Re: OT? Dairy flu

On 6/14/2024 8:49 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:

RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com> wrote:

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:
>

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/
>
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.
>
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.
>
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.
>
The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans
will be infected.
>
Ron Okimoto

>
>
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.

>
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.
>
Both the USDA and CDC have been screwing up by the numbers on this one.
>
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.
>

I wash my hands regularly and don’t associate with cattle. I worry when
cleaning bird poop off my car and wonder about the squirrels I see running
around as they inhabit the same tree limbs as birds.
 Do you think H5N1 might attenuate per humans by passing through cattle (ie-
reducing our kill rate)?

What the CDC has not emphasized is that this is not fully the same H5N1 Eurasian influenza A that has killed half of over 800 infected humans (over 400 dead).  Influenza is an RNA virus that has multiple gene groups (RNA chromosomes with genes on them).  The Dairy H5N1 has the H and N (H5 and N1) antigen genes of the Eurasian virus, but about half of it's gene groups come from another wild bird influenza, so it is a recombinant that occurs when two different strains of influenza coinfect an individual.
The details have not been clarified, and this virus may only be partially the same as the H5N1 that has been killing sea mammals in South America.  All the H5N1 virus circulating in America do share the H5 and N1 Eurasian gene lineages, but the version that infected dairy cattle is a recombinant with about half of it's genome coming from another strain.
The 3 people that have been infected by the dairy H5N1 have not shown the lethal symptoms that have been observed in Europe and Asia when humans were infected by the Eurasian H5N1.  The fear is that the Dairy strain will mutate or recombine with a circulating human influenza A and become lethal.  The more humans that it infects, the more likely that those mutations will be selected for or it can coinfect with a human strain and transfer to humans as a recombinant.  That is why it was and is so important to identify all the infected herds and minimize the spread, so that human infections can be minimized, but neither the USDA, nor CDC have done what needed to be done in order to do that.  So as it stands more humans are being exposed to the virus because they have allowed the virus to spread unchecked in the dairy herd for the past two months.

 I guess face masks won’t protect you from getting virus particles in your
eyes.

The CDC has been recommending goggles or gas mask-like face protection from their initial recommendations.  They knew that humans were getting eye infections.  They knew that humans were being infected, but didn't want to admit to how many, and never looked to determine the extent of infection.  They still have not done that.  Michigan claims that they are going to start testing the dairy workers and their families (close contacts), so we might have some answers that we should have had months ago.
You pretty much need someone to sneeze in your face.  The Michigan dairy worker got milk in his eyes.  Influenza has been known for decades to infect through the eyes, nose and mouth, but the proposal has been that you need to touch a contaminated surface and then rub your eyes or nose within a few minutes to initiate an infection.  Covid needed less virus and was an airborne infection.  Face masking, social distancing, and surface disinfection (and hand sanitizing) pretty much stopped influenza infection during that period of time.  Those measures were very effective against influenza, but you needed better face mask protection for covid.

 I still wonder what ill effects a highly litigious industry may have on
public health awareness about the prospects of H5 in livestock. Also there
are those pesky food disparagement laws.

Initially the cattle industry was resistant to cooperating and solving the issue.  The USDA and CDC bungles at the beginning and the bungling that continues has some political basis.  The cattle industry has a lot of votes, so the poultry industry can suffer as long as the dairy and beef markets are not upset.  Large layer facilities are going down in states with the dairy virus, and they are getting it from dairy cattle via the people that work with the cattle, but having egg prices go up again is better than identifying all the states with infected cattle and alarming the consumers.
When the FDA tested the dairy products from 34 states and found 15 more states producing infected dairy products than the 9 that had already been identified, they initially refused to release the names of the states with infected products because they claimed that all they were interested in was food safety and they had found no live virus in the milk products and pasteurization had killed the virus.  They concluded that as long as you consumed pasteurized milk products that the food was safe.
In terms of trying to prevent the next pandemic this was just stupid. They needed to identify all the infected herds as soon as they could so that they could reduce the spread and infection of humans.  The sad thing is that 10 days later the FDA did release the names of the states, but the USDA and CDC refused to use that information to identify the infected herds in those states.

 That said I still enjoy my cheese and wondered if drinking pasteurized milk
with inactivated H5 fragments might yield some degree of mucosal immunity
in humans. I drink soy or mostly use it for my oatmeal so I don’t consume
cattle milk.

You apparently have to check to see if pasteurized milk was used to make the cheese at this time.  I wouldn't think that the virus could survive any aging process.
We ingest a lot of potential antigens, and we do make antibodies against some of them, but the immune response is geared to respond and make antibodies to an active infection (microbes replicating within the patient).  It takes multiple rounds of selection to produce effective antiviral antibodies.

 Definitely wouldn’t drink raw milk myself, though that seems to be the new
Trump cult costly signal of tribal allegiance. How risky might that
behavior be?
 

The cats (most of them died) were fed raw milk.  What is scary is that the virus infected their brains and killed them.  Influenza is usually a gut and respiratory virus, but somehow it infected the cat brains.  That should put off anyone from drinking raw milk from a dairy that has not been verified to be uninfected.  The NIH also did a mouse study and found that feeding mice with infected milk also infected the rodents.
Ron Okimoto