Re: A child tests positive for H5N1

On 11/22/2024 8:48 AM, RonO wrote:

On 11/21/2024 8:37 PM, RonO wrote:

On 11/21/2024 6:53 PM, RonO wrote:

On 11/21/2024 6:18 PM, RonO wrote:

On 11/20/2024 5:28 PM, RonO wrote:

On 11/19/2024 5:28 PM, RonO wrote:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/california- reveals- suspected-avian-flu-case-child-mild-symptoms
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https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR24-037.aspx
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The California child is day care age and was showing symptoms while attending the day care so they are administering preventive treatment and testing of contacts.
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The child had no contact with farm animals, and the source of the virus has not been determined.  They need to sequence it and determine if it is the dairy virus.  If it is the dairy virus, infection via dairy products should not be ruled out.  It would be just like the Missouri infection where there was no known source except that they had consumed dairy products.  I only saw the milk claim in one article, and it seems be suppressed at this time.  The child is only claimed to have had respiratory symptoms.
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They tested the family members, but they need to do antibody testing in order to rule out that any of them had been infected since the child was late in the infection when tested (low amounts of virus) and was negative 4 days later at the next testing, a family member could have infected the child and recovered before being tested.  If they aren't going to test them properly they should contact trace the family members to determine if they can track back to a possