Re: CDC lists 52 confirmed cases of dairy influenza in humans

On 11/16/2024 9:00 AM, RonO wrote:

On 11/15/2024 7:33 PM, RonO wrote:

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html
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It looks like the CDC added 5 more cases from California and 1 more case for Washington.  They are also claiming that there was one positive case submitted from California that could not be confirmed at the CDC and 3 cases submitted of Poultry workers from Washington that could not be confirmed by the CDC.  Total is now 52.
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The CDC is continuing to not add the seropositive (evidence of past infection) dairy workers and the close contact of the Missouri patient as being infected.  That would add 11 more to the total.
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Ron Okimoto
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 It wasn't one more case in Washington, but an Oregon poultry worker.
 https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/oregon-reports- first-h5-case-farm-worker-california-reports-5-more
 The CDC is counting this as a dairy virus infection, but the Oregon report did not identify the virus as the dairy H5N1.  The previous poultry flocks in Oregon had been infected by another strain of H5N1 found in migratory fowl.
 The Oregon health department should do contact tracing from the infected flock to find out what worker brought in the dairy virus to the poultry flock.  That worker may have come from Washington or California, but it may be a local dairy that is infected.  In all the other cases the poultry farms got infected by local dairies that had workers that also worked on poultry farms.  The most recent example of this was Utah that found 8 local dairies infected after the poultry farm went down.
 Ron Okimoto
 

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html
Another California dairy worker has been confirmed to be positive, and there are probably more waiting to be confirmed.  Confirmation seems to take a while for both the USDA and CDC.  The USDA has been limited to confirming around 50 herds a week for the past month they have likely reached some type of limit for verification with all the cases submitted from California.  One article that I read claimed that California had claimed to have sent in 39 total samples for verification over 2 weeks ago, but the CDC has only confirmed 27 and claimed negative results for another, so there may be 11 more samples that they are still testing. My guess is that California has sent in even more samples during the last couple weeks.  The article may have been claiming that they had tested a total of 39 individuals that showed symptoms and had sent in the positives for verification.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-11152024.html
The CDC continues to not include the antibody positive dairy workers as having been confirmed to have been infected.
They have not changed their claim that the Missouri patient did not exhibit the usual symptoms of influenza infection.  The statement is true, but is the lie of omission because they know that the patient exhibited symptoms that human patients in Asia exhibited when infected with H5N1 (evidence of gut infection).  The denial is even worse than that because they are doing it because they do not want to admit that the patient was likely infected by the milk that they drank.  The gut infections in Asia occurred by ingesting infected goose blood.  The CDC's own research had indicated that the most common pasteurization method used in the US did not reduce the infective virus to below detection levels, and they recommended that more testing of the milk supply was warranted.  The Missouri patient's symptoms indicated that they should have tested the Missouri milk supply, but this was never recommended nor done.  The patients close contact had the same symptoms and the CDC even claimed that they likely had the same source for infection, and they still did not test the milk supply.  The FDA had not included Missouri in their then current milk product testing, so no one knew if they had infected milk products.  This should not be tolerated because it has been known from the beginning that cats fed infected raw milk were infected and had a high mortality rate.
I do not know why the CDC has not been challenged on this.  The Utah health department included the gut infection symptoms in their health alerts about infection with H5N1.  In the review paper that I put up about the past European and Asian H5N1 infections noted that the gut infection (diarrhea) was due to drinking infected goose blood, and gut infection is also noted in dairy cattle.  Utah included diarrhea among their symptoms, but the CDC refuses to acknowledge it.
The FDA is retesting the milk supply, but they are doing it on a voluntary basis which is stupid.  They need to go in and test the milk at multiple milk processing plants in states with current infections like Utah and California.  They need to test the milk as it comes out of the trucks and as it comes out of pasteurization, and they need to try to culture virus from the milk at both testing points.  They need to test all the pasteurization methods.  The CDC had found the 30 minute treatment to be effective, but virus survived the 15 to 20 second 72 degree pasteurization method.
What could possibly be reason enough to ignore reality and do what the USDA, CDC, and FDA are currently doing?  It seems to be willful stupidity because they do not want to know what they will find.
One note is that the CDC's lab update claims that 3 of the 11 Washington poultry workers had a virus with a drug resistance mutation that made the antiviral oseltamivir less effective.
There was another drug resistance mutation, but it was to a drug that isn't used in the US.
Ron Okimoto