Bird Flu Advisory

"Virologists around the world said they were flabbergasted by how poorly the United States was tracking the situation."

What an opportune time for the Trump clown car to take charge.

It’s a very bad time to be a cow or dairy farmer in the US for sure.

Why is this crossed out? Who's F&F-ing this? Fucking weird.

Just want to add I moved my settings to "delicate flower", which I think crosses out any post that gets a single F&F vote. It's revealed a great deal.

Interesting R4. I’m guessing that leaves very few posts visible?

I'd say about 15-20% of posts I see get crossed out, but about a fourth of them aren't trollery. I used to think it was Muriel telling us something, but now I think it's a bad actor spamming F&Fs to get people auto-banned.

Posting a receipt so prove I'm not trolling here. You can also check by moving the slider to "delicate flower" in your settings.

Nothing to worry about! Trump will be putting RFK Jr. on the case!

They want to poison you. They are ones who put all that chemical in East Palestime, dropped it in with balloons they used fron Chinese.

Bird flu will be our next President

SA is opinions like everywhere else, including social media. That ugly fag Piers and talking fist Morning Hoe want you to follow thier lies. Do not fall for it. They are not reporters.

The scientific American article is fine. This current situation is a complete shit-show for the dairy industry. And it is likely to worsen under the incoming “administration.” Personally, I wouldn’t give a platform to Rasmussen. And avian influenza has always been just a few genetic changes from becoming aerosolized in mammals. That is not new or specific to the current situation. Bird flu us spreading in cows because they don’t clean the milking equipment between animals not because it has become aerosolized. There have been only 60 cases in humans in the US; all from dairy or bird exposure. Most have resulted in conjunctivitis. Only one case has been serious and that was from keeping birds (chickens?) in the backyard.

A cull of Americans is on the horizon.

Thrilled you Virusphiles have your early X-Mass pressie!

Any self-respecting gay man knows to watch their viruses. Any who don't exposes themselves as a stupid cunt with a death wish.

Build a wall!

R15 Drag name: Faucina

Perhaps, but I take comfort in knowing who would die first and painfully.

As if my powerful heterosexual immune system could be defeated by an illness for chickens. OP must be wicked queer, kid.

[quote]now I think it's a bad actor

Just the one, dear?

It's not just one, but it only takes one.

Can they just get a flu shot?

It’s all because of Biden and the Democrats!!

As Covid raged and eventually wound down, Hubby and I discussed how the Trump (1.0) administration's initial lackadaisical response and refusal to treat the outbreak as a serious health risk (as opposed to the serious economic risk that they focused upon), followed by the Republican response to sacrifice old people to "save" the economy and generally stick their heads in the sand and instead focus on anti-vax bullshit/herd immunity/"it'll be over in a matter of days" left us open to another pandemic. Denialism never results in anything resembling a positive outcome.

We were so encouraged when Biden won and the adults entered the conversation, ready to swing into action and do the things necessary to detect and mitigate the spread. And we were dismayed that the country rebelled, turning common sense precautions into supposed government overreach, highlighted by how despite the virus emerging under Trump they blamed Democrats. We've seen it here on DL: posters repeatedly pointed out the fact that more people died from Covid under Biden than Trump. And it's true: Trump dumped the mess in Biden's lap and (after suborning insurrection) high-tailed it out of town, leaving the worst of the pandemic to the new administration.

And so it is shocking - yet completely understandable - that the Biden administration has done little to stop H1N1. They should have been on this like white on rice, but clearly, the country's new Republican majority would have seen any action from the administration as an attempt to both again over reach [italic]and[/italic] sway the election, giving the Republicans another opportunity to use Trump's piss-poor Covid response against the Democrats as they struggle to take the right and necessary actions to mitigate the spread.

Bottom line, as I read this [italic]Scientific America[/italic] (now there's an oxymoron if there ever was one) article, it's pretty clear we're headed toward another pandemic, and the mantra will be exactly what R23 just posted.

We. Are. Fucked.

‘’Decrease the surplus population’’

MAGA plan for getting rid of Dem’s

It might be a MAGA plan R26, but since the Democratic constituency is the educated elite and the MAGAts are the ones doing all the uneducated/low-skilled jobs (like, say, milking cows), it's going to hit them harder than Dems... Just like last time.

Just stop consuming dairy and don’t visit farms. No evidence yet of any person to person transmission.

Getting rid of Dem’s what? And who the fuck is Dem?

Dem's fools, R29.

r23 COVID was spread by TRUMP, OBAMA, BIDEN, CLINTON ALL OF THEM.

You skipped a BUSH there, honey chile.

It's killing cats, it's in mice, if it moves into pigs it will be in favorable conditions to mutate in ways that maximise harm to humans.

Don't visit farms

You do realize that this in not just in the farms don't you? Elder/senior lezzies also forget that it's in WILD birds now which means we all are exposed all the time, when will it make the jump human to human? It probably will.

And the fucking farmers in Texas waited years before they said anything, they wanted it to spread, fuck the farmers who all get subsidies just like the Chinese farmers.

It’s been in birds since 1924.

Except human-to-human transmission has in all likelihood happened, R28:

[quote]A switch flipped in September among experts who study pandemics as national security threats. A patient in Missouri had the bird flu, and no one knew why. “Evidence points to this being a one-off case,” Shah said at a briefing with journalists. About a month later, the agency revealed it was not.

[quote]Antibody tests found that a person who lived with the patient had been infected, too. The CDC didn’t know how the two had gotten the virus, and the possibility of human transmission couldn’t be ruled out.

I'm going to Costco to stock up on toilet paper, disinfectant and hand sanitizer now.

The Missouri household cases had GI symptoms, which would indicate they got it from something they ate or drank. Don’t think unpasteurized milk.

𝐈𝐭 𝐒𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐈𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐇𝐚𝐬 𝐀 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐍𝐨𝐰: 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐒𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐒𝐲𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐨𝐦

Seems alarmist, but I and most everyone I know has a persistent cough. I'm coping.

Since these cases aren't being cultured and identified, might it be bird flu?

Quite frankly, I think it's about damn time the birds got their revenge on humans. The chickens have come home to roost, indeed.

It appears that the probability is increasing daily, exponentially, that this could become an extinction-level event.

Farmers and ranchers are fine. They partake of the biggest part of “welfare” after no tax paying corporations.

If I'm reading correctly, it doesn't usually kill cows, but it does affect their milk production significantly. Birds are another story. Extremely high mortality rate. It will be hard to say until or unless it starts spreading from human to human whether we will be more like cows or more like chickens in our response to it.

R42 we don’t know how it would affect cattle if it were aerosolized in mammals. It isn’t spreading in all cows, only cows that are used for milk production because of the re-used milking equipment.

ElderLez, you seem to be downplaying this risk. Out of curiosity are/were you in healthcare?

I'm really worried about this. Maybe because I'm sick with a sinus infection, my husband has the persistent cough thing going around (for over a week now), and both of my dogs came down with Kennel Cough over the weekend. We're all doing fine, but Christmas is going to be punctuated by a lot of coughing, hacking and nasal mucus.

Regarding the Missouri case(s), I didn't see where the second patient had GI issues and the SA article didn't mention that. I hope — for humanity's sake — that he got it from consuming infected dairy and not just breathing the air in his home shared with the first patient. I seriously think another pandemic will break what's left of our democracy, and Trumusk will turn what could be and should have been contained into a mass culling event. There will not be another lockdown. No MAGAt will wear a mask or do a damn thing to mitigate the spread, and in fact, go around trying to infect as many as they can.

Here you go R44. Neither one had typical flu symptoms.

And here’s a very informative article in general about the current situation.

I don’t think I am downplaying the situation. Get your seasonal flu shot if you haven’t already, maybe ask your doctor for a prescription for Tamiflu to have on hand for peace of mind (it works against bird flu), write your congressperson and Senators about the importance of influenza surveillance and the creation of a universal flu vaccine and all the other important work NIAID funds.

Let’s save the fear for when the fear is actually called for.

It's a matter of time, the virus will mutate to spread more easily, just like COVID, it will cross over to human to human soon I'm sure.

Thanks, elder lez, for the calming voice of reason.

My manager caught walking pneumonia from the dumb bitch that sits across the partition from him.

She came in after Thanksgiving hacking her lungs out but refused to go home or wear a mask. He same down with it a week later.

Dumb cunts will NEVER stay home when they’re sick. EVEN when they are given paid time off for sick leave. They just won’t.

If jumps to people and mutates in one of those dumb cunt Petrie dishes visiting everyone over the holidays, we’re fucked. If we can get it under control, then it may not be so bad.

But given all of those factors, it’s bound to turn up in China, India or Africa and get worse since they have more agrarian populations. Then it will be a mess.

Twenty big cats, including a half-Bengal tiger and four cougars, died between late November and mid-December at a sanctuary in Washington State after becoming infected with bird flu.

Assuming that most if not all the cats were exposed, that’s a 50% mortality rate. If it mutates into a highly transmissible human variant with a virulence even approaching what was observed in the sanctuary, we are in BIG trouble.

50% has been the mortality rate of chicken farmers in China.

Fucking YIKES!

