Re: OT? Dairy flu

RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:

The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning for
"possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu.  The
CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the virus and
the threat to humans.  They knew from the first detections that humans
were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and contact
tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to other dairy
herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing results that
many states did not get cattle but ended up with the virus.  People were
the obvious vector for spread of the virus between herds.  We have known
for years that the flu virus only survives for around 5 hours on the
skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but we also know that you
have to be infected within a few minutes of getting it on your skin or
clothing because the virus doesn't seem to be infective after a few
minutes on those surfaces.  The virus survives the longest on hard
surfaces and is infective off those surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the
poultry farms that were infected by the dairy virus in the same counties
as the infected herds would have had little reason to exchange
equipment.  Infected humans likely took the virus to those poultry
farms.  The two known human cases were shedding infective virus.  The
CDC has understood this from the very beginning of their involvement,
but they failed to act on it.  They claim that it isn't their policy to
force testing onto farm workers, so they never checked to determine the
rate that humans were being infected even though there was ancedotal
evidence of other dairy workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy
thing is these red eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got
infected, and they are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing
and contact tracing they would already know how the other herds and
poultry flocks got infected.
 
What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.  They
both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid.  The FDA tested
milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that came from milk
processing plants in those states and found 17 states with H5N1 positive
milk samples, but would not release the names of the states because they
claimed to only be worried about the safety of the food chain.
Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When the FDA finally did
release the names of the states a couple weeks later it was found that 9
new states not yet identified as having positive dairy herds had
produced milk products that were positive for the dairy virus.  3 of the
states already known to have infected herds were not found to have
positive dairy products, so they likely missed some positive states of
the 38 tested.  The CDC could have predicted the results because they
started to monitor waste water and most of the new states that were
found to have positive dairy products had also shown flu virus in the
waste water.
 
The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have mild
eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently tear
ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is infecting a
lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I
should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had high
mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza virus is
normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to infecting
human brains that would be a real tragedy.
 
So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided to
prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It doesn't
sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to limit the
first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to do that you have to
identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently being infected
are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the infected herds and
monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts.  The next pandemic
could have already started in one of the states with unidentified
infected dairy herds.  They need to track down the dairies that
contributed to the milk of the processing plants that produced positive
milk samples.  They need to go to the counties with positive waste water
(these include multiple sites in California that has not yet claimed to
have positive herds and several of these sites are in rural areas
surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare scenario) and identify
infected herds.  They need to track the contacts of the dairy workers so
that they can identify more infected herds in states that are already
known to have infected herds.  Once they identify all the possible
sources of infection they can monitor those herds and people and then
try to keep any virus from spreading and becoming a pandemic.
 

My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell them
not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should ramp up H5
based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for matching and
effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.