October 30 – Reflections on the Day the Earth Moved for H5N1 | Hacker News Reader

October 30 – Reflections on the Day the Earth Moved for H5N1

hogvet51.substack.com

52 pointsctoth34 comments

CDC page about the outbreak referred to in this post: https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html

Says:

> H5 bird flu is widespread in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and U.S. dairy cows with several recent human cases in U.S. dairy and poultry workers.

> While the current public health risk is low, CDC is watching the situation carefully and working with states to monitor people with animal exposures.

> CDC is using its flu surveillance systems to monitor for H5 bird flu activity in people.

Strains jumping from one type of animal to another sounds very critical to me. How concerned should we be?

The article ends with the rollout on testing milk/dairy. Does that mean the jump isn’t that worrisome or just that both the jump and the number of dairy cows affected is now so large that we need to take action?

Unfortunately this seems like one of those critical things that could be totally snowed under or worse derailed by next weeks events.

Article seems to say that the pig was infected by birds; it wasn't the same strain as cows.

Exactly. So it was another avian strain that migrated to pigs and that for the first time. That seems to be why it is so serious.

The article recognizes the jump as very worrisome, but it's also a new development.

Milk/dairy infections have apparently been happening for some time now; per quoted headlines:

> Utah reported that 8 dairy herds in Cache County were bulk tank positive for H5N1, tested as a result of a B3.13-infected layer flock. Utah is the 15th state with confirmed infections in the U.S.

> California reported another 5 B3.13-infected dairy herds with the count as of yesterday standing at 193 (of approximately 400 nationally confirmed infected herds)

The testing is a consequence of that situation.

Caught a flu from a sparrow that got into my house in 2009.

Worst cold/fever I’ve ever had in my life.

People joke about birds not being real. The Flu is REAL.

I'm a bit annoyed that we could stop this cold with a vaccine that sorta already exists, but didn't because we thought it was low-risk. It might be, or it might be a repeat of the big nothing that was H1N1 in 2009, but flu shots are cheap, so I'd rather pay $50 and not take the risk.

Any action that requires most of the human population to do or receive something is certainly not easy or cheap or uncomplicated

Flu shots are much less effective than you think, the average across all ages is below 50%.

Yeah but if H5N1 strains have a high fatality rate, a 50% effective vaccine is a big deal.

Of course, but parent is saying we shouldn't worry about H5N1 because a vaccine exists...

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