Re: CDC dairy flu Friday update

On 10/20/2024 7:45 AM, RonO wrote:

On 10/19/2024 10:51 AM, RonO wrote:

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/cdc-bird-flu-response.html
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The CDC is indicating that things are worse than have been cited in the press in California.  Instead of 11 dairy workers infected with the Dairy influenza the CDC is claiming that they have confirmed 13 human cases.  It sounds like they had confirmed 9 of the cases this week ending Friday the 18th.  They are still down playing the dairy worker infections, and have not changed their plans of trying to deal with the next pandemic when it gets started instead of trying to prevent it.  You have to start wondering if California would have even been infected if the CDC and USDA had started contact tracing and testing dairy herds and had identified the infected herds early in the epidemic.  All the CDC did was tell the workers to wear protective gear when working with infected animals, but they refused to identify all the farms with infected animals so that the workers would know when they should wear protective gear.
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Two California human cases have been confirmed by viral genomic sequence to be the B3.13 dairy influenza H5N1 genotype.  For some reason they do not state that the H5 sequences had 2 and 3 amino acid substitutions in them that could affect H5 antibody binding, but they do state the negative results that no amino acid changes in the H5 gene were those that would make the virus more infective in humans (They are looking for 2 substitutions that facilitate binding to the most common human viral receptors) and they claim that the virus do not have the mutations that would make them more resistant to anti viral drugs.  In terms of their strategy to wait until the virus starts the next pandemic by evolving to be transmitted between humans the fact that their vaccine strategy will likely not work due to the H5 mutations in the latest human patients is not stated by them.
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It is just a fact that the more dairy workers infected the more chance of the virus mutating and being selected to be more infective in a human host.  Instead of attempt to prevent that from happening the CDC decided to "monitor" the situation and wait for the virus to start being transmitted in the human population before trying to do something about it.  They stock piled H5 influenza vaccine, but the latest human infections had mutations in the H5 gene that likely make that vaccine pretty much worthless.  The CDC has admitted that the Missouri mutations reduced neutralizing ability of the available H5 antibodies and that they need to create a synthetic H5 genes with the Missouri mutations in it in order to test for dairy influenza antibodies in the Missouri patient contacts that showed symptoms.  Everyone is still waiting for those results that would verify human to human transmission if any of the contacts are positive.
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The CDC just can't seem to admit that they have been wrong, and they are unwilling to do what California has been doing in tracing contacts and testing dairy herds.  California wasn't even testing the workers, they were just assuming that they could transmit the virus, and identified more infected herds than anyone else in such a short period of time, and in testing workers that showed symptoms they found virus positive workers that were obviously shedding virus.  The USDA and CDC have known for a very long time that it was likely infected dairy workers that took the virus to poultry farms.  Both Texas and Michigan determined that dairy workers at infected farms worked at more than one dairy, and some of them also worked on poultry farms (around 8% of the dairy workers at known infected farms also worked on poultry farms).  They knew that the virus only was infective off of clothing or skin for less than 30 minutes.  They tried to claim that equipment may have been transferred from a dairy to the infected poultry farm in Texas because they knew that it would not have been the humans that took the fictional equipment (no equipment was ever verified to have been transferred).  They also knew that the infected states that had not gotten infected cattle likely did get migrant farm workers from infected states.  It wasn't rocket science, but they refused to start testing dairy workers, and perform contact tracing that would have proven them wrong.
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TO has seen this same refusal to face reality among the IDiots and other creationists posters before them.  Not including the data about the H5 gene mutations that would affect vaccine efficacy is a common creationist tactic seen on TO.
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Ron Okimoto

 The "lie of omission" seems to have been adopted by the CDC.  In the "Recommendations" section they continue to claim that Pastuerization kills avian influenza, but do not cite their own recent research indicating that influenza survives and is infectious after the most common pasteurization method (72 degrees C for 15 to 20 seconds).  The 63 degree C method for 30 minutes decreased viable virus to below detection levels, but the 72 degree method did not.  The CDC research published in their November 2024 news letter indicates that the FDA claims that the milk supply is safe is questionable, but the CDC is not acting on their own findings.
 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/30/11/24-0772_article
 This research data is publicly available now, and the CDC has likely known about it for months.  In light of the possible gut infection of the Missouri patient the CDC seems to be willfully not acknowledging their own research results.  Avian influenza infects the guts of birds, and the dairy influenza has infected the guts of some of the cattle (some with debilitating gut infections).  It has been known from the beginning that the farm cats were infected by drinking raw milk.
 Ron Okimoto
 

The USDA updated their site to claim 4 more infected herds in California making the total, at least, 128.  It may be that California has had infected herds for some time before they were first reported at the end of August.  It would take a lot of infected workers taking the virus to this many herds in such a short period of time.  The workers or infected cattle would have to take the virus to a new herd, that herd would need time to infect enough cattle for more workers to be infected so that they could take the virus to more farms.  There are likely more farms that have been submitted for verification, and California wants to start testing farms in counties that have not yet claimed to have infected herds.  The claim is that there are "more than 1,100 dairy farms in California with over 1.7 million dairy cattle.  The farm with 2 verified infected workers had over 5,000 cows on the farm.  More than 10% of the dairy farms in California have already been confirmed to have been infected with the dairy influenza.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/hpai-confirmed-cases-livestock
The additional herds are claimed to have been confirmed Sat. Oct 19th, but the update just showed up on the web.
It could be that dairy worker close contacts could also be tramsmitting the virus to other herds if this many herds have been infected in such a short period of time.  The first half dozen farms to be detected were hoped to have contained the infection because they shared workers and equipment, but those farms may not have been the first to be infected. Additional contact tracing has led to over a hundred farms to be identified as being infected.  Infection rate of dairy workers would have to be much higher than the CDC has been claiming as "sporadic" to infect this many herds.  Even after the testing of dairy workers with symptoms started the CDC only increased the number of workers tested to more than 260 from more than 250 when they had confirmed 13 more worker infections.  That likely means that just about everyone of the workers California has tested was positive.  They have only claimed to test workers with symptoms.  Asymptomatic workers have gone untested.
Ron Okimoto