I've been hearing so much about bird flu lately that I wanted to see how steeply new cases in humans had gone up. It turns out they haven't:
After a big burst in October the number of human cases has steadily dropped off. Is this because there's less bird flu? Or because farm workers are getting vaccinated and wearing more PPE? I don't know.
Either way it's good. If we see data that the general public cases start increasing, that would be worrying. At this point the biggest effect is on availability and price of eggs. So many chickens are being destroyed to attempt to control the bird flu. It's a sad situation all the way around.
At this point, there have been no identified cases of human-to-human transmission, so cases will occur in isolated clusters and not spread in the general population.
By the time we see numbers soaring, it'll be rather late to say, "oh, I think something's going on here."
That a very sick patient in Louisiana has H5N1 carrying a mutation that likely makes it easier for human-to-human transmission, and a mutation has been identified that, like SARS-CoV-2, allows it to more easily attach to lungs, portends a very bad pandemic.
But yeah, we'll go with, "there's nothing to see here." I mean, I can imagine this is exactly how the Chinese doctors and the Chinese CDC folks treated an outbreak of Influenza-like illnesses late November in 2019.
It may never happen. But if it does, it would be coming at a time when there's low trust in science, vaccines, and the government, overlapping with an HHS potentially being led by an anti-vaxxer and a CDC being led by a guy who doesn't support vaccine mandates. With H5N1 historically having a 30-50% mortality rate in humans, this all sounds like a perfect storm.
No news is good news. So far. For now.
The risk is that (1) the H5N1 virus needs only a minor mutation to become something that could spread easily among people, in a form that's not only highly contagious but also quite deadly, and (2) America would have a Federal government utterly unable to deal with the epidemic.
I lose less sleep at night worrying about H5N1 than I do worrying about every ideologue and incompetent who will be in charge of public health in America for the next four years (or more).
Oh Kevin, so credulous. You think farm workers are going to report an illness that might cost them their jobs? Everybody’s being quiet while it turns into a catastrophe.
Well, that's scary. And correct.