U.S. conditionally approves vaccine to protect poultry from avian flu | Hacker News Reader

U.S. conditionally approves vaccine to protect poultry from avian flu

science.org

38 pointsAnon8476 comments

This is an existing, widely used vaccine, not a new one.

Now that the disease has jumped to humans, humans can apparently transmit it to other poultry. Avian flu is apparently not too dangerous to humans, but people can be unwitting carriers.[1]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html

> Avian flu is apparently not too dangerous to humans

There are multiple strains. So far the strain circulating in cows seems to be mild in humans, but the strain in birds seems to be very deadly to humans.

> the strain in birds seems to be very deadly to humans

Source?

https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/wpro---documen...

> From 1 January 2003 to 27 September 2024, a total of 261 cases of human infection with avian influenza A(H5N1) virus have been reported from five countries within the Western Pacific Region (Table 1). Of these cases, 142 were fatal, resulting in a case fatality rate (CFR) of 54%

> Globally, from 1 January 2003 to 27 September 2024, 904 cases of human infection with avian influenza A(H5N1) virus were reported from 24 countries. Of these 904 cases, 464 were fatal (CFR of 51%)

Anecdotally, a teenager in Canada was recently infected with the strain being carried by birds. She lived, but after being in the hospital for a month, and an extended period of time on ECMO. Who knows where her quality of life is at the moment. That level of care would not be available to many people if the rate of infection were to rise.

Thank you. That said, CFR’s denominator is those who show up to a hospital in bad enough shape to be tested for H5N1. All we can conclude is this appears more deadly than the flu. That’s concerning, but not what I’d consider “very deadly.”

I think the available evidence supports calling it very deadly to humans. As you said though, it's possible and even likely the CFR is overestimating. However I doubt you would see a 50% CFR equate to something low enough that wouldn't effectively be a disaster if human to human transmission began, and at a rate similar to the flu or covid. Let's pray that never happens or that we have an effective vaccine by that time.

Technically speaking, it cannot be more deadly than the flu, since it is the flu.

There’s some evidence of rapidly expanding asymptomatic human -> human spread of it.

Hopefully that strain acts as an effective vaccine against the one(s) responsible for the > 50% CFR.

> it cannot be more deadly than the flu, since it is the flu

I’d say technically it’s not the flu. The flu is influenza A or B.

There was a post just a day or two ago about the surprising finding of people with antibodies who never got sick. Hopefully they'll chase that down and we'll get a more correct denominator soon.

I am appalled by any organization that resists consensus-driven scientific method proven facts. Falsehoods based on pseudoscience should not have a place in our society.

>> Although many influenza researchers contend that vaccination can help control spread of the deadly virus, the U.S. government has long resisted allowing its use because of politics and trade concerns that many contend are unscientific.

That sentence is very misleading.

There are countries that do not allow the importing of the products of vaccinated chickens because they are concerned the chickens may have asymptomatic bird flu.

The scientific merit of that is irrelevant. It is a fact that US agricultural policy has to take into account. Bird flu is an economic problem, primarily, and vaccination might not be worth it if the cost is killing the poultry export industry.

This is more informative:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24155545/bird-flu-vaccine...

>> But, Cardona explained, the industry no longer relies on diagnosing sick poultry based on visible signs and symptoms but on strict protocols that utilize molecular testing.

>> “Markets have been negotiated based on not using vaccination ... based on, frankly, older data [that] there could be a chance that you would import the virus in an animal or in a product that has vaccine in it,” Cardona said.

Seems like vaccination is more of a cost or negotiation issue:

>> The National Turkey Federation says unilateral vaccination “would have a severe impact on exports” but that it has urged — and continues to urge — the federal government to “move as rapidly as possible to try to develop new agreements” with trading partners.

And it seems we already vaccinate chickens?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9890037/#:~:text=Active%20im...

One of the common poultry vaccines in the US is for Marek’s disease, which has arguably been a disaster.

Over time, the disease has evolved to be more virulent so that it can spread in vaccinated flocks.

As a side effect, its mortality rate in unvaccinated flocks has been increasing, and some strains of it are approaching 100%. Normally, such a contagion would burn itself out instead of spreading.

The mortality rate in vaccinated flocks is non-trivial and also increasing. I think it’s still lower than the unvaccinated mortality rate before the vaccine was introduced, but I’m not sure.

(I am by no means an anti-vaxxer; the currently available human vaccines are effective and safe, as is the Marek’s vaccine. Marek disease’s is a worst case scenario outlier, and enabled by the conditions in modern poultry farms, which are atrocious.)

they should be letting migrant farm workers take the vaccine

That's a good idea in itself but bird flu has its name from killing the birds, so you'd still have >>40% of the entire chickens die.

So weird. RFK is now in charge of this stuff for humans, and is anti-vax, but apparently our gov't thinks vaccines are fine for chickens.

