Bird Flu

[Samson]

Bird Flu, or a particularly pathogenic version of Avian Influenza A (H5N1) is spreading around the world. Currently we know about 145 cattle herds and 4 farm workers in a dozen states across the United States but that is likely the tip of the iceberg.

It was detected in poultry in China in 1996, and had spread to wild birds by 2002. It then spread around the world on their migratory routes, and in 2021 it entered the US. It has been spreading around the large scale intensive poultry enterprises, and at some point started infecting dairy cattle. Transmission in cattle within the head is via milking machines (Caserta 2024) and between herds includes the movement of asymptomatic cattle (Nguyen 2024). The milk could provide a potential route of human infection. It also infects other mammals, including cats (2 died!) and also a significant outbreak in harbor seals as well as a long list of others.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported a total of 860 human infections with 454 fatal cases since 2003, though this should not be interpreted as a true case fatality ratio as less severe infections are likely to go unreported. The worry that it could be only one mutation from efficient human-human transmission and another global pandemic. The 2009 pig flu had a relatively low mortality rate by flu pandemic standards, being estimated to have killed less than 300,000 (Dawood 2012). The Spanish Flu probably killed more than WW1 [BBC].

Any thoughts? Are we better or worse off since COVID? Will our familiarity with flu jabs protect us from some misinformation?

Spread Around the World (I am not sure how to interpret b) (Ramey 2022) :

Spoiler Legend :

Occurrence of outbreak events for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in wild and captive birds (i.e., non-poultry) from 2 August 2005–22 March 2021 as reported to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). Panel A depicts the relative occurrence of detection events (red) geographically during the period following spread of emergent A/goose/Guangdong/1/1996-like (GsGD) highly pathogenic HPAI viruses to wild and captive birds (left) and subsequent to the evolution of clade 2.3.4.4 viruses (right), many of which may be adapted to wild birds. Panel B depicts the relative occurrence of HPAI outbreak detections by year. Data courtesy of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE 2021a)

I cannot find a reference for this, but I think it is roughly right:

Note the date, but gives an idea where the US poultry herd is:

Source

Nature Review on International preparedness 12th July
Nature Review on spread in US herd 8th May

Ramey 2022 : Highly pathogenic avian influenza is an emerging disease threat to wild birds in North America
https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.22171

Dawood 2012 :Estimated global mortality associated with the first 12 months of 2009 pandemic influenza A H1N1 virus circulation: a modelling study
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(12)70121-4

Caserta 2024 : From birds to mammals: spillover of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus to dairy cattle led to efficient intra- and interspecies transmission
https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.05.22.595317

Burrough 2024 : Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Clade 2.3.4.4b Virus Infection in Domestic Dairy Cattle and Cats, United States, 2024
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/30/7/24-0508_article

Nguyen 2024: Emergence and interstate spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) in dairy cattle
https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.05.01.591751

Uyeki 2024 : Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Virus Infection in a Dairy Farm Worker
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2405371

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I have no confidence whatsoever in my provincial government or the right-leaning portion of the people here in handling yet another goaround with a pandemic. The government hasn't been keeping us updated on the numbers of people who still have covid and are still dying from it. They prefer to pretend it doesn't exist anymore, while encouraging their loyal sycophants to spread hysteria that the NDP party wants to go door to door and forcibly vaccinate everyone.

I hate the word "jabs". It implies that receiving these vaccines is a violent, hostile action. The truth is, I've found that pharmacists are far more skilled at giving shots than the average public health nurse. It's practically painless. I've had more pain from my own insulin injections and glucose testing.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Bleach is the answer! Everybody just drink bleach. No need for stupid vaccines or even stupider masks. Just drink bleach!

 

[BenitoChavez]

Just another reason why we should all go vegan...as I sit here eating a bowl of ice cream

Anyway, I'd have to say that generally speaking humanity is currently better equipped to face the next global pandemic considering how Covid touched everyone's lives in one way or another. Individuals are certainly more health conscious. I still see people wearing masks today whereas before Covid almost nobody did save some travelers in airports. Health care providers and administrators have hopefully learned some lessons regarding patient care, availability of resources and hospitals beds, managing employee stress and burnout etc.

But what we've also learned is that certain segments of the population aren't willing to do take proper precautions if it infringes on their preferred lifestyle. Also that whoever you have in government can have a dramatic effect on the progression of a virus. So YMMV.

