Bird flu: humans infected with H5N8 strain for first time in Russia

[2hats]

UKHSA are investigating lateral flow testing kits with a view to evaluating their potential use in the event of significant human-to-human H5N1 transmission.

 

[Nylock]

yep, it does seem to have around 50% fatality rate for humans so if it does jump it would make covid 19 look like a walk in the park.

There was an official on the radio today sounding very concerned about it and warning the govt not to take their eye off the ball with this one and to start prepping asap.

That's us fucked then.

 

[yield]

Bird flu researchers turn to Finland’s mink farms, tracking a virus with pandemic potential
Stat. Aug. 11, 2023

As it stands now, the H5N1 virus does not infect people easily. But the fear is that uncontrolled spread in animals like mink gives the virus plenty of chances to evolve in ways that could enable it to spill over into people. Already in Finland, a paper from government researchers indicated the virus has spread from mammal to mammal at the farms — and in some cases has picked up mutations indicating an adaptation toward replicating in mammalian cells.

“These farms are a risk that are not very well controlled, and probably cannot be very well controlled,” said Isabella Eckerle, a virologist at the Geneva Centre for Emerging Viral Diseases, referring to how the farms squeeze normally solitary mammals into mass holdings and how they still have contact with birds and people. “We now have two examples, SARS-CoV-2, and avian influenza. I wonder, what else do we need?”

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

Bird flu researchers turn to Finland’s mink farms, tracking a virus with pandemic potential
Stat. Aug. 11, 2023

different strain to the thread title one, this is the one to watch for with a 50/50 roll on the death dice in its current forms.

 

[Aladdin]

Oh ffs

 

[SpookyFrank]

I do think that, in the grand scheme of things, COVID was a bit of a let off. Millions dead rather than billions. And it has created and empowered a huge contingent of anti-public health nihilists who could actively sabotage whatever too-little-too-late measures are brought in to deal with the next pandemic threat.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I do think that, in the grand scheme of things, COVID was a bit of a let off. Millions dead rather than billions. And it has created and empowered a huge contingent of anti-public health nihilists who could actively sabotage whatever too-little-too-late measures are brought in to deal with the next pandemic threat.

I suspect if there was a really serious pandemic idiots like that would be locked up for the public good.

 

[Nylock]

If that strain of flu went pandemic, the more committed hardcore antivax loons will likely be among the first to die. Although, how many others they end up infecting before nature takes its course is somewhat concerning...

 

[SpookyFrank]

If that strain of flu went pandemic, the more committed hardcore antivax loons will likely be among the first to die. Although, how many others they end up infecting before nature takes its course is somewhat concerning...

It's their personal choice to, err, breathe germs over everyone else.

 

[skyscraper101]

First H1N2 human case detected in the UK

First human case of swine flu H1N2 detected in UK

The UK’s first human case of flu strain H1N2 – which has been circulating in pigs – has been detected, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said.

www.standard.co.uk

 

[skyscraper101]

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I think we may have already found the next pandemic. One strain of bird flu has jumped between not only wild birds and domestic birds, but now to cattle, goats, and at least one person:

In the U.S. agriculture industry, bird flu isn’t just for birds anymore.

An avian influenza outbreak that has led to the death of about 80 million birds over the past two years is now sickening dairy cattle, temporarily curbing their milk production and prompting some states to increase restrictions on the livestock crossing state lines.

Concern that the disease could spread to beef cattle and hurt consumer meat demand has roiled livestock markets. Farmers are ramping up preventive measures, drawing on poultry industry tactics to drive off wild birds known for spreading the disease.

Near Brooten, Minn., dairy farmer Lucas Sjostrom said he is planning more precautions with his 200 dairy cows, such as putting just three gallons of raw milk into five-gallon containers to prevent any splashing or spills while it is hauled away to be pasteurized, which would eliminate any potential viruses. He is considering laser systems that shoo away wild birds, used by some poultry farmers, though he isn’t yet sure if the investment makes sense.
“We just don’t know how to battle something so new,” said Sjostrom, who is also the executive director of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association. ”We’re still learning so much.”

