First human case of avian flu in Texas
politico.com
politico.com
In all seriousness, even if we get into a pandemic again, unless we see mortality rates in the double digits, I doubt the world would go into prolonged lockdowns again.
No, "we" didn't. The CDC and, by extension, much of the coverage was insisting on surface sanitization even though there was plenty of evidence for airborne transmission already. I distinctly remembered going with the CDC recommendations until a friend pointed me out to a bunch of published articles with a preponderance of evidence for airborne transmission. It took many months for the CDC and other agencies to change their stance, by which time the whole 'surface cleaning' was already entrenched in everyone's minds.
I was unlucky and lost 3 grandparents between my wife and I. Matters more to me probably.
The thing is lack of density was sufficient to trigger this lack of care. Kind of interesting.
[0]https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm
Rather, there seems to be some mechanism by which some viruses push out others. This can also be seen in how new SARS-CoV-2 variants would often rapidly exterminate the prior variant within weeks, instead of co-existing.
Because nearly everyone has had it already. The mitigations were removed because Omicron so visibly ignored them that everyone just gave up at that point.
If we're now largely immune to COVID why isn't influenza now pushing it out?
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/dashboard/respiratory-virus-das...
> it's still killing at nearly 5x the rate as the flu
The way they define COVID deaths make such numbers incomparable.
To be clear in this, I took COVID very seriously, I still carry a mask in my pocket and use it when I travel, but I'm trying to be realistic about the situation.
It's not. The CDC only caught this case because they are proactively testing workers at farms that have confirmed animal outbreaks.
> "The patient reported eye redness (consistent with conjunctivitis), as their only symptom, and is recovering." [1]
Diseases like ebola or hendra virus that actually have 50%+ mortality rates don't have mild forms like this.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p0401-avian-flu.html
Give it a two week incubation time (not that far-fetched) and it will spread far and wide.
Chances are >99% of cases are so mild they were never tested. It's pretty surprising this one was detected at all. It's only the second confirmed case in the US despite tons of confirmed animal cases in poultry and migratory birds.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/chart-epi-curve-ah5n1.html
> It's only the second confirmed case
We know it doesn't transmit very well in humans. Luckily people have been working on that:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/controv...
> The patient reported eye redness (consistent with conjunctivitis), as their only symptom, and is recovering.
This is not a disease with a double digit mortality rate, no matter how many times people try to do math with a three digit sample size of poor people in developing countries.
The CDC only caught this case because it's literally testing anyone with symptoms at the cattle farm.
You make it sound as though they're working on making it transmit well in humans. Oh wait, they are! What's wrong with them?!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8852235/
This is what it looked like in Dec 2020: https://www.statista.com/chart/23746/icu-bed-occupancy-rates...
I was in a blue state that issued a strongly worded stay at home recommendation, but no "lockdown" with legal force. It worked great, owing in part to still having some sense of social cohesion. When your society can't get through novel disruptions with leadership informally keeping most everybody on the same page, that's what you should be worried about.
[0] https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/state-fair/202...
https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data-research/dashbo...
> unless we see mortality rates in the double digits, I doubt the world would go into prolonged lockdowns again.
You should have learned from the last pandemic that going in a lockdown is the prevention measure to avoid mortality rate in the double digits…
Huh? Mortality rate is the mortality rate, its independent of a lockdown; unless more vulnerable people are "locking down" at rates different than less vulnerable ones, but at that point we're not talking about a "lockdown".
The purpose of the COVID lockdown wasn't to suppress the mortality rate; it was to suppress the total infected/mortality.
When your medical needs exceed resources mortality rate converges toward untreated mortality rate.
Try this on for size what is the untreated mortality rate of a single gunshot wound to the chest. Its close to 100% but the overwhelming majority survive with prompt treatment. You wouldn't say that the mortality rate was what it is.
Soon new patients would live or die with no medical care and death rate for the diseases and anyone who is at risk of dying wo care would skyrocket.
50M people would ultimately die in the US alone everything would collapse and people would lock down of their own accord.
Most of the world didn't go into any lockdowns. Sure, most gatherings were banned and places like restaurants couldn't have people dining in. But most people could go outside and do almost anything they wanted, provided they didn't gather in crowds.
The lockdowns like China enforced where people had their doors barred and could only leave once a week for groceries (or had groceries delivered by the government) were an outlier.
If we ever see mortality rates in the double digits, expect real lockdowns.
> If we ever see mortality rates in the double digits, expect real lockdowns.
We'll see them because our ruling classes are psychologically and politically unable to push back on corrupt academics, not because they work. Lockdowns had no effect on COVID because respiratory viruses are able to spread long distances on air currents, but lockdown policy assumes they can't.
So, you were told to self isolate because you were in a household with a sick individual. Wouldn't that be the prudent thing to do anyway?
Also, what does 'forbidden' means? What would have happened if you went out anyway?
> Lockdowns had no effect on COVID because respiratory viruses are able to spread long distances on air currents
Citation needed. Also, the viral load at 'long distances' is unlikely to be problematic.
That'd very much depend on what the reason to leave the house was, wouldn't it? I never got sick anyway so must have been immune to that variant.
> Also, what does 'forbidden' means? What would have happened if you went out anyway?
I think there were fines. I forget exactly, it was a few years ago now. I'm not sure how it was policed.
> Citation needed. Also, the viral load at 'long distances' is unlikely to be problematic.
Go look at any regression analysis of lockdown/masking severity vs outcomes, there are plenty out there. Or study what happened on the Diamond Princess way back in Feb/March 2020. The data from that semi-controlled experiment is only compatible with long distance transmission on air currents. Or look at how SARS-1 was able to spread between buildings, and apartments within the buildings. They were able to show it was spreading through ducts within the buildings and then on wind currents between buildings.
Or if you want a more direct approach, look at the old graphs of case numbers for a country you aren't familiar with and try to work out when mask mandates or lockdowns were implemented or relaxed. I've tried, it can't be done. If these policies worked you'd see clear impact because clear impact is the definition of worked. No impact can be seen, as you'd expect from gas-cloud type spread.
That doesn't make much sense. Just because some country called their measures "lockdown" doesn't make the situation comparable to another country with different measures who called theirs "lockdown" as well. I suggest doing a duck-test ("if it walks like a duck, ...").
> Where I live I was forbidden from leaving my apartment for a couple of weeks when my wife got COVID, for any reason except purchasing groceries. So that was definitely a China-style lockdown.
That doesn't require a lockdown. Technically even the status of your wife and yours was different at the time. Your wife was in medical isolation and you were quarantined (at least it sounds like you were not testing positive at the time which makes all the difference here).
We are still “in” one, in all seriousness.
- Pandemics
- Antibiotic resistance (The sheer stupidity of using the same antibiotics we depend on to stay alive just to make animals grow faster and be more profitable.)
- Climate change (1/6th of all emissions)
- Soil, air, water pollution
- Deforestation
- Higher food prices
- Less net food available
How do cases like this ever get diagnosed? IME the standard of care for mild respiratory illness in the US tends to be basic symptom management, or maybe a standard diagnostic panel to determine whether to prescribe antibiotics. How does someone with mild symptoms get tested for a rare virus in the first place?
> CDC is working with state health departments to continue to monitor workers who may have been in contact with infected or potentially infected birds/animals and test those people who develop symptoms. [1]
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p0401-avian-flu.html
For those who enjoyed Portal, it is a nice first person puzzler. Completely different mechanics. I do not think it required much (any?) high precision/twitch actions. Not finished, but I think I am preferring original Talos Principle vs Two, because there were not so many annoying NPCs in the first.