 

[Theov]

Bleach is the answer! Everybody just drink bleach. No need for stupid vaccines or even stupider masks. Just drink bleach!

Eh. Masks ARE stupid.
If you think they do a thing, I need to sell you some nice bridges. They are half the price now and if you buy more, I can give you a discount.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Bleach is the answer! Everybody just drink bleach. No need for stupid vaccines or even stupider masks. Just drink bleach!

Or ivermectin. That's what the premier of Alberta was touting at one point. But then she's stupid and heartless enough to say that there are benefits to smoking and everyone with cancer can cure it themselves if they haven't yet reached Stage 4.

 

[Samson]

Or ivermectin. That's what the premier of Alberta was touting at one point. But then she's stupid and heartless enough to say that there are benefits to smoking and everyone with cancer can cure it themselves if they haven't yet reached Stage 4.

The Controversies section of her wiki page is long enough and does not even get to the smoking thing. People actually vote for her?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The Controversies section of her wiki page is long enough and does not even get to the smoking thing. People actually vote for her?

Ohgosh, there's a lot to unpack there.

Spoiler :

After she became premier, it was revealed that she made comments on April 29 during a Locals.com livestream about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Smith argued for a peace plan between Russia and Ukraine and advocated for Ukraine's neutrality. She also made subsequently deleted posts in March that questioned whether breakaway regions in Ukraine should be able to govern independently, and whether NATO played a role in the invasion, citing a conspiracy theory promoted by Tucker Carlson alleging 'secret U.S. funded biolabs' in Ukraine.[103] On October 16, she issued a statement saying that she "stands with the Ukrainian people" and advocated for diplomacy to "spare millions of Ukrainian lives."[104] Smith also made posts on Locals.com critical of COVID-19 vaccines and questioned the legitimacy of reports that unmarked graves had been found in Canadian residential schools.[105]

In a social media interview on November 10, 2021, Smith said that she was not wearing a Remembrance Day poppy because politicians and public health officials had "ruined it for her" by taking away Canadians' freedoms through public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, and that citizens that had gone along with public health measures and been vaccinated had fallen for the "charms of a tyrant" in the same way that Germans had fallen for Adolf Hitler.[106][107] She elaborated, "That's the test here, is we've seen it. We have 75 per cent of the public who say not only hit me, but hit me harder, and keep me away from those dirty unvaxxed."[106][107] When the interview resurfaced in 2023, Smith apologized, writing "As everyone knows, I was against the use of vaccine mandates during COVID. ... However, the horrors of the Holocaust are without precedent, and no one should make any modern-day comparisons that minimize the experience of the Holocaust and suffering under Hitler, nor the sacrifice of our veterans."[106]

During her campaign for the UCP leadership, Smith conducted an interview with a Naturopathic physician during which they discussed lifestyle for the prevention of cancer and how Smith's health savings account proposal could help with that. She said "When you think about everything that built up before you got to stage 4 [of cancer] and that diagnosis — that's completely within your control and there's something you can do about that that is different."[107] NDP leader Rachel Notley and Smith's fellow candidates including Brian Jean criticized this comment, with Jean (who lost a son to cancer) Tweeting "You [Smith] saying to someone that their cancer is 'completely within your control' before stage four is insensitive, hurtful, and outright untrue. Please stop."[107]

On May 17, 2023, an investigation by Marguerite Trussler, the Alberta Ethics Commissioner, found that Danielle Smith had violated section 3 of the Conflict of Interest Act by talking to the Alberta Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Alberta about charges in an ongoing criminal case against far-right street preacher and COVID-19 protestor Artur Pawlowski.[108][109]

A news-leak on December 18, 2023 revealed allegations of an ongoing ethics probe into recent re-structuring at Alberta Health Services, including the rapid hiring and firing of Deena Hinshaw for a position on their Indigenous Wellness Core team just days prior to starting. One physician at Alberta Health Services resigned in protest, claiming 'political interference from Danielle Smith's office', and a letter signed by over 200 physicians called for an investigation into the matter.[110]

1. She adores Tucker Carlson, to the point that she held a couple of "interview" events with him in Edmonton and Calgary, and charged admission. So many people tried to get tickets for that, and there were actually draws for free ones. The rational people were hoping he'd get turned away at the border for deliberately spreading misinformation harmful to the public. We were thinking of the time years ago when Ann Coulter was prevented from speaking at a university because the speech she intended to give included things that would have been in violation of our hate laws. She refused to change her speech, so that was that. And she ranted and screeched about how Canada had apparently violated her free speech rights (seriously, American constitutional rights aren't portable across the border here).