Unvaccinated people die, unvaccinated poultry is an existential risk to the ag industry. Different incentives making the palatability of solutions malleable when pushed through mental models and belief systems, like making sausage.

If it’s that big of a risk that poultry industry will die, shouldn’t we also be concerned about the fact that the birds in the wild will also die off? Wouldn’t that threaten the broader economy much more?

The wild is where these diseases tend to originate. But the distribution of populations over thousands of square miles ensures some groups will avoid even the most virulent strains.

The risk and impact to domesticated flocks is increased due to the sheer density of modern poultry operations.

Not just density but also lack of genetic diversity, as seen in other agri sectors like honey production.

Or even plants. Most infamous example are bananas, virtually all banana that you can buy in a supermarket will have the exact same DNA.

High density agricultural facilities provide perfect conditions for producing novel diseases. You have a bunch of stressed animals living right on top of each other, and each one ends up testing out large number of minor variations of the disease until they breed one that’s good enough to escape containment.

>unvaccinated poultry is an existential risk to the ag industry

The number of chickens killed by bird flu is miniscule compared to the amount that have been culled by hyperventilation bureaucrats. Chickens have survived thousands of years without being rendered extinct by a virus, that's not going to suddenly change, because that's how evolutionary dynamics work.

There's a difference between going extinct and having enough of a mass die-off to temporarily but significantly impact our economy and food supply. I think any regulatory policy would be trying to avoid the latter more than the former.

Chickens have survived for thousands of years, but not in quantities and conditions that we cultivate them in today to feed ourselves.

I'd be careful with that - in the past there were no "mega-chicken-factories" that you'd find nowadays. So you can't quite compare spread of viruses in chicken today with the last "thousands of years" without very large asterisks

Edit: stetrain phrased it better :)

Pandemics became a thing among humans when we moved into cities because the increase in population density meant the disease could spread faster than the population’s immunity could build. Chickens in the wild (insofar as “wild chicken” is a meaningful concept) indeed may not succumb to a pandemic, chickens in a factory farm spread disease rapidly amongst themselves.

Factory farms have been around for almost a century and that hasn't happened. Nothing's changed now, there's absolutely no empirical evidence that such a thing is happening.

> Factory farms have been around for almost a century

So around the same time as the Spanish flu pandemic?

you cannot be serious. disease among husbanded animal populations has been a problem since mankind began keeping animals. before vaccines, the only options available were cleanliness, inoculation, and culling, to include killing entire herds when even a single individual was found to carry a disease.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-rinderpest-was-eradicated

Apart from all the chicken that did go extinct...

If you think about it, veterinarians are a evolutionary adaptation as well!

Population density matters for disease spread, and population density of animals in any agricultural settings will be orders of magnitude higher than in natural state.

There might be more chickens in one mega-farm than there used to be in the wild in their original homeland in Southeast Asia.

I don't they're doing it because they're worried about chickens dying out so that's a strange counter

> hyperventilation bureaucrats

If they didn’t cull our poultry industry—as a whole—would be ineligible for export to most countries.

Maybe you shoulf ask a poultry farmer for an informed opinion. If you do, link to it here.

Currently you're just parroting conspiratorial disinformation.

I did a web search for you (it's not difficult, you should try it one day) and this came up:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crm7d2yv878o

> Chickens have survived thousands of years without being rendered extinct by a virus

Sure, in an environment that’s completely different from an industrial farming operation.

Clearly you misunderstood GP. Bird flu in a farm mean at worst 5% death rate for them, so clearly death isn't why GP talked about the danger for big ag.

In my country, if any factory farm is hit by any virus, the meat is considered tainted and cannot be sold (wouldn't be bought by big retailers anyway) until the virus is cleared.

For poultry it can means 3 months of throwing eggs away. It's more economical to kill all the chickens and start from scratch. If the contamination reach your neighbours, they will do the same thing (so you want to do it early, and radically).

You clearly have never heard of Marek’s disease:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek's_disease

Current strains are hitting 100% mortality rates in unvaccinated chickens, and it can spread over a mile on the wind. Wild turkeys are asymptomatic carriers.

Actually, the last I checked, this vaccine will be bad for the industry. It prevents exports, which will lead to a supply glut.

So, in addition to the hit from culling chickens last year, paying for the vaccine, the big producers will see their income tank way more on average than if they just culled a few states worth of chickens and then sold the remaining at market rates.

On the other hand, this action should lower the price of eggs in the US, and makes it less likely that Trump will have to deal with pro-vaccine folks that don’t want their loved ones to needlessly die. I’m guessing they don’t want to distract their propaganda machine by making it explain that everything is great again, and your personal experience with flu deaths is an outlier.

Also, it will help further isolate the US economy, which should reduce the economic shock if Trump follows through with his plan to launch a four front invasion of Canada, Greenland, Panama and Gaza.

I’m hoping the “they did it so less people will die” theory is correct, to be clear.

vaccinated chickens hasn't had any health impact on Canadian's with it's own chickens vaccinated for a while now.

How do you know there’s been no health impact on Canadians?

Because of science. There is zero evidence that viruses like H5N1 survive through cooking. So if the vaccine is using a dead virus, there is almost zero chance it will have any affect on cooked food.

https://www.canada.ca/en/services/health/food-safety/highly-...

Also, Canada doesn’t allow this vaccine, so anyone claiming it’s caused a public health crisis there is peddling some highly refined bullshit. :-)

Says “Because of science” and fires off a single article from the government of Canada that has nothing to do with the issue of whether the vaccination itself causes problems in humans with consumption of animals vaccinated.

Apparently, we have a different idea what science is. I’d like to leave it at that. Any other takers?

"Nothing"? The link states that "is no evidence to suggest that the consumption of fully cooked poultry, beef, game meat, organs or eggs can transmit the influenza A(H5N1) virus to humans". The vaccine is made of a dead virus. Thus, heat kills virus, heat kills vaccine.

>> Apparently, we have a different idea what science is.

Arrogant dismissal.

There is more than just “dead” virus in the vaccine. Byproducts like formaldehyde, antibiotics, aluminum, salts, soaps, and other adjuvants are present.

Your simplistic and dismissive look at this issue is the one that’s arrogant. Hand-wavy comments such as yours deserve to be challenged.

Do you think anti-vaxxers will believe that?

Never heard of shedding?

I don't think Canadian poultry (meat or egg) is actually vaccinated against avian influenza?

Here's the CBC talking why Canadian egg prices have been relatively stable so far (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/egg-prices-avian-flu-canada-u...). No mention of vaccines.

Government websites about poultry and HPIA state (...last updated in 2023 >.>) state that we're still doing "stamping out" as opposed to vaccines (though we do have a task force!) https://inspection.canada.ca/en/animal-health/terrestrial-an...

Half of RFK’s platform is insane. The other half makes sense.

He claimed he’d focus on the reasonable half (like banning ultra processed foods). I’m hoping that’s true.

However, vaccinating the chickens creates a huge trade barrier (because you cannot sell vaccinated poultry products in most places), so this could just be another example of Trump’s isolationist trade policies.

I guess we can hope they did this to improve public health, but I suspect it’s more of “a stopped clock is right twice a day” situation.

Banning ultra processed food is unhinged. The conventional definition of UPF isn't coherent.

I agree legislative work to precisely define UPF is needed.

However, scientists have repeatedly shown that they cause a statistically significant increase in all cause mortality.

If you take the random word generator that is RFK’s mouth, then filter it with reproducible scientific studies, the result is probably actually better than what previous political appointees have produced.

I’ve already expressed skepticism about the second step, where science is involved. Still, I can hope.

there is not evidence that it is the "processing" of the UPF that is the problem. so any attempt to ban UPF is doomed.

https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj-2023-078476

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35658669/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25804833/

^—- Conclusions: The consumption of ultra-processed products (i.e. foods with low nutritional value but high energy density) has increased dramatically in Sweden since 1960, which mirrors the increased prevalence of obesity. Future research should clarify the potential causal role of ultra-processed products in weight gain and obesity.

So, the last one has a quantitative definition that could be used for a preliminary ban.

Also, all those articles link many more. One click deep will provide a dozen concurring studies. I didn’t feel like adding more links.

"foods with low nutritional value but high energy density" is not the definition of UPFs that I've seen most often. The definition I most see is the NOVA classification. NOVA doesn't require a UPF food to be of low nutritional value or high energy density.

Also the GOP opposed mere taxes on sugary drinks but now they want to ban UPFs? I don't believe it.

Of course. The study goes back to the 1960’s, so they can’t use classifications that didn’t exist back then.

That’s why I said “preliminary”

Alternatively, they could read more than three abstracts, and find a better definition.

Regardless, there’s enough evidence for a ban, and also quantifiable metrics that could be used to define one.

I’d expect the regulators and scientific community to do better than my proposal.

Poultry doesn’t usually vote

Their owners do fund campaigns though I bet.

Maybe it isn't "so weird" and people's views are more subtle than the broad strokes painted by the media would lead you to believe.

> apparently our gov't thinks vaccines are fine for chickens

Egg prices are a meme. Our egg prices are high while our vaccinating neighbours’ aren’t. We don’t want to import their cheap eggs. We don’t want to trash our export prospects by loosening culling requirements. So the only choice left is vaccination.

He's not anti-vax, he's pro-vax. He just wants to make sure the risks are actually known before we do things like mass-produce a new vaccine.

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