Yeah, yikes for sure on that, but there’s a lot of caveats involved like China only testing people who were already hospitalized so likely not that high, but still unacceptable!

There definitely seems to be very different outcomes based on how the virus is transmitted, with the teat to teat transmission between cows and milk to eye contact between cows and dairy workers being the most mild. And then there’s transmission from infected food like those poor big cats, but seems less deadly and much rarer in humans since we cook our meat and pasteurize our milk. And then there’s the close contact with infected birds, which causes what we think of as flu symptoms.

R47 Well, shit. My dog eats Stella & Chewy freeze dried raw turkey topper on his kibble.

How is Seamus doing Sylvia?

Yeah, I’ve been trying to get my wife to change our dog to a raw diet, but with the exception of fish it doesn’t seem like such a good idea at the moment.

R56 Mentally he's doing ok but I suspect that 2025 will be our last year with him. He's been losing mobility in his rear legs (degenerative neuropathy) and we won't let it get to the point where he can't walk. He's also at the age where his appetite is slowing down, hence the turkey topper on his food. I've just written an email to Stella & Chewy demanding that they require rigorous testing from their meat suppliers. Meanwhile, I'll start looking around for a canned alternative.

We won’t be pasteurizing milk for much longer thanks to worm brain.

People give raw milk to babies, and we know why trump was elected now, then again those babies may never reproduce and continue the exchange of faulty genetics, win win

R57/Sylvia, I am so sorry to hear that.

The CDC said on Thursday its analysis of samples from the first severe case of bird flu in the country last week showed mutations not seen in samples from an infected backyard flock on the patient's property.

The mutations seen in the patient are rare but have been reported in some cases in other countries and most often during severe infections. One of the mutations was also seen in another severe case from British Columbia, Canada.

No transmission from the patient in Louisiana to other persons has been identified

Thanks EL/R60. FWIW, Stella & Chewy responded with the following:

"Stella & Chewy’s verified that our routine food safety process of High-Pressure Processing for frozen and freeze-dried foods is effective at inactivating the Avian Influenza virus. Our HPP cycles are run using a higher pounds of pressure per square inch and a longer cycle time than current research indicates effectively inactivates this virus."

I'd never heard of this process, but here's further info. It apparently breaks up the viruses' capsid proteins.

Great news!

[quote] Sharing because Scientific American is a vetted and trusted source.

No it’s not. In recent years it’s been called out for pushing pseudoscience including trans ideology, pushing theories as fact for political purposes. The same thing happened to the ACLU. They began hiring crackpots.

That's a lot of chickens.

Fuck, r65!

Darke, Greene and Preble counties in SW Ohio are all huge farming counties. I grew up there.

Preble is pig producers. If it’s hitting the chickens in Darke county, it won’t be long before it spreads to Preble.

Lord, I hope it doesn’t jump from chickens to pigs, because we’ll be next

R66 = MAAAARY!!!

Its here they found the human with bird flu, probably my old neighborhood, it's everywhere, don't drink raw milk stupid, and cook your food, salads raw veg especially are becoming sketchy and contaminated. The much vauted EU food safety fails too, it should be the best in the world, yet it's racked with corruption.

The Food and Drug Administration has started testing aged raw cow's milk cheese for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1), otherwise known as bird flu.

Too bad the children who got raw milk didn't die before they breed, and stop the cycle, too bad

Drinking raw milk is like wearing bell bottoms. It’s a trend and a choice. It isn’t heritable.

First death in the US.

Why the fuck would I throw away hand sanitizer and my n95 masks, op? That would be totally stupid ass behavior.

Scarf lady AND some hot Greek daddy are in charge.

We're fine! The virus sends its love!

Oh good, perfect, just in time to be overseen by a mature, responsible U.S. president.

“Now, I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew viral spread could be so complicated!”

Bottom line, elect Trump, get a pandemic.

Reason #199887666 that I am vegan.

It's happening!

Why this is bad news for the Harris/Walz Adopt a Pet foundation.

"Only birds get bird flu, duh. Tigers and other species get their own flu."

The CDC put out that guidance around a week ago R80 so don’t go all Chicken Little just yet. The urgency is concerning, however.

And of course Trump has now done this.

He downplayed Covid because he thought “only loser presidents have pandemics.” It goes without saying that his perception amongst Americans is all he cares about.

Now it seems he’s going to prevent the CDC from issuing health information about this.

All guidance from all federal agencies is halted at the moment, but it’s true that there were supposed to be updates on avian influenza this week.

They came for my motherfucking Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report! This means war.

Since Trump is going to kill science at the Federal level, I've turned to this newsletter from the University of Minnesota CIDRAP.

The weary misery in the eye of the wretched cow in OP’s photo is heartbreaking. What a sick society we are.