2. Unmarked graves. A few years ago an old residential school site in BC was found and suspected to contain unmarked graves of 215 indigenous children. Residential schools were still in use up to the 1990s, and there's not a one of them that didn't have some horrific abuses connected to them. There are four such sites in/near the part of the city I live in. What would be found if the grounds were ever searched, I don't know. But if they did find indications of unmarked graves, it wouldn't surprise me. There were many reasons these kids died, and in many instances their parents weren't told, or at least weren't told where they were buried.

This government contains a number of residential school deniers (as in "oh, no abuses happened, no children were kidnapped from their parents and forced to attend, every death that happened was due to TB, and anyone claiming differently is lying and teachers should teach the positive things about these schools because the nuns running those places just loved children and were so loving and kind to them" and blah, blah, blah, with more lies than ever. My own MLA, who is currently the health minister, used to be on the Catholic school board. She's one of these deniers, and hired another known denier to oversee the social studies curriculum in the new curriculum she tried to ram through. Even her former colleagues wouldn't pilot it, due to the egregious bigotry and misinformation in it.

3. Ah, right. Smith stated that those who are against the vaccine and masking are the most persecuted people she's ever seen in her lifetime. She said that, knowing full well that there are still Holocaust survivors who are alive and able to call her out on that.

My MLA has a sister-in-law who used to be on the Catholic school board until she went on social media and compared teaching children about inclusiveness for LGBT people to Nazi Germany indoctrinating school children to praise Hitler. She captioned the image she used with "brainwashing is brainwashing." The current education minister did NOTHING. This woman's colleagues did NOTHING until enough protesting had made them realize that this wasn't going to go away, she wouldn't resign of her own accord, and they had to do something. She wouldn't comply with the conditions they laid down, and so they kicked her off the school board. To this day she STILL doesn't think she did anything wrong. The Take Back Alberta (TBA) group that's backing the current provincial government hails her as a martyr.

4. Those "health savings accounts" were pegged at a whopping $300.00. Considering the cost of services that have either been delisted or were never covered to begin with, this is peanuts.

Her notion that Stage 1-3 cancer is controllable by the patient is obscene, not only because it's absolutely wrong, but also because many people don't even know they have cancer until it's progressed to Stage 4.

5. Smith actually thought that all she needed to do to "fix" certain inconvenient legal matters for her buddies and cabinet ministers and the "Coutts 4" (protesters who helped block the international border at Coutts; they were caught with assault weapons and the intent to kill RCMP officers) was pick up the phone and have a little "chat" with the Attorney General.


Yes, people vote for Smith. People adore her and praise her on her FB page, and it's enough to make rational people feel like throwing up to read all the BS there.

Among other things, she decided that LGBT kids would not be allowed to be called by their preferred names/pronouns in school unless the parents had given written permission. This would effectively be outing kids who might not be ready for that. Yet it was interesting that "Danielle Smith" isn't her actual legal name. She gets to be publicly known by her preferred name, yet she won't extend this to kids.

6. Dr. Deena Hinshaw was the Chief Medical Officer during the pandemic. She did daily press briefings, and got a bit too popular for former premier Jason Kenney's liking. He started showing up to these briefings and gradually pushed her to the sidelines, after ordering her to say things that weren't necessarily accurate or advisable. This became abundantly clear when a journalist asked her a question and she hesitated before saying, "You'd have to ask the premier about that."

Smith has such a streak of petty vindictiveness. Hinshaw gave accurate information to the best of what was known about covid at the time, and the premiers really didn't like the CMOs of the provinces telling people things that weren't in line with what was politically expedient. After all, the doctors wanted to minimize the effects of the pandemic (so we wouldn't end up like some places in Europe with significantly higher death tolls), and the premiers wanted the pesky precautions gone because they were "bad for business."

 

[Zardnaar]

Here we go again.

 

[Narz]

I suggest we don't take kids out of schools and let them be raised by tiktok for a year this time

 

[Samson]

I suggest we don't take kids out of schools and let them be raised by tiktok for a year this time

Even if there is a 50% case mortality?

 

[Narz]

Even if there is a 50% case mortality?

