Re: Buisness as usual in California dairy regions.

On 11/27/2024 10:12 AM, RonO wrote:

On 11/26/2024 8:50 AM, RonO wrote:

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-26/bird-flu- warnings- are-going-unheeded-at-many-dairy-farms
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The dairy flu was detected in dairy flu last week and it seems to be buisness as usual on the California dairy farms.
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QUOTE:
Nearby, workers herded some of the animals onto a rotating platform within the farm’s milking parlor and quickly attached pumping equipment. The machines buzzed and whirred as the cows were carried in a lazy arc to the parlor’s exit, where they were detached from milk hoses and sent on their way.
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The scene seemed utterly unremarkable — except for the fact that five days earlier, the H5N1 bird flu virus that has ravaged California’s dairy herds for the last three months, had been confirmed on the farm. Although dozens of cows were sick, and their owner expected that number to climb, none of the farm’s workers wore personal protective equipment and vehicles from off site were let in and out with nary a hint of concern.
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The have a picture of dead cows in the article.
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It sounds like the California dairy workers are not heeding the CDC's advice to use protective gear on infected farms.  It sounds like it needs to be a requirement not just a recommendation.
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These workers are getting infected and then infecting other dairies that they also work at and poultry farms.  It probably only takes a 5 to 10% infection rate to account for spread of the virus.  It is stupid to deny reality at this time with millions of birds already down and all the infected dairies detected by contact tracing.  A lot more workers are getting infected than they have tested.  Even in California they seem to have tested less than 50 dairy workers total (28 confirmed to have been infected and producing detectable virus).  That is so crazy at this time with 400 dairies infected and what is their excuse?  They have no excuse.  Hundreds of dairy workers should have been tested by now in just California.  No one wants to confirm what has been happening for a very long time.  Infected workers shed live virus and take it to other dairies and poultry farms.  This is not rocket science, and the CDC and USDA have understood this since the first poultry farm was infected and the first infected dairy worker was shedding live culturable virus.  How did they think the states that did not get dairy cattle got infected dairy herds?  They obviously got migrant dairy workers.
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The articles observed for this news article were not wearing protective equipment, and will likely just add to the number of infected humans.
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QUOTE:
No expert will say that H5N1 bird flu is going to become the next global pandemic, and government health officers say the virus poses a low risk to the public. However, some experts warn that nearly all the conditions needed for the virus to develop a threatening mutation are now present in many dairy farms: Lax testing protocols; close, unprotected contact between humans and animals; a general failure to take the threat seriously enough; and the approach of human flu season.
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What is the CDC's excuse for the current situation?  8% of the dairy workers tested in Colorado and Michigan for H5 antibodies were positive, so the CDC and USDA should have known for a very long time how most of the dairy herds were being infected, but they did nothing to stop the spread.  They needed to identify all the infected herds and prevent further dairy worker contacts with other farms that had not yet been infected.
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Ron Okimoto
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 https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/mammals.html
 The USDA has added 47 more samples to the California herd total (461). The USDA seem to only be able to verify around 50 to 60 samples per week.  The highest sample number seems to be 471, but there is an unbroken string of between 471 and 420 so they may have caught up.
 It looks like California will hit the 500 herds, by the end of November, predicted by the California dairy analyst back in October when the count was less than 200.
 It is very sad that no other state is reporting more infected herds when there is no doubt that there are likely hundreds of herds in other states that are infected, but just not tested.
 Colorado claims to have completed bulk milk tank testing of all their dairies and they did not find any infected herds.  They must not have tested the known positive herds, or they should recheck their evaluation methods.  If the dairy farms were able to keep their infected cattle out of the milk supply (they are required to remove milk from sick cows from the milk that they ship to processing plants).  Their bulk milk tank sampling could have been negative.  I do not know what the sampling protocols were.
 https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/AHFSS/Animal_Health/HPAI.html
 This is yesterdays California numbers (only claiming 436 confirmed) but they also claim that some of the infected dairy herds are recovering, and once they test negative they will be removed from quarantine restrictions, and monitored by routine testing at the processing plants.
 My guess is that with the virus mutating into sequences like the Missouri patient that some herds are going to start being reinfected across the nation.
 Ron Okimoto

The USDA added 13 more herds to the California list yesterday (total 474).  My take is that California is not the abnormal high infection state.  All the other states with infected herds just never tested the herds, and never did any contact tracing.  The California data also means that if you track the dairy workers that work at more than one dairy you will find more infected dairies.  They didn't even test the workers, and it turned out that workers are likely a major source of spreading the virus from farm to farm (and how the poultry farms have gotten infected).  It looks like 28 of the first 39 dairy workers that California tested were confirmed positive for the virus.  They started testing workers with symptoms, but seem to have stopped that activity when they found too many infected.  They should be testing all the dairy workers and also antibody testing to see who was infected.  They need to test against the current H5 protein sequence because the current H5 antibodies no longer bind to the current H5 sequence as effectively as before, so the antibodies produced by the current infection, might not be detected using the old H5 antigen.
This also means that states like Texas and Michigan that were infected early on, can likely start getting reinfected.
Ron Okimoto
Ron Okimoto