Re: More farm workers infected by the dairy virus

On 7/15/2024 11:44 AM, RonO wrote:

On 7/13/2024 9:04 AM, RonO wrote:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/three-presumptive-bird-flu-cases-reported-poultry-workers-colorado-rcna161686
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3 farm workers cleaning up an infected poultry farm were infected by the Dairy virus.  Where the Dairy virus goes poultry flocks start to go down.  In Michigan they found that some dairy workers at infected farms also worked at poultry farms, and around twice as many had close contacts that worked on poultry farms (17%).  They have known from Texas with the first poultry flock to go down with the Dairy virus that humans likely took the virus onto the poultry farm.  They tried to blame equipment because the virus is not infective off skin and clothing for more than half an hour, but can remain infective on a solid surface for 24 hours.  An infected person shedding virus is obviously the bests means to infect the poultry flock and other dairy herds that did not get infected cattle.  They already had an example of an infected dairy worker shedding virus in Texas, so it seemed obvious that infected humans were taking the virus to poultry farms by the time all the flocks in Michigan began to go down, but the USDA and CDC have been in willful denial mode.
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Infected humans have been transferring the virus to Dairy herds in states that did not get cattle, and have been infecting poultry flocks with the dairy virus.  The work determining how many dairy workers have been infected has never been done at this time, but everyone knows that more than 4 is not just likely but a given.  Only 61 dairy workers have been tested of those 61 the CDC admits that over half were not tested correctly (only nasal swabs when most of the positive cases have been negative for nasal swabs but positive for eye swabs).  There has been no attempt to identify all the infected herds in order to limit the infection and human contacts.
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The willful stupidity is likely politically driven.  Instead of trying to prevent the next pandemic the CDC has decided to monitor all states for influenza activity, and if there is an increase in influenza cases they will act.  This is so tragically lame.  Instead of prevent the virus from evolving into a pandemic virus they will try to contain the issue after it becomes an issue in the human population.  Colorado demonstrates how stupid this strategy is.  The dairy worker infected in Colorado had respiratory symptoms.  The poultry workers had eye infections, but some of them also had respiratory symptoms.  The virus can obviously infect humans whether it comes from cows or birds, and in Colorado it is becoming a respiratory infection.  They need to identify all the infected herds and now poultry flocks in Colorado and quarantine the herds and farm workers.
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The more herds infected the more humans will be infected, the more chance that the virus will evolve into a pandemic virus.  Willful stupidity should not be allowed to continue.
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Ron Okimoto

 https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/15/health/colorado-bird-flu-humans-confirmed/index.html
 Two more Colorado poultry workers from the same farm have tested positive for H5N1 dairy influenza.  All 5 of the infected poultry workers came from the same farm and were working with the same infected birds.  This likely should tell everyone how many dairy workers have likely been infected since dairy cows shed virus for over 4 weeks, and these workers were likely only exposed for a few days cleaning out the infected flock.  They do not say how many had respiratory symptoms, but the state that some did.  The Colorado virus may have mutated to better infect humans, but still produces mild symptoms.  The CDC is waiting for sequencing results to tell them how bad the situation may be.
 These poultry workers could have infected other flocks and herds if they worked on other farms, but the CDC isn't doing any contact tracing.
 Ron Okimoto
 

Oklahoma has finally admitted to having infected dairy herds so the number of positive states have become 13.  Oklahoma is one of the states identified by the FDA back on May 10th as having H5N1 positive dairy products, but the USDA and CDC never followed up.  The fact that it has taken this long for the infection to be detected in Oklahoma is due to the willful stupidity of how the dairy virus has been handled by the USDA and CDC.  It is obvious that the USDA and CDC could have just started sampling dairy products in the lower 48 states, identified dairies that contributed milk to those processing plants and identified most of the infected herds.  They could have started contact tracing to idenify more herds that could have been infected by the known infected herds.
Oklahoma hasn't been announced by the USDA, you have to go to their web site and find out that 2 Oklahoma dairy herds were reported positive July 11th.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/hpai-confirmed-cases-livestock
There were 9 other states where the FDA idenitfied H5N1 positive dairy products that were not then known to have infected herds, but no one followed up.  3 of the last 4 states added to the positive list were among the 9 identified by the FDA as having positive dairy products back in May.  By now the virus has likely spread to many other states because no one identified the infected herds, and tried to limit infection by limiting dairy worker contacts with other farms.
As tragically stupid as it may be Florida was one of the states identified by the FDA as having postive dairy products and it was very far from other known positive states (the closest state was North Carolina) and yet no one bothered to identify the infected herds in that state (There has been no admission to having positive herds in Florida).   The CDC also knew that one Florida county had absurdly high waste water readings for influenza and yet they didn't check the dairies in that county.  Florida has a high population and is not where you want this type of virus to fester and evolve.  The Dairy virus has been allowed to spread in Florida unchecked for months.
Ron Okimoto