Re: Dairy cattle mortality in California

On 10/17/2024 5:02 PM, RonO wrote:

On 10/16/2024 6:26 PM, RonO wrote:

On 10/14/2024 4:41 PM, RonO wrote:

On 10/14/2024 4:10 PM, RonO wrote:

On 10/13/2024 9:49 AM, RonO wrote:

Second attempt to post:
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https://www.newsweek.com/disturbing-footage-reveals-bird-flu- infected- cattle-dumped-roadside-1967813
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As noted in previous posts the California strain of the dairy influenza virus has a higher mortality rate among cattle than the initial virus. Apparently dead cattle are piling up and not being disposed of in a biosecure manner.
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The esimate is that there are over 1,100 dairy herds in California and 100 have already been confirmed to be infected with more herds detected by California health officials and already submitted for verification.
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20% of the dairy herd in the US is in California (over a million cattle).  The mortality rate was initially 2%, but around 15% of the infected cattle are dying in California.  Initially around 10% of the herd was infected at any one time, but now 50% of the herd is found to be infected in some cases.
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Ron Okimoto
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https://evrimagaci.org/tpg/california-confronts-bird-flu-cases- among- dairy-workers-45706
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This article claims that California has been contact tracing since the start in late August.  After the first couple weeks the first claims were that they thought that they had isolated the infected herds to around half a dozen because they shared workers between the farms, but the contacts obviously exploded out of those first half dozen and now they likely have over a 100 infected dairy herds identified some of them before the cattle showed symptoms.
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The claim is that there is still no evidence for human to human transmission, but that hasn't been true since late July.  A Texas study released their data before peer review.
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https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/previously- undetected-h5n1-avian-flu-cases-farmworkers-revealed-new-report
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They released this data in late July, but the CDC has never incorporated the data into the known human infections.  What they found was they tested 14 dairy workers from two farms and two of the dairy workers from one of the farms had antibodies to H5 indicating that they had been infected by the dairy virus.  One of those workers only had contact with other dairy workers, and did not have contact with cattle (cafeteria worker).  Their submitted publication indicated that this was evidence for human to human transmission (worker infected by dairy cattle, and one worker infected that did not have contact with cattle).
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The initial Texas data indicated that around 10% of a herd was infected (showed symptoms), but when these researchers tested 39 milk samples from the two farms they found 64% of the samples had H5N1 virus.  This is closer to the 50% infection rate that California is experiencing, but the mortality in Texas was only 2% while it is 10 to 15% of infected animals in California.  So going by symptoms under estimated the rate of infection in Texas herds.  They should have implemented testing like they have in California, and they would have had a better estimate of the actual infection rate.
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One of the authors of this paper is quoted in the news article.
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QUOTE:
"I am very confident there are more people being infected than we know about," senior author Gregory Gray, MD, MPH, a UTMB infectious disease researcher, told NPR. "Largely, that's because our surveillance has been so poor."
END QUOTE:
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It should be noted that the CDC never changed their minds, and surveillance continues to be poor (except in California where they implemented contact tracing) for the rest of the nation.
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Ron Okimoto
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https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/california- reports-4-more-probable-h5-cases-dairy-workers
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California is reporting 4 more cases of human infections.  This makes the total 11 for California.  It means that the other states have been severely under reporting cases, mainly because they are not testing and contact tracing.
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The cases need to be confirmed by the CDC, but the previous ones were verified, and California is likely using the CDC PCR test.  It should have been fixed by now, and initially had issues with false negative results when the CDC first put it out, but they have had more than half a year to fix that test, and false negative results are not an issue for positive test results.
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11 cases involving 9 farms.  2 cases were at the same farm, but it was a huge dairy farm (something like 5,000 cows) and the two workers worked at different parts of the farm, and did not have contact with each other.  So it looks like all of them were infected by cattle.  In a previous article California health officials claimed that they were tracing close contacts of the infected dairy workers, and would be testing those contacts if they exhibit symptoms.  It won't be any surprise if they find close contacts infected because in both Michigan and Texas where they asked the question they found that twice as many close contacts of dairy workers worked at poultry farms or other dairy farms as the dairy workers themselves, and both Texas and Michigan had infected poultry flocks with the dairy virus.  So they already have known for months that close contacts may have been spreading the dairy virus.  The CDC just never implemented testing and contact tracing.
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Ron Okimoto

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https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian- influenza/hpai-detections/hpai-confirmed-cases-livestock
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The USDA just updated their herd infection data adding 5 California herds since the last update last week.  The number of herds infected in California went from 99 to 104, but the 5 additions were supposedly confirmed Oct 10 (last Thursday), and more herds have been submitted since then.  The USDA dosen't seem to be keeping up with what California is sending them.  The USDA is still refusing to start contact tracing and increase testing in other states.  My guess is that they will have another batch confirmed tomorrow, but may not report them until next week.
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The California health department is claiming that California has over 1,100 dairy herds consisting of over 1.7 million cattle.  The initial hope was that because most dairies are very large and have full time staff that there would be a more limited number of dairy workers with jobs at multiple dairies as is the case in other states with mostly smaller herds and part time workers.  Contact tracing of workers from infected farms has allowed California to detect infections in around 9% of the California dairy herds.  This likely means that herd infections have been severely under reported in other states, but the USDA and CDC refuse to start contact tracing and testing in other states when they know that it is the only way that they are going to get the epidemic under control and reduce worker exposure to infection.  The CDC is still only recommending protective gear for workers working with infected animals, but they refuse to identify the infected herds so that workers would know that they should wear protective gear.  California has identified 11 dairy workers infected with the dairy influenza.
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As sad as it may be the CDC is still claiming that only around 250 people associated with infected animals have been tested.  The number is currently +250.  California may push them closer to 300.  The number of human cases claimed is 25, but one is the Missouri case that did not have exposure to infected animals.
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The California data is not surprising because the sequence is supposedly closest to Colorado where 10 people were infected with the dairy virus, but most of them were Poultry workers (6 of the poultry workers were from one farm) so the CDC has known that infection of workers in proximity to infected animals was much more likely than they had been claiming based on their refusal to test the workers and find out what the infection rate actually has been.
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The CDC is still refusing to start a contact tracing and testing program in other affected states.  Everyone knows that the most important thing to do is reduce dairy worker infections, but the CDC has refused to do what needed to be done from the very beginning of this fiasco.
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Ron Okimoto

 The USDA updated their database today (10/17) adding 10 more California herds confirmed Oct 15.  This would bring the number of California herds to 114.  Probably 10% of the dairy herds in California are known to be infected.  Around 90% of the California dairy herds are claimed to be in the Central Valley, so in proximity to be infected and be subject to the current contact tracing.
 Someone should do the sequence analysis to sort the mess out as to how the virus spread so rapidly to so many farms.  It looks like the virus was in California for some time before it was detected.
 Ron Okimoto

It turns out that the Oct 10 update samples were not included in the USDA's 104 herd estimate (it was actually 109).  The 10 from Oct 15 and an additional one added Oct 16 makes it 120 herds testing positive in California with more already submitted for verification.
The recent case in Michigan indicates that the USDA's reliance on self reporting to identify infected herds gave them a false sense that the dairy herd infections were burning themselves out.  My guess is that if they started bulk milk testing in known positive states that they would find that the situation is just as bad as it is in California, but that the earlier infections had milder symptoms.  The CDC and USDA never started contact tracing like has been done in California to identify the infected herds.  In California self reporting obviously took too long before the first herds were reported to be infected, and the California herds were dealing with a 10 to 15% mortality rate.  It is obvious that you can't rely on self reporting among the dairy farmers.  The USDA and CDC need to step in and start contact tracing or get the other state's health departments to start doing it.  Until that is done dairy workers will continue to be exposed to the virus without knowing that the cattle are infected.
There are only around 1,100 dairies in California, and all that they need to do is do bulk milk tank testing at each dairy to identify all the infected herds, and they need to keep testing the dairies on a weekly basis to determine that they remain free of the virus.  The dairies that test positive have to be placed under quarantine, and the dairy workers and equipment can not go to other farms that have not yet been infected.  They have to identify the dairy worker close contacts and make sure that they do not work on uninfected farms.  If they had started doing this at the beginning of the infection millions of commercial layer chickens would likely not have been infected with the dairy virus.  The commercial flocks obviously got the virus due to dairy workers also working on poultry farms.  The price of eggs is likely going to go up again because millions of layer chickens have been infected with the dairy virus.
Ron Okimoto