Summary
A new H5N1 bird flu variant has become “endemic in cows,” with cases detected in Nevada and Arizona, raising concerns about human transmission.
Experts warn that without intervention, the outbreak will continue, but Trump has cut CDC staff and halted flu vaccination campaigns.
The virus’s spread coincides with a severe flu season, increasing the risk of mutation.
The administration has also stopped sharing flu data with the WHO and shifted its containment strategy away from culling infected poultry, raising fears of inadequate response.
Can this be passed through milk? Maybe the Fascism problem will solve itself if Bobby Brainworm convinces all the fascists to drink more raw milk …
There are cases of a couple dairy workers getting mild cases of bird flu from getting raw milk splashed in their eye while working, so yes it’s not terribly unlikely.
Government told people to never drink raw milk. The sale and consumption of raw milk went up in ivermectin loving circles. It’s weird reverse psychology with raw milk.
Dairy farmer here, who fought this crap off when we still didnt know what it was.
Bird flu contaminated raw milk in cats, yeah it will kill the shit out of them. Its what helped us figure out what it was in the first place. Nothing confirmed so far as humans being infected from consumption that i am aware of currently, but i personally wouldnt try it.
The dairy workers that got bird flu. It was pinkeye that popped positive for h5. Probably splashback from either milk or fecal. It wasnt really a big deal other than conjunctivitis sucks.
But if you drink raw milk, you are playing russian roulette as patient zero at this point. Dont do it.
It seems so. I’ve been buying ultra-pasteurized which may be sufficient.
It’s all fun* and games until there’s human to human transmission.
(*Darwin award “fun”)
Also was just found to be infecting rats for the first time ever documented.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, there’s a case of two exclusively indoor cats catching it. One prominent theory is that the humans in the household passed it to them.
Yes, its being tracked in via fecal matter on your shoes.
Raw catfood has infected some cats as well.
Think about how many cats aren’t being reported.
Like, if my cat drops dead I’m just burying her. No one would ever know.
If the 5 strays that hang outside my apartment died of it I’d just bury them too. No one would have a clue.
Great point, and H5N1 can kill cats within like 24 hours (not sure if that’s exposure or first symptoms). So, you’re not paying close attention to your cat for even just a matter of hours, it dies, you don’t know why, and just bury it.
RIP NYC
See, if you bury your head in the sand, the virus can’t get you
Well, ya know, it’s primarily a respiratory disease among humans. You literally aren’t likely to catch if if your head is buried in sand. And once you suffocate or whatever, you won’t have to worry about the flu.
This is the kind of outside the box thinking that makes this nation great.
Well, inside the sand thinking.
The price of beef is about to go the way of the price of eggs.
Down, right?
Down, right?
Just do this:
- stop testing,
- stick a lightbulb up their rear
- put some horse paste in their feed
- disinfectant in their water
- ???
- Profit
Surely some rich republican ranchers can get Trump’s attention…
People confusing this with COVID might be in for a surprise because if this becomes a human pandemic it will likely be much worse.
The difference being that Covid took a scientific breakthrough to make a vaccine for (as various factors about the virus were unprecedented) while flu variants are very much a known thing as far as virology goes.
The feds already have a reserve of human-safe H5N1 vaccines, the only thing preventing them from using that when SHTF is ideology. It will be both completely prepared for and completely preventable.
You think we’ll have enough?
Fascists are actively slashing funding, firing experts, cutting programs. Research labs are currently in shambles. The future secretary of health is a fucking anti-vaxer.
You thought covid was bad? We’re going to experience a pandemic with no government action first hand.
assuming the strain used in that reserve will be effective against whatever variant makes a breakthrough to humans. note that current H5 vaccine candidates are determined based on animal studies and a variant that jumps from an animal to a human might show substantial variation that we could need to change the strain in the vaccines. it would be faster than before thanks to mRNA vaccines but I would think that even just within the USA, a sufficient roll out with an updated vaccine would at best take a couple months assuming people would be willing to get vaccinated. Between the antivax people in US and parts of the world not receiving vaccine quickly enough, there would be ample room for such a H5 to take hold and have devastating effects. Covid could still seem like a walk in the park despite having mRNA tech ready to go now.
Agreed. Maybe if we didn’t have so many goddamn Republicans, especially with power and platforms. Even under Kamala, it’d be bad, but with these chucklefucks in charge right now…
Bird flu for the meats, tariffs for everything else (and probably affecting meats as well). I wonder how this will affect our food supply during Great Depression II compared to the dust bowl and tariffs in the first one.
Hopefully we don’t have the dust bowl as well, but I do wonder how prices for staples like rice and beans might go up if the meat and dairy supply is tainted…
This is seriously the dumbest and probably most preventable timeline. Well, except for all the goddamn idiots and apathetic people in the country.
Sigh.
Username checks out.
Maybe it will get people to start drinking plant based milk if the price of course milk skyrockets like it has with eggs. All the IGF-1 in dairy isn’t good for you and could even be part of the reason for the rise in colorectal cancer (the amount of dairy we consume nowadays in nuts).
I mainly drink milk in the form of half and half for coffee. Obviously, plant milk is garbage for this purpose.
Really it’s not. Grocery chains carry good alternatives even in really rural areas nowadays. If you haven’t tried one in the last few years the options out now are quite a bit better. I typically use Planet Oat in my coffee.
They’d probably raise the price of alternative milk as well to match, just to price gauge people
Good.
How about we… i dunno… not farm animals? It’s bad for health, it’s bad for the animals, it’s bad for the environment. Every pandemic we’ve ever had has been caused by animal ag. That’s COVID, SARS, MERS, AIDS, etc.
