Hacker News Reader

Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

Wastewater detection is showing H5 bird flu all over California: https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/wwd-h5.html

That's suggestive there are far more than the 29 reported California cases - with cases generally remaining mild enough to earn no special attention over routine respiratory infections.

View on HN

Wastewater surveys pick up animal-to-animal or animal-to-human transmission strains too.

It's very hard to know what to do here, because that's also detecting contaminated milk dumped into the wastewater system, which is a massive signal but also not human.

why is contaminated milk being dumped into the wastewater system? and what is contaminated milk even have to do with H5N1? it's avain flu and last I checked birds don't have tiddies

H5N1 isn't exclusively avian flu, and the current receptors for the strain circulating in the U.S. have much more affinity for binding sites found in human eyes (hence conjunctivitis being one of the most common symptoms) and bovine mammary tissue.

"H5N1" is a crude description of a wide variety of strains, some more amenable to avian hosts, some not.

As for why milk is being dumped into the wastewater system? Because that's where it goes.

https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-informatio...

I agree there are likely cases not being detected, but there are lots of flying natural reservoirs who also poop in sewer watersheds (no one's keeping them sterile, after all). They may also be getting magnified by agricultural sources; California does a much better job of testing, but there are very likely positive farms that haven't been found yet.

Note: wild bird crap with H5N1 in it gets washed into storm drains, and in many communities this would wind up in wastewater and be detected, so this is probably not direct evidence of human H5N1 infections

Would that happen without rain? and I am not sure there has been recent rain in Los Angeles?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com