Getting worried about bird flu | Hacker News Reader

Getting worried about bird flu

coredump3.blogspot.com

27 pointsjethronethro13 comments

Oh look, the raw milk festival in Fresno is this weekend. https://rawfarmusa.com/events

Some barn cats have tested positive for H5N1. All the ones we know of have died. https://bnonews.com/index.php/2024/04/4-more-cats-test-posit... It seems to be hitting them much harder than the cows.

Edit: Better link for the barn cats https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/04/17/two-veterinarians... “A colleague of mine, he told me, ‘You know what’s strange? I went to one of my dairies last week, and all their cats were missing. I couldn’t figure it out — the cats usually come to my vet truck,’ ” Petersen recalled. “And then someone called me and said half of his cats had passed away without warning, and so then all the alarm bells start going off in your head.”

They have only tested dead cats, so of course they have all died!

With seeing how people behaved during covid (i.e learnt nothing) I wouldn't be surprised to see another pandemic/huge infection. If it has such a high mortality rate, then maybe we will see a slight shift in some people's behaviours, but I still think most won't change.

It’s probably worse than that. Since Covid had relatively low mortality after the first wave, and got so politicized, I think if there were another more dangerous pandemic a lot of people would simply not believe it until they experienced it first hand.

Worst case, no one will talk about it in 6 months or so.

stop worrying about EVERYTHING. Live your best life.

This is on my Bingo card!

6% and 4% for Covid and Influenza respectively. So 33% seems insanely high to me.

It's very worrying. But it's not 33% chance of death with every infection.

I'm just a layman, but it looks like 33% might actually be the mortality rate. The WHO[1] and CDC[2] both report a case fatality rate over 50%.

From the Wikipedia article Human mortality from H5N1[3]:

> Public health officials in Ontario, Canada argue that the true case-fatality rate could be lower, pointing to studies suggesting it could be 14-33%, and warned that it was unlikely to be as low as the 0.1–0.4% rate that was built into many pandemic plans.

Scary.

[1]: https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/cumulative-number-of...

[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2022-2023/h5n1-t...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mortality_from_H5N1

“We just have to flatten the curve!”

"... but it's getting widespread enough that the mainstream media is picking up on it"

As usual, the mainstream media is making it widespread, not the other way around as you suggested.

Fear is good for business.

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