the USDA found that two dairy workers on infected dairies
also worked on two of the commercial layer farms that got infected
with the dairy virus, but the workers were never tested and the denial
of how the virus was spreading among dairy herds continued, as the
virus rapidly spread among dairies in Michigan even though they were
not moving cattle.
For some stupid reason, California never restricted dairy worker
movements between farms even though they had initially found most of
their infected farms by contact tracing. They restricted cattle
movements, but not worker movement. The result has been that nearly
all the herds in California were allowed to be infected.
Ireland should not make the same mistake.
Ron Okimoto
I have been following your updates. Just FYI I received this from my
online health portal.
https://www.dartmouth-hitchcock.org/stories/article/what-you-need-know-
about-avian-influenza-virus
The CDC continues to claim that the risk to humans is low, but that
likely should have changed with the first human fatality due to the D1.1
genotype. The first two human infections with the D1.1 H5N1 influenza
resulted in patients in critical condition. In both patients (one in
Canada and the other in Louisiana) the virus mutated and produced
several mutations that made the virus more likely to infect humans (they
produced the next pandemic virus). At the time it looked like these
mutations were being selected for during the human infections (How did
the same mutations occur twice independently?) because there was
supposed to be no contact between cases, and the wild birds did not have
the virus with those mutations, but it turned out that these mutations
did not have to occur every time within a human infection because they
had not disclosed that some of the Washington state poultry workers had
been infected by the D1.1 virus and were only exhibiting mild symptoms
when they were treated with anti-virals. Their viral sequences have not
been disclosed, but my guess is that they did not have the same
mutations that the Canadian and Louisiana patients had or they would
have made that disclosure when they admitted that they had been infected
with D1.1 after the two critical hospitalization cases. So the
mutations do not have to happen every time or they caught the infections
in the poultry workers before they had occurred during their infections.
Because of the severity of the infections and the fact that the D1.1
virus seemed to be coming from wild birds the CDC should have changed
their "monitoring" policy. Essentially the CDC is waiting for the virus
to make the jump (have the mutations that had occurred in the D1.1
infections) and start to circulate within the human population before
they jumped into action and tried to suppress the infection and prevent
the next pandemic. Their slow responses indicate that this policy would
be a failure in preventing the next pandemic, but they still adhere to
it to this day. They were lucky that the D1.1 virus had not infected
the contacts of the patients that were in critical condition and one
died. It was a couple weeks before they were testing the contacts for
evidence that they were infected. We were lucky and they dodged the
bullet twice, but the CDC decided that they could continue their stupidity.
Now Dairy farms and dairy workers are being infected with the D1.1, and
it obviously infects dairy workers and poultry workers as easily as the
B3.13 genotype. It can obviously mutate more rapidly than the B3.13
virus, and it produces respiratory symptoms, and my take is that the
mutations needed to better infect humans are selected for in respiratory
tissue, while the mutations are not selected for in the eyes and mammary
glands that the B3.13 virus infects.
They need to test all the dairy workers at infected farms for the D1.1
virus, and they need to get these infected workers anti-virals as soon
as possible. They need to limit human exposure to this virus as much as
possible.
The patients being infected by their backyard birds (Wyoming and
Louisiana) mean that they need to put out a warning where ever the D1.1
virus is known to be cirulating in wild birds. People with backyard
birds or open range poultry need to closely monitor their birds, and at
the first signs of infection they need to minimize their contact with
the birds and get the CDC and USDA involved in testing their birds.
Because of the two critical human cases the testers will likely arrive
in hazmat suits to test the birds.
That should be happening, but it isn't happening because the CDC and
USDA refuse to deal with reality. Human infection with the D1.1 virus
needs to be minimized, but they refuse to minimize the risk to poultry
and dairy workers.
It should be known that the 68 human infections is a very low and
inaccurate estimate. Those are only the ones confirmed that were
tested. As sad as it may be the CDC still claims only 700 total humans
tested.
Three veterinarians were found to be infected out of around 100 tested,
but half of them came from states that should not have had infected
cattle (the states had not admitted to being infected). None of them
had exhibited symptoms and they did not know that they were infected as
they continued to work with cattle (and could have contributed to the
spread of the disease). One of them had only worked in two states that
did not claim to be infected, but one of those states obviously had, had
infected cattle.
Early in the dairy infection 13 dairy workers were tested for antibodies
and 2 of them were found to have been infected in Texas. Eventually
they tested 115 Michigan and Colorado dairy workers and found 8 had been
infected, but 2 of the infected claimed to not have had any symptoms
(like the vets). 7% of the workers had been infected. The numbers are
worse than that because they included over 30 samples from the original
testing where they selected dairy workers that had claimed to have never
exhibited symptoms (yes, as stupid as it may be they wanted to find no
infections) and they found that none of this first group tested. The
second batch of individuals (around 80) were taken at random (as the
testers came to them whether they had had symptoms or not). This means
that around 10% of the individuals from the random sample of dairy
workers were found to have been infected.
When around 70% of the dairy herds in California were identified as
being infected California was claiming that around 5,000 dairy workers
worked at the infected farms, and that protective equipment was still
not manditory and was not being used at a lot of infected farms (Really,
the CDC only "recommended" the use of protective equipment). So my
guess is that over 500 dairy and poultry workers in California have been
infected, but they just were never tested. Both the CDC and California
claimed that they were going to start testing dairy workers after the
high frequency of infections detected by the antibody tests, but nothing
ever happened, and those claims were from October. Everyone decided
that it was best to go into denial than start to identify the infected.
The CDC even admitted at the time that they needed to identify the
infected so that they could get them anti-virals and minimize viral
replication in those individuals in order to prevent the mutations that
would make the next pandemic virus from happening, and to minimize the
risk of reassorted virus emerging from double infections with human
influenza A.
The CDC knows that they are lying about the number of infected
individuals, and they have decided not to differentiate the D1.1 deadly
infections from the B3.13 mild symptom infections. They don't even list
the antibody positive dairy workers and vets among the "68" known infected.
We have been very lucky that the next pandemic has not already started.
It could be starting in Nevada and Arizona right now, but they refuse to
start testing dairy workers at the dairy farms infected with D1.1 when
they already know that one worker has exhibited symptoms and was found
to be positive.
Ron Okimoto