This isn't going to go well.

Idiots running the country headed by the Chief Moron who blames Covid and scientists for ending his first presidency. He's hobbled federal health agencies and he's not going to do a damn thing if there's any chance he'll have to go through another situation like 2020.

Not to mention the general public will not treat a new pandemic with any respect. They all hated what Covid did to their personal lives and the economy and they're going to refuse to quarantine and wear masks again...well, until the bodies really start piling up this time.

H5N1 is rapidly mutating and decimating bird populations and more and more mammal populations are being infected.

The hope we all had after Covid of "oh, well, this kind of pandemic won't happen again for decades!" was a lie we told ourselves to avoid dealing with it again.

Well, it's not going to be decades before the next pandemic...it's gonna be months, maybe a year or two if we're lucky.

The Ramon's tried to warn us.

Fuck. The Ramones.

The Ramon's must be a Latin cover band.

I am stocking up on KN95 masks.

I’m enjoying seeing the defiance from the morons. If bird flu becomes a pandemic, something like one out of four people who get it could die. There will be no denial. You will either quarantine, heavily mask up, or risk your life every time you leave your house.

Also we are not living in “after COVID” times. COVID never ended it just got buried.

So it's a potentially fatal pandemic that will target MAGAts, R92?

[quote] Also we are not living in “after COVID” times. COVID never ended it just got buried.

Preach. Unfortunately H5N1 also transmits by fomites, unlike COVID, so those who care will also have to go back to scrupulous hand-washing.

But please RFK Jr., drink all the raw milk you want! Spread the word about the benefits of raw milk far and wide via the new Trump Ministry of Health website!

[quote]Not to mention the general public will not treat a new pandemic with any respect.

If Trump has his way, the general public won't even know there's a pandemic.

And what would be the point of the public knowing another pandemic was under way? With Shitler in charge, the government will do nothing to stop the spread, mitigate the damage, or do anything to prevent further outbreaks. The sad part is that it won't matter because by the time the pandemic gets to the point that infection is common and unavoidable, we'll be in a recession and headed toward a depression anyway.

It really is this simple: Trump = death.

The thing that gets me is poor whites voted for this shit in the hopes that all of the poor blackcat and brown people would “go away”.

Well, it turns out, the plan is to KILL OFF ALL of the poor - no matter what color - decimate what’s left of the middling classes so the broligarchs can rule over the ashes.

The idiots who voted for it are going to be wiped out, just not soon enough.

Too bad federal health agencies aren’t allowed to communicate about this:

Shit, meet fan! (Honestly, I'm amazed that the USDA was allowed to confirm this or any other research news.)

"The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today announced a new spillover of H5N1 avian flu to dairy cattle, which involves the D1.1 genotype currently circulating in wild birds and has been implicated in human infections, including the fatal case in a Louisiana resident who had contact with sick backyard birds.

Until now, all dairy herd H5N1 detections have involved the B3.13 genotype, thought to be the result of a single spillover from wild birds in late 2023 or early 2024."

I’ve got a chronic cough and have been feeding wild birds since December. Maybe I should wear a hazmat suit.

Word on the street is that RFK Jr has blocked further testing of any symptomatic farm workers because so many are coming up positive and is threatening anyone who goes to the press. So, not necessarily time to panic, but certainly a bad move by Mr. Works and Shit for brains.

Ahh, the ol' "No Testing = No Pandemic" playbook. They're so predictable in their evil.

Speaking of health and evil, the NYT today reports:

Come this fall, only older Americans and those with chronic health problems may be urged to get the Covid shot — assuming the vaccine is available at all. The advisers are expected to decide on a way forward at a meeting in June. But the debate may have become irrelevant. New requirements for clinical testing of vaccines, announced earlier this month, may delay the availability of shots that had formerly been updated annually without complicated trials.

“Substantial updates to existing vaccines — such as those related to seasonal strain changes or antigenic drift — may qualify as ‘new products’ and therefore require additional clinical evaluation,” the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. That category includes the Covid shots and “may” even include the seasonal flu vaccine, according to Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for H.H.S.

Do they just want people to die? I don't get it.

Yes R104.

Saves on social security

[quote] Word on the street is

0/10

Thanks for your vote of confidence R107, while obviously I can’t disclose my source for the order to CDC not to test farm workers, there’ s publicly available information about the decision not allow the FDA to test the nation’s milk supply from yesterday . Muriel won’t accept AOL links unfortunately, but you can google it yourself.

R108 without some verification I don’t believe it. CDC leaks like a sieve when stuff like this happens things that are seen as against public health or which are such a departure from regular CDC policies etc.

The stated cdc guidance “as of today”—- test them.