Re: OT? Dairy flu

On 6/13/2024 4:03 PM, RonO wrote:

On 6/13/2024 2:25 PM, RonO wrote:

On 6/13/2024 6:28 AM, jillery wrote:

On Wed, 12 Jun 2024 17:23:28 -0500, RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
wrote:
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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/
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Scientific American has an opinion piece stating what I have been going
on about.  For some stupid reason the USDA and CDC decided to rely on
"self reporting" instead of going in and testing the herds and states
that likely had infected herds.  It has just allowed the virus to spread
to more dairy herds, and they have no idea of the extent of the
infection because the CDC chose to "monitor" only a few herds in two states.
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It has been sad and the opinion piece notes that the poultry industry
has suffered because of it.  When the price of poultry products start
going up it is the USDA's and CDC's fault for not acting as they should
have acted.  You can't keep the avian flu off a poultry farm if changing
clothing and even showering in, as is required at some commercial
breeding facilities, when the worker is infected and shedding live
virus.  For a poultry farm the infected flock is depopulated (killed
off) and poultry within a mile radius of the infected flock are also
disposed of.  Several 2 million bird layer flocks have had to be
depopulated in several states, and they were infected by the dairy
cattle with a likely human intermediate.
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They knew from day one that dairy workers were likely taking the virus
to other farms and infecting other herds, and poultry flocks, but they
only "recommended" that dairy workers and their contacts not go to other
farms if they have come into contact with infected cattle.  The kicker
is that they refused to identify all the infected herds so most of the
dairy workers in contact with infected cattle were not under the
"recommendation".  It has been sad and should never have unfolded as it has.
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The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans
will be infected.
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Ron Okimoto

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I wonder if the current policies you mention above aren't consequences
of a lack of funding and a lack of political support, due to
conspiracies fallout from the Covid pandemic.

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The USDA was given 800 million to control the dairy outbreak, but both the CDC and the USDA claimed that it was not their policy to require testing, so neither ever attempted to determine the extent of the spread of the virus, nor track dairy workers and their contacts.  It is obvious that most of the Dairies were infected by dairy workers or their contacts going to those other farms.  Early infections in states like Kansas, New Mexico, and South Dakota all claimed that they had not gotten any cattle from Texas, but herds in those states got infected. They have had a very good idea that the infection was being spread by humans, because of what is known about influenza survival on surfaces like clothing and skin (it remains infectious for less than 30 minutes) and remains infectious on hard surfaces like door nobs for up to 24 hours.  The infected human was shedding live virus, and would have been an obvious vector to take the virus to other farms.  They have done nothing but "recommend" that dairy workers and their contacts exposed to infected cattle not go to other farms, but they never started a program to identify all the infected herds so that the workers would know not to go to other farms.  They should have started testing and contact tracing immediately, but they did not, and have not started.  If they had started contact tracing they would already have a good idea of how all the herds got infected.  Only one county in Michigan got infected cattle from Texas, but now 9 counties have infected herds.  People are the obvious vector.  2 people have been confirmed to have been infected in Michigan, and there have likely been a lot more.  They were shedding live virus and could have infected their human contacts, and if they or their contacts went to other dairy farms they would have been shedding virus.  It would not need to survive on their skin or clothing.
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Both the USDA and CDC have been screwing up by the numbers on this one.
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Ron Okimoto

 https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/hpai-h5n1-dairy-cattle-mi-epi-invest.pdf
 This report is dated June 13th.  They finally did what they should have done at the very beginning in terms of verifying the links between infected herds.
 QUOTE:
Shared personnel between premises
o 20% of affected dairies’ employees and 7% of dairies’ employees family members work on other dairy premises
o 7% of affected dairies’ employees also work on poultry premises; 13% of affected dairies’ employees have family members who work on poultry premises
o 31% of dairies have employees who own livestock or poultry at their personal residence
END QUOTE:
 QUOTE:
Based on the epidemiological findings, the majority of links between affected dairy premises, and between dairy and poultry premises, are indirect from shared people, vehicles, and equipment. As such, HPAI disease spread between dairy and poultry premises can be mitigated by identifying potential interconnections between operations (people, conveyances, etc.) and increasing biosecurity practices on all premises and associated animal businesses (e.g., milk haulers, deadstock/contract haulers and other shared vehicles/trailers between premises, livestock markets). Identifying as many affected herds as possible will assist in assessing the scope of the event and allow decision-makers to better manage the response.
END QUOTE:
 It should be noted that people take the vehicles and equipment to other farms, and people are known to be infected by the virus, and the known infected humans were shedding live virus.
 This is what I have been claiming from the beginning, but neither the USDA nor the CDC acted on what they should have been doing.  We will have to wait to see if the USDA and CDC finally get their act together and start looking for all the infected herds and start doing the contact tracing that they should have been doing from day one.
 Ron Okimoto

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-06142024.html?ACSTrackingID=USCDC_7_3-DM130439&ACSTrackingLabel=Update%20on%20CDC%E2%80%99s%20Avian%20Influenza%20A(H5N1)%20%E2%80%9CBird%20Flu%E2%80%9D%20Response%20Activities%20June%2014%2C%202024&deliveryName=USCDC_7_3-DM130439
This link seems to be long because the CDC is in the process of changing web sites for the information that they are releasing.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/study-ferrets-eye-exposure.html
The first link is the CDC's latest update and the second link is the new publication that they are talking about
Their latest research just verified that the H5N1 variant can readily infect mammals through their eyes.  It has been known for decades that people are often infected by touching infected surfaces and then rubbing their eyes or nose within around 5 minutes (the virus isn't infectious on skin for very long only a few minutes).  So they have verified how the humans got infected and why the first two dairy virus patients were only infected in their eyes (nasal swabs were negative).
The kicker is that they are still claiming that the risk is low even though they now know that a lot more humans were likely infected than they previously knew about.  They have still only tested 45 people for H5N1 (three of the 45 were obviously positive), but this number includes the first over 30 individuals tested in Texas, but they were not tested correctly.  Only nasal swabs were tested, and the one Texas positive and one Michigan positive were negative for nasal swabs, and only positive (shedding live virus) from their eyes.  So over 30 tests were expected to not show anything even if the people had been infected.  The situation really has been that bad in terms of CDC screw ups.
So even though they don't make the claim their ferret research indicates that a lot more humans than have currently been identified could have been infected through their eyes, and likely spread the virus (because they were obviously shedding live virus) to other farms and could have likely infected their human contacts if those contacts rubbed their eyes after touching surfaces contaminated by dairy workers infected by the cattle.
Ron Okimoto