MSN

The USDA found this alarming enough that they're telling people to be sure to cook your eggs and meat fully. They are saying though that the risk of spread to humans is low and you really have to be in close contact with an infected animal.

Then, there's the spread to goats:

A young goat living on a farm in Minnesota where a backyard poultry flock has tested positive for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).

According to the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, this is the first U.S. detection of HPAI in a domestic ruminant (cattle, sheep, goats, and their relatives). Officials say all birds on the property were already quarantined after detection of the virus last month.

Presently all other animals on the Stevens County farm have been quarantined. The Board is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to investigate the transmission of the virus in this case.

“This finding is significant because, while the spring migration is definitely a higher risk transmission period for poultry, it highlights the possibility of the virus infecting other animals on farms with multiple species,” said State Veterinarian, Dr. Brian Hoefs in a news release. “Thankfully, research to-date has shown mammals appear to be dead-end hosts, which means they’re unlikely to spread HPAI further.”

Avian Influenza spreads to goat living on Minnesota farm with infected chicken flock

Goat testing positive for Avian Influenza is U.S. detection of the disease in a domestic ruminant.

www.wisfarmer.com

Bird flu is endemic to wild birds, but a variety that can jump species rapidly is worrying.

 

[2hats]

The N American agribusiness sector use chicken shit (actually that plus dead poultry, their feathers and spilled waste feed, all rendered together) to up the protein content of cow feed in an effort to boost milk yield. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, the genome of the H5N1 virus that infected the Texan patient, which has now been analysed, was found to have acquired "substitutions in PB2 [polymerase] likely to enhance replication in mammals" (specifically E627K; note that this has been observed before).

Summary Analysis of Genetic Sequences of HPAI A(H5N1) Viruses in Texas

Summary Analysis of Genetic Sequences of HPAI A(H5N1) Viruses in Texas

www.cdc.gov

 

[Mr.Bishie]

The N American agribusiness sector use chicken shit (actually that plus dead poultry, their feathers and spilled waste feed, all rendered together) to up the protein content of cow feed in an effort to boost milk yield. What would possibly go wrong?

We’ve been spreading that on the fields of the UK for years!

 

[NoXion]

We’ve been spreading that on the fields of the UK for years!

I'd say there's a significant difference between fertilising fields with chicken shit and feeding it to cows.

 

[teqniq]

Looks to be rather worrying:

H5N1 now confirmed in 11 US farms. Cats die within 48 hours.

This is serious. To find out more in detail I urge you to check out THIS LINK. Meanwhile here is a summary: Vets are being advised to wear full PPE (personal protection) if seeing a cat with neurological symptoms, after forty cats died on a dairy farm...

www.dailykos.com

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

We’ve been spreading that on the fields of the UK for years!

I'm pretty sure they've composted it first, which burns out any pathogens if done right. You can't really put chicken manure directly on a field because there's so much nitrogen that it burns the crop. Composting it solves that problem. That still leaves the problem of ag chemical and other contaminants that can build up in the soil.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

The N American agribusiness sector use chicken shit (actually that plus dead poultry, their feathers and spilled waste feed, all rendered together) to up the protein content of cow feed in an effort to boost milk yield. What could possibly go wrong?

As far as I know, they aren't feeding dead cows to cattle anymore. One hopes they at least process the chicken waste to reduce the risk of pathogens. It won't remove prions though. We didn't really learn much from Mad Cow it seems.

They also put municipal sewage on fields in the US too. To minimize the risk some processers have heat treated it and compressed it into pellets. The shit is the least of the risk here. Can you imagine what kind of things people pour down the drains?

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

I suspect if there was a really serious pandemic idiots like that would be locked up for the public good.

US authorities ended up having to forcibly quarantine the infamous 'Typhoid Mary' back in the day.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallonn

I suppose furloughing staff with pay and our welfare safety in general helped avoid the necessity here during the Covid pandemic, as back then she was motivated by poverty and needing to work to survive.

Nowadays, though, we have tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people who believe 'it's my right' not to wear facemasks and to go out in public and cough and sneeze and infect other people. They don't care about the consequences for other people.

I'm not sure the authorities would have the capacity to quarantine all those selfish idiots.

 

[yield]

Bird flu pushes US dairy farmers to ban visitors, chop trees

CHICAGO, April 11 (Reuters) - Dairy farmers in the United States are raising their defenses to try to contain the spread of bird flu: banning visitors, cutting down trees to discourage wild birds from landing, and disinfecting vehicles coming onto their land.

South Dakota on Thursday became the eighth state to find highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in a dairy herd, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported infections in North Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Michigan, Idaho and New Mexico.

While the first cases appear to have been introduced to herds in Texas and Kansas by wild birds, the USDA said transmission among cattle was also possible. Agricultural officials in Michigan and Ohio said infected herds in those states received cattle from Texas.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

This article makes what I've been seeing across rural areas make more sense. In the last two years I've watched farmers chop down entire stands of trees and push them into a big pile. I figured it was just greed for just a little more land to plant. Here's the other shoe as it drops:

Dairy farmers in the United States are raising their defenses to try to contain the spread of bird flu: banning visitors, cutting down trees to discourage wild birds from landing, and disinfecting vehicles coming onto their land. ....

Even before North Carolina’s outbreak, Jordan, 64, said she was limiting visitors who could unintentionally carry in contaminated bird droppings on boots or vehicles. She also started chopping down about 40 small trees to avoid attracting wild birds during spring migration. ....

Seven state and industry officials said farmers face challenges because of uncertainty over how the virus is spreading and the exposure of open-aired barns to wild birds.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91090900/bird-flu-threatens-us-farms-forcing-farmers-level-trees-disinfect-vehicles

Planting trees used to be something farmers made sure to do to prevent erosion, but now they're cutting every tree in sight. I highly doubt if cutting trees down will work. Are they going to chop down all of the telephone poles and cell phone towers? When this doesn't work (and it won't), they'll try killing every bird in the sky (and that won't work either).

 

[gentlegreen]

The N American agribusiness sector use chicken shit (actually that plus dead poultry, their feathers and spilled waste feed, all rendered together) to up the protein content of cow feed in an effort to boost milk yield. What could possibly go wrong?

When I very briefly worked in a nutrition lab at MAFF around 1980, we were drying and milling chicken poop samples for analysis (delightful job) and I think I was told that was what it was intended for - or it may have been pigs ... Perhaps coincidentally I went vegan in 1981 and dodged BSE ...

 

[existentialist]

When I very briefly worked in a nutrition lab at MAFF around 1979, we were drying and milling chicken poop samples for analysis (delightful job) and I think I was told that was what it was intended for - or it may have been pigs ... Perhaps coincidentally I went vegan in 1981 and dodged BSE ...

View attachment 419909

Pfff, 1981? Johnny-come-lately.

I was vegetarian in 1972

 

[gentlegreen]

Pfff, 1981? Johnny-come-lately.

I was vegetarian in 1972

Your parents must have been bohemian !
We didn't even have anything remotely "foreign" in the house.

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

US authorities ended up having to forcibly quarantine the infamous 'Typhoid Mary' back in the day.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallonn

I suppose furloughing staff with pay and our welfare safety in general helped avoid the necessity here during the Covid pandemic, as back then she was motivated by poverty and needing to work to survive.

Nowadays, though, we have tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people who believe 'it's my right' not to wear facemasks and to go out in public and cough and sneeze and infect other people. They don't care about the consequences for other people.

I'm not sure the authorities would have the capacity to quarantine all those selfish idiots.

dawn of the living dead

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Planting trees used to be something farmers made sure to do to prevent erosion, but now they're cutting every tree in sight. I highly doubt if cutting trees down will work. Are they going to chop down all of the telephone poles and cell phone towers? When this doesn't work (and it won't), they'll try killing every bird in the sky (and that won't work either).

I was out of town for a couple of days. When I returned, I found that about a half mile of trees had been cut down along the road leading into town. Many of them had been there since before I was born. There isn't a cattle yard anywhere near so there's no reason to be doing this, even if the theory that cutting down trees will prevent bird flu were true (which it is not). If this continues this area will return to the dust bowl days and no one believes you when you tell them this.

(And the irony here is that they put up tree-like structures to shade the cattle to keep them cool.)

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Woke up to the sound of a Bobcat in use. Looked out to find another neighbor digging out all the trees he can find (on his property) in the name of bird flu.

If you drive around in rural areas you see huge piles of trees.

 

[CNT36]

Meanwhile, the genome of the H5N1 virus that infected the Texan patient, which has now been analysed, was found to have acquired "substitutions in PB2 [polymerase] likely to enhance replication in mammals" (specifically E627K; note that this has been observed before).

Summary Analysis of Genetic Sequences of HPAI A(H5N1) Viruses in Texas

Summary Analysis of Genetic Sequences of HPAI A(H5N1) Viruses in Texas

www.cdc.gov

According to that CDC link the change to the polymerase happened during the human infection. It shows how quick this can happen but there is no evidence of onward transmission. Other proteins notably Hemaglutinin and Neruminidase are closer to their avian forms than mammalian so that is going to hinder cell entry and spread within humans.

 

[teqniq]

NYT article from last week, not sounding very optimistic:

This May Be Our Last Chance to Halt Bird Flu in Humans and We Are Blowing It

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

On Friday, Colorado became the latest state to detect the bird flu virus spreading in dairy cattle. It follows revelations earlier in the week that viral fragments are turning up in retail milk.

Still, scientists don't view this as an immediate threat to human health.

Genetic material is not the same as infectious virus and pasteurization is expected to inactivate the virus in milk, but the findings speak to the broader uncertainty about the extent of the spread.

"There's so many critical things that we still need to know to get a better perspective on how bad this is, or maybe it's not so bad," says Dr. Rick Bright, a virologist and the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

Federal health agencies started sharing more details publicly this week, but Bright says there's still not enough transparency.

"It's the void that just leaves everyone nervous," he says

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/04/26/1247479100/bird-avian-flu-cows-cattle-milk-virus-unanswered-questions

On the AG radio here they're saying that they're finding broken virus proteins in pasteurized milk samples from store shelves. That's good news because it means that its being killed by heat and not passed on infect humans.

Now the bad news:

More than half of cats around the first Texas dairy farm to test positive for bird flu this spring died after drinking raw milk from the infected cows, scientists reported this week, offering a window into a toll the virus has taken during its unprecedented spread through the cattle industry.

The report, published Tuesday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, chronicles the early investigation by veterinarians and academic laboratories into a disease that started spreading through cows across the region earlier this year.

Cats at the Texas farm had been fed raw milk from cows that turned out to be infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI H5N1. A day after the farm first started noticing cows were getting sick, the cats started getting sick too. By the end, more than half of the cats had died.

"The cats were found dead with no apparent signs of injury and were from a resident population of [approximately] 24 domestic cats that had been fed milk from sick cows," the scientists wrote.

Tests of the samples collected from the brains and lungs of dead cats yielded results suggesting "high amounts of virus." Autopsies of the cats also revealed "microscopic lesions consistent with severe systemic virus infection," they said, including to the eye and brain.

Around 1 in 5 samples of milk the Food and Drug Administration checked from U.S. retailers tested positive for H5N1, though the agency said last week that studies so far show that pasteurization is working to kill off the virus in milk; only harmless fragments remained. Officials have repeatedly urged Americans not to drink raw milk.

MSN

This suggests that the current incarnation of the virus is pretty virulent, if not casually transmitted to humans.