Re: Should they start calling H5N1 genotype B3.13 "dairy influenza"

On 10/30/2024 10:22 AM, RonO wrote:

California, Washington and Oregon are still calling the dairy virus "avian influenza" but the infection hasn't been spread from birds to cattle since it was first detected.  The poultry flocks that have been infected by the virus had all been infected by nearby dairies in all cases where that determination could be made.  The poultry flocks are quickly depopulated, so the back infection to dairies hasn't been noted.   Dairies are not depopulated, and continue to infect other farms.
 Influenza A in swine and Humans is avian influenza, but we call it swine flu or just the flu in humans.
 The use of "avian influenza" for the dairy virus is allowing Washington and Oregon to ignore the fact that they likely have infected dairies in their states, and they refuse to identify those infected herds.  Poultry flocks have always been infected by nearby dairies, so when a poultry flock goes down with the dairy virus there are infected dairies in the area.  It was found in Michigan and Texas (both states started getting infected poultry flocks after the diary virus was detected) that around 7% of the workers on infected dairies also worked on poultry farms. More worked at other dairies because most dairies do not maintain full time staff.  Contact tracing was never implemented to identify all the infected herds.  California implemented contact tracing and have identified around half the total known infected herds in just the last month.
 https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/more-human-avian- flu-cases-washington-state-california
 This article claims that the number of confirmed infected herds in California is now up to 186 (388 total herds).  Sample submission numbers indicate that over 200 samples have already been sent in for verification by the end of last week.  Once a herd has tested positive a sample is sent in for verification.  California understands that their commercial poultry flocks have been infected by the dairies.
 Continuing to call H5N1 genotype B3.13 avian influenza is just allowing states like Washington and Oregon to deny having infected dairy herds, so they do not have to do anything to identify the infected herds, and reduce human infections.  It is just contributing to the CDC current plan to allow the virus to evolve into the next pandemic before trying to contain it.  The stupid existing plan is to wait until the virus starts to be observed spreading in the human population before stepping in and trying to contain the infection.  California has high population density and two busy international airports.
 We no longer call swine flu nor human influenza virus "avian influeza" so why keep calling the dairy influenza "avian influenza"?  It now has 10 to 15% mortality among infected cattle in California.
 They are only testing workers with symptoms, but they know that a lot of asymptomatic dairy cattle were shedding virus.  They just have never implemented testing asymptomatic dairy workers. Nasal swabs could be negative, but the milk samples could have high levels of virus.  They know for human infections that nasal swabs were negative but eye swabs were positive.
 CIDRAP has been one of the most up to date news source on the dairy infection, but Minnesota never implemented contact tracing when their dairy herds were found to be infected, and they have not reported new dairy infections for quite some time (the first infections were confirmed in early June in Minnesota) even though multiple commercial poultry flocks continued to go down with the dairy virus.  They may be keeping track of what others are doing, but they are not doing much to clear the infection from their state.  Minnesota seems to be pretending that they do not have the issue.
 Ron Okimoto

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/bird-flu-california-cows/
This article claims that worker advocates are claiming more should be done to protect dairy workers from infection, but the article also claims that the dairy workers are actively avoiding being tested.  They do not want to be tested.  As in Texas there is likely the issue where some of the dairy workers are illegal immigrants or "undocumented aliens" and they did not want to be tested.  When California implemented contact tracing they did not implement testing the workers they just assumed that they could be involved in transmitting the virus.  They did start testing some workers that showed symptoms.
This article claims that only 39 people have been tested and that 16 of them have been confirmed to be infected at this time.  The CDC has not yet confirmed all the samples submitted for confirmation.  The article does not give the number of positive samples California has submitted for verification.
The article indicates that they are currently having trouble testing the individuals that show symptoms because they avoid testing.  The United Farm Workers union wants the workers to be better protected, but they admit that the workers do not want to be tested. This may have been the case in all the states affected, and migrant farm workers may be responsible for taking the virus to dairies in states that did not get infected cattle.
They still do not know how Kansas and South Dakota got infected by virus that was most closely related to certain dairies in Texas.  If they had implemented contact tracing they would have likely figured out how those states were infected by now.
Dairy jobs are the type of jobs that undocumented aliens are taking, and they do need to be protected from the dairy virus.  The actual infection rate needs to be determined, and all the infected dairy herds need to be identified, and they obviously need to do that by contact tracing and testing.  They need to test the dairy workers and restrict the movements of infected individuals without compromising their livelihood.  The infected workers cannot be allowed to spread the virus to other farms so some type of quarantine has to be implemented.
The virus has already evolved so that the current H5 antibodies have 10 to 100 fold less neutralizing ability in the Missouri case, and the H5 gene in California has 2 and 3 amino acid substitutions in it among the dairy worker isolates so far.  As the virus keeps mutating it will eventually evolve to the point that it can start reinfecting the herds that had previously been infected. So all the dairy workers that have been exposed so far will be exposed again to a more evolved form that has increased mortality in cattle, but still mild symptoms in humans at this time.
We have been lucky so far.  The CDC plans rely on the virus evolving to better infect humans in a way that they can detect the infection and contain it before it can disperse in the human population.  It is a stupid strategy and they have stockpiled H5N1 vaccine, but as the virus changes the efficacy of that vaccine is in doubt.  The CDC admitted that it had to make a synthetic H5 gene with the Missouri mutations in it to obtain antibodies that would react with the Missouri H5 protein product.   The existing H5 antibodies were not effective enough.  Even with the specific sequence changes only one antibody test out of 3 was positive for the Missouri patient.
This article has some interesting misinformation.  The article correctly claims that poultry flocks were decimated by H5N1 in 2022.  The claim is that the virus jumped to dairy cows, but the 2022 virus was not the dairy virus.  Some poultry flocks did go down in Oct. 2023 in the central valley, but I was unable to obtain the sequence of the virus. Oct 2023 is when the H5N1 made the jump to cattle by sequence phylogeny estimates.  All the Texas isolates were derived from this earlier infection, but they did not know where it had occurred.  The closest related sequence to the Texas dairy virus was a Peregrine falcon sample collected in California.  I tried to get the sequence of the Oct. and Nov. 2023 California commercial poultry infections by trying to get in contact with the USDA people involved in identifying the samples as H5N1, but I was told that the USDA did not give out that information. The sequences in the database are worthless because they only give the location of collection as USA, and the date of sequence submission. Someone needs to get with the researchers that submitted the sequences to sort the mess out.  It is possible that the dairy virus first infected dairy cattle in California Oct 2023, but went undetected except for the commercial poultry flocks that started to go down.
The California dairy cows did not get the virus from poultry as this article indicates.  The commercial poultry flocks that have gone down in California in 2024 got the virus from the California dairy herds.  The California accounts claim that they traced the dairy virus origins to Idaho dairies.
Ron Okimoto