Re: H5N1 new cases

On 2/18/2025 1:19 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

On Mon, 17 Feb 2025 18:02:34 -0600, RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
wrote:
 

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/third-avian-flu-spillover-reported-arizona-dairy-herd-raw-pet-food-sickens
>
They are claiming that sequence results indicate that the Arizona dairy
D1.1 infection is not related to the D1.1 dairy infection in Nevada.
This would mean that avian influenza has transferred to cattle 3
independent events.  Texas (B3.13), Nevada (D1.1), and now Arizona (D1.1)
>
Two more cats in Oregon were infected by contaminated raw pet food made
in Washington state.  They identified H5N1 in the cats that needed to be
put down, and the pet food that both cats had eaten (the same brand).
They now have a consumer alert on Wild Coast Raw, pet food.  A bunch of
commercial and backyard poultry flocks have been hit by H5N1 in 4
states, but like the cats they aren't stating what genotype they were
infected with.  Two large layer farms went down in Indiana.  Over 57
million birds affected since just Nov. 2024, 162 million since 2022.
>
It should be noted that they only detected the Nevada and Arizona
infections due to the recent USDA testing program.  The claim is that
the herds were not showing symptoms until after they turned out
positive.  They would have never been tested under the old volunteer
testing program.
>
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/AHFSS/Animal_Health/HPAI.html
>
California is claiming that 281 of the 745 infected herds have cleared
the virus already.  This likely means that the virus likely has infected
most of the herds in other states and they are likely fully recovered by
the time that the USDA is finally testing them.  9 states were
identified to have produced virus positive milk samples by the FDA, but
they would not test their dairy herds back in May 2024.  3 of those
states eventually claimed at least one infected herd, but the others
remained in denial.  The virus likely burned through all the herds in
those states by now, and the herds would have recovered months ago.  The
D1.1 dairy infections is the second wave for these states.  Nevada had
an older case of dairy virus infection, but they only claimed one
infected herd, now they have half a dozen herds infected with D1.1, and
none detected with B3.13.  The D1.1 virus likely spread through the
Nevada herds the same way that the B3.13 virus spread (cattle and people
shared between farms).  Now we even have evidence (3 infected
veterinarians) that vets could have taken the virus from farm to farm,
and not even known that they were infected.
>

 Avian flu now a major problem in Northern Ireland:
  "About 64,000 birds are being culled in County Tyrone after suspected
avian flu was reported at a commercial poultry premises.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgm28zp82zo
 "Northern Ireland in eight-week provincewide bird lockdown as battle
against avian flu outbreak continues."
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/northern-ireland-in-eight-week-provincewide-bird-lockdown-as-battle-against-avian-flu-outbreak-continues/ar-AA1zdYBM
 With a very large beef and dairy industry throughout Ireland, I'd
guess a lot of famers are very worried right now about this spreading
to cattle.
 

The protocol that they are not revealing in the US is that once a flock goes down with high path avian influenza all poultry flocks within a mile radius are depopulated.  That is why when a 3 million bird layer flock goes down they depopulate the whole farm even if only one of the layer houses is infected.  These facilities have at least 5 very large layer houses that house birds of different ages so they always have most of their birds at near peak production.
It isn't lockdown, but depopulation of the living birds.
I do not know what they do in Ireland.
It looks like it can spread to cattle via the farm workers, my guess is that if they did the contact tracing at the infected dairy farms in Nevada, that they would find that the D1.1 infection came from one of the infected poultry flocks that shared workers with dairy farms, and that some of the half dozen infected dairies were also infected by shared dairy workers.  It spread to half a dozen farms too quickly for it to be due to transfer of cattle.
If you look at the data poultry workers are easily infected working with infected birds, and some of these poultry workers also work on dairy farms.  Most of the commercial poultry farms have been infected by the B3.13 virus from nearby dairies, and there is little doubt that it came onto the farms with dairy workers.  The first cases in Michigan the USDA found that two dairy workers on infected dairies also worked on two of the commercial layer farms that got infected with the dairy virus, but the workers were never tested and the denial of how the virus was spreading among dairy herds continued, as the virus rapidly spread among dairies in Michigan even though they were not moving cattle.
For some stupid reason, California never restricted dairy worker movements between farms even though they had initially found most of their infected farms by contact tracing.  They restricted cattle movements, but not worker movement.  The result has been that nearly all the herds in California were allowed to be infected.
Ireland should not make the same mistake.
Ron Okimoto