If it were bubonic plague level sure lets play it safe

 

[Zardnaar]

We have also had a change of government. Current lot is of the let her rip variety.

Old government was really good on crisis management and the small stuff but useless on the big issues.
Easy double vaccinations though nit bird flu specific though.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The anti-vaxxers here aren't just refusing covid shots. They're refusing measles shots. And now a kid has died of measles. Others are at risk.

Measles can cause brain damage if it's bad enough. It's not a harmless thing. I knew a kid who died of it in the '70s. Not all shots work, or at least people sometimes catch whatever they've been vaccinated for within that 7-10-day time frame for it to become effective. That's how I ended up with mumps in high school... three weeks before the end of the semester. I ended up having to repeat my classes, because I was sick for the duration of the rest of the semester and missed the final exams.

 

[Birdjaguar]

If it were bubonic plague level sure lets play it safe

We have a few cases of that every year in NM. No big deal.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

A few winters ago there was an outbreak of measles in my city. It was traced to someone's kid in the walk-in clinic in a mall not far from here. A general health alert went out to everyone who was in the clinic that day, to monitor for symptoms of measles.

I tend to be a hermit in winter anyway, since it's hard to get my walker through the snow. But when there's an outbreak like this, I try to avoid the public areas of the apartment building as well. At the very least I don't touch door handles or elevator buttons with my bare hands. There are too many kids here, who pick up who-knows-what at school and pass it along.

 

[Samson]

Possible first recorded case of human - human transmission, but the surveillance systems are not really up to the job of figuring out where it came from.

All eyes are on Missouri.

Researchers are anxiously awaiting data from the midwestern state about a mysterious bird flu infection in a person who had no known contact with potential animal carriers of the disease. The data could reveal whether the ongoing US bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle has reached a dreaded turning point: the emergence of a virus capable of spreading from human to human.

Thus far, data from the mysterious infection are few and far between: small snippets of the H5N1 virus’s genome sequence and an incomplete infection timeline. Ratcheting up concerns is the fact that no Missouri dairy farms have reported a bird flu outbreak; this might be because there really are no infections, or because the state does not require farmers to test their cows for the virus.

“The fear is that the virus is spreading within the community at low levels, and this is the first time that we’re detecting it,” says Scott Hensley, a viral immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “There’s no data to suggest that to be the case, but that’s the fear.”

More concerns were raised about the Missouri case on 13 September, when the CDC announced that two people who had close contact with the hospitalized person had also become ill around the same time. One of them was not tested for flu; the other tested negative.

That test result is encouraging but not definitive, says Hensley, because the sample could have been collected when the individual’s viral levels were too low for detection — after they started to recover, for instance.

Spoiler Rest of article :

A mystery case
On 6 September, Missouri public-health officials and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that an adult in the state had developed symptoms including chest pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, and was hospitalized owing to other medical conditions. That person did not become severely ill and has recovered from the infection. Tests revealed it to be H5N1 influenza, often referred to as bird flu.

Since March, when the H5N1 virus was first detected in US dairy cattle, there have been more than a dozen cases of human infection that were traced back to contact with infected animals, including cows and birds. The Missouri case stands out because investigators found no such link and no tie to unprocessed food products, such as raw milk, from potentially infected livestock.

This raised the possibility that the virus might have evolved to not only infect humans, but also to spread between people. If so, this increases the risk of it sweeping through human populations, potentially triggering a dangerous outbreak.

But that’s not the only possibility, cautions Jürgen Richt, a veterinary virologist at Kansas State University in Manhattan. “It’s a mystery case,” he says. “So you have to throw your net a little wider. Maybe they cleaned out a bird feeder in the household. Did they go to a state fair? What kind of food did they consume?”

More concerns were raised about the Missouri case on 13 September, when the CDC announced that two people who had close contact with the hospitalized person had also become ill around the same time. One of them was not tested for flu; the other tested negative.

That test result is encouraging but not definitive, says Hensley, because the sample could have been collected when the individual’s viral levels were too low for detection — after they started to recover, for instance. A key next step will be to test all three people for antibodies against the strain of H5N1 bird flu that has been infecting cattle. Such antibodies, particularly in the two contacts, would be definitive evidence of past infection.

Genomic sleuthing

While researchers await the antibody results, they are combing through patchy genome-sequence data from virus samples from the hospitalized person. This could yield any signs that the virus might have adapted to human hosts. The search is a challenge, however: the samples contained very low levels of viral RNA — so little that some researchers have shied away from analysing the sequences altogether.

