More avian flu news:
Bird flu H5N1 confirmed to infect another person
• We have no idea how widespread human infections
• We're barely looking
• Its playing w fire - we should be doing everything absolutely possible to stop H5N1 from evolving to human-human transmissionhttps://t.co/exXbnZ4wSC— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) May 22, 2024
I remain on the fence about this, but it makes sense that we should be "doing everything absolutely possible to stop H5N1 from evolving to human-human transmission." My question is: What? What precautions could we be taking among agricultural workers who handle chickens and cows?
So far, the CDC recommends extensive preventive gear (N95 masks, coveralls, boots, face guard), but only for "close exposure" with sick or suspicious animals. Is that insufficient? Should farm workers be routinely vaccinated against H5N1?¹
What else?
¹Vaccine doses are not yet available in quantity but will be shortly.
You've already got basically an entire industry who has stated they don't believe the government/CDC and that the whole thing is "fake news" so good luck with any preventative enforcement.
If COVID showed us anything it's that we're basically on our own; nothing's going to happen until it's too late and even then it'll be half measures that will only be followed by 25% of the population.
Good luck, everyone.
The problem was that much of our government's advice and orders were objectively wrong or transparently politically motivated. When you say Sturgis Motorcycle Rally should be stopped because of COVID but George Floyd marches are OK because of racial justice you have just eliminated any chance that the half of the country that considers the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally to be good clean fun and the George Floyd protesters who burn flags and police stations to be unpatriotic criminal scum will agree to follow your instructions in the future.
"The problem was that much of our government's advice and orders were objectively wrong or transparently politically motivated"
Sturgis (which happened and was not subject to a lockdown or anything, after all, and after which a bunch of people got sick) is an anecdote--it's certainly not "much" of the advice and orders.
You're looking at this backwards; it's not that "much" or even a significant part of what public health experts were saying was "wrong," it's that a bunch of weirdos with political axes to grind cherry pick miniscule and half-remembered examples ("The gubbermint said my church shouldn't have choir practice! But I heard a bar was open in San Francisco!") so as to further their stupid axe-grinding.
The pandemic was the single most significant event in human history in the past 5+ decades. It had legions of effects and implications, and if your takeaway is a stupid and one-dimensional as "the government's advice was wrong!" you should really reexamine the lens through which you are seeing the world.
When you write things like "gubbermint" you lose a lot of credibility. It's seen as condescension from an elitist who looks down their nose at people that don't share you're liberal views. It's precisely attitudes such as this that led to trump being elected.
And your scientific evidence for your claims?
Links please.
We have good evidence that Stugis was a superspreader event:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7753804/
The density and duration of marches was much lower and I am aware of no scientific evidence tha they contributed to significant covid-19 spread.
You can of course refute me by providing links to scientific evidence showing that George Floyd marches contributed to significant covid-19 spread..
There were plenty of things that had less density and duration than the BLM protests/riots and were prohibited in many areas -- going to the beach, eating at restaurants. backyard barbeques, taking kids to playgrounds.
Workers at risk have an ally with a lot more enforcement power than
CDC. Let an industry ignore OSHA and see what THAT costs them!
I read that farms were wary of allowing testing on their farms, out of fear that if they tested positive they'd have to shut down, maybe even cull, and incur massive economic losses. We're so afraid of losing money that we're willing to risk lives. How very human.
We should have passed a program that backstops ag losses for such things, IMO, a long time ago.
I've read that's pretty much it as well. I assume they have insurance for this kind of thing, but it's probably not enough to recover if they lose their whole herd or something. Plus a big bovine/bird flu scare would almost certainly drive down demand for even pasteurized milk, so they're no doubt scared about that, too.
Playing with fire? Twitter hysteria strikes again. Good grief.
Pink eye.
This is what AG workers deal with. Chinese forced labor! Terrible.
The deadly shooting and the labor department’s investigation revealed the hazardous working conditions that many migrant farmworkers have been subjected to in San Mateo county.
“Our investigators found workers at California Terra Gardens and Concord Farms housed in sickening conditions, forced to sleep near garbage and with insects all around,” Alberto Raymond, the labor department’s wage and hour division assistant district director, said in a statement.
At California Terra Garden, investigators found that 39 workers were housed in cramped cargo containers, garages and dilapidated trailers, were forced to sleep on filthy mattresses and were exposed to insects and trash. According to the labor department, the farm’s owners, Xianmin Guan and his wife, Liming Zhu, illegally deducted money from workers’ pay for the substandard housing.
At Concord Farms, investigators found that its owner, Grace Tung, housed workers in moldy, makeshift rooms in a greenhouse infested with bugs.
Bird flu? That settles it, I’m voting for Trump.
After Trump's oh so successful effort at managing covid019? 🙂
"doing everything absolutely possible to stop H5N1 from evolving to human-human transmission."
Reposting stuff on X is half the battle, evidently!
Full body condoms for everyone!
I don't see how we stop it. It's just a matter of time, and we should perhaps count ourselves lucky that the cows are spreading a strain that isn't killing people.
Bird flu is global, and we really need to focus on surveillance and vaccines. I just saw an article in the paper about vaccine manufacturers starting to create more vaccine. Vaccinating farm workers and health workers would give us a better chance of slowing spread and saving lives
BTW, did we all read about the people searching out unpasteurized milk because they think if they drink raw contaminated milk it'll confer immunity from H5N1?
No matter what you tell people, some will invariably and purposely step on rakes or shoot themselves in the foot.
I suppose I'm not super concerned about bird flu as there's already a vaccine for it. Just need to ramp up production and distribution quickly. Should weed out some more anti-vaxxers, on the plus side.
So far, the CDC recommends extensive preventive gear (N95 masks, coveralls, boots, face guard), but only for "close exposure" with sick or suspicious animals. Is that insufficient?
The CDC's webpage also lists some other common sense advice Kevin, like avoiding any un- or under-cooked poultry (including eggs) and pork; isolating yourself if you get sick after dealing with sick animals. You know, those annoying things they ask us to do rather than using their magic silver bullets. Which hey presto, they are working to make an avian flu shot anyways. I mean, what else is there to be done? Wave a magic wand?
Mandatory veganism…
What more can we doing?
Have we not learned anything for the covid pandemic
The only way to get a handle on risks like this is:
- lots of testing
- waste water testing
- containment of spread of H5N1 in herds
We certainly are doing minimal testing, so any information we obtain will be after H5N1 gets loose in the population and it will be too late to contain it.
Trans species already.- but then “I’m not a scientist!” 3 months and it’s Trump jumping on this with his large fox and congressional megaphone and blame it all on Joe. plus border crossers and all the other most hated. Another Reich indeed.
Note to cattle and dairy …
Everything possible is quite simple:
* mandatory testing of domestic poultry for Bird Flu. Farmers know that they will be told (and paid) to slaughter their entire herd if a single chicken tests positive, and so farmers are avoiding testing. we have to fix that that. this will both protect the virus from spreading in our farm population and also stop humans from eating food from sick birds.
That's it. That's what we need to do. If the "full body condom" crowd could take a seat then the rest of us will focus on the job at hand.