Re: New Mexico H5N1 dairy infection mystery

On 4/4/2025 12:21 PM, RonO wrote:

https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/04/04/milk-tested-for-bird-flu- reveals-a-scientific-mystery/
 Apparently there has been unsolved infections in New Mexico since Feb. but nothing has been reported about it by the CDC and USDA.  The bulk milk tank testing is showing positive herds, but they do not find the positive cows from those herds.  They claim that the cows test negative, but from the beginning they have known that you have to test all 4 teats of the cows udder because not all the mammary lobes can be infected and there might only be 1 positive teat out of 4.  It sounds stupid, but they may not have tested all 4 teats of all the cows.  It is just a continuation of not wanting to know what is actually happening.  What they should be doing is contact tracing cattle and dairy workers in order to figure out how the herds got reinfected after months of being negative.
 What is even stupider is that they claim that they have spent over 2 million dollars to try to figure out how the virus is being transmitted between herds in California.  They already know that dairies that share dairy workers and poultry farms that share dairy workers get infected, but they haven't done the antibody testing of workers and then doing the contact tracing of the positive workers to determine which workers took the virus to the new dairies and poultry farms.  Instead they have wasted the money to test things like flies to see if they could carry the virus from farm to farm.  It has been obvious since Michigan and Texas found out that dairy workers could be infected and that dairy workers at the infected dairies also worked on the poultry farms that got infected, that dairy workers were the likely vector of transmission, but they have refused to start dairy worker testing and contact tracing.
 Back in October when they found out that 7% of the dairy workers tested were positive for H5 antibodies and had been infected the CDC claimed that they were going to start dairy worker testing, but they lied, and no such testing was ever started.  Instead they are wasting money to try to find some excuse for letting the dairy workers spread the virus from dairy to dairy and state to state.
 Ron Okimoto
 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bird-flu-heading-north-spring-fewer-federal-health-officials-working-s-rcna199607
Another news article on the inadequate response to the dairy influenza epidemic that infected a lot of poultry farms.
They show the past 2022 major loss of poultry flocks, and my guess is that they should trace poultry worker movements in those cases.  It looks like the farm workers have been a major vector for transmission of the virus to other herds and flocks, and this could have been the case in previous outbreaks of avian influenza in commercial poultry.
QUOTE:
“We should be doing a lot more in terms of aggressively seeking out this virus in animal and human populations, doing much more active surveillance, and much more aggressive testing,” said Dr. James Lawler, an infectious disease expert and professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. He stressed the need to monitor both farms and workers to detect the virus before large-scale outbreaks happen — and to ensure that the nation's health care system is prepared if the virus suddenly becomes a bigger threat to humans.
END QUOTE:
As I have consistently noted since the start of the dairy epidemic the stupid denial and lack of testing and contact tracing has allowed the epidemic to fester for a year.
Ron Okimoto