“What I would want to see is higher quality,” says Ryan Langlois, a viral immunologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. “I am very leery about interpreting anything from partial sequences.”

But for Hensley, one feature of the sequence fragments immediately leapt out: a single change in the string of amino acids that form a flu protein called hemagglutinin (the ‘H’ in H5N1). That protein sits on the surface of influenza viruses, where it helps the viruses bind to and infect host cells. It is also a target of flu vaccines.

The change that Hensley found creates a site to which a large sugar molecule can bind. That sugar, he says, could then act as an umbrella, shielding the swath of hemagglutinin beneath it. It is a change that his laboratory has studied in other flu strains, and it could affect how the virus binds to host cells — as well as whether vaccines being developed against the H5N1 virus found in cattle can recognize and perform well against the virus detected in Missouri.

Surveillance gaps

Even if the sequences were available, researchers know little about which genetic changes might allow bird flu viruses to better infect humans or to become airborne, says virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Previous studies1,2 had suggested that changes to a gene encoding a protein responsible for copying the viral genome could be crucial for allowing the virus to replicate in mammalian cells. But researchers were unable to sequence that gene from the isolate from Missouri.

Meanwhile, the CDC has issued contracts to five companies in the United States to provide testing services for H5N1 and other emerging pathogens. Testing of cattle also needs to be improved so that public-health officials will know which regions of the country to surveil for infections in humans, says Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In the United States, most testing of cattle is regulated at the state level, but only a handful of states have required routine testing on some dairy farms.

Public-health workers still don’t have a good handle on how many US herds have cows infected with H5N1, or whether cattle have immunity after contracting bird flu or can become reinfected, she says.

While researchers wait for more information, Hensley cautions against panic. “This could still be a one-off case and not the sign of something bigger,” he says.

 

[warpus]

Masks definitely work, there's plenty of scientific data supporting that statement.

Unfortunately if we ever have another serious global pandemic, there are a lot of people out there who will work against the rest of us when it comes to trying to deal with it.. and a lot of those people are in elected office.

 

[Samson]

The global H5N1 influenza panzootic in mammals

Influenza A viruses (IAV) have caused more documented global pandemics in human history than any other pathogen. High pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) viruses belonging to the H5N1 subtype are a leading pandemic risk. Two decades after H5N1 “bird flu” became established in poultry in Southeast Asia, its descendants have resurged, setting off an H5N1 panzootic in wild birds that is fueled by (a) rapid intercontinental spread, reaching South America and Antarctica for the first time; (b) fast evolution via genomic reassortment; and (c) frequent spillover into terrestrial and marine mammals. The virus has sustained mammal-to-mammal transmission in multiple settings, including European fur farms, South American marine mammals, and US dairy cattle, raising questions about whether humans are next. Historically, swine are considered optimal intermediary hosts that help avian influenza viruses (AIV) adapt to mammals before jumping to humans. However, the altered ecology of H5N1 has opened the door to new evolutionary pathways. Could dairy cattle, farmed mink, or South American sea lions serve as new mammalian gateways to humans? Here we explore the molecular and ecological factors driving H5N1’s sudden expansion in host range and assess the likelihood of different zoonotic pathways leading to an H5N1 pandemic.

 

[Samson]

Bird flu suspected of killing dozens of captive tigers in Vietnam

Dozens of tigers, three lions and a panther have died in zoos in southern Vietnam, with subsequent tests detecting cases of bird flu.

The country’s Ministry of Health said in a statement on Thursday that two samples taken from dead tigers at Mango Garden Resort in Dong Nai province tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Since early last month, 20 tigers died at the resort after being fed chicken, said Phan Van Phuc, an official of Dong Nai province’s Centre for Disease Control, in the statement.

“It’s likely that the tigers had been infected from sick chicken, and the authorities are tracking the source of the chicken to determine the cause,” said Phan.

State media had previously said a total of 47 tigers, three lions and a panther died at the private My Quynh safari park in Long An province and the Vuon Xoai zoo in Dong Nai, near Ho Chi Minh City, in August and September.

Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV), an NGO focused on wildlife conservation, said there were 385 tigers living in captivity in Vietnam at the end of 2023.

About 310 are kept at 16 privately owned farms and zoos, while the rest are in state-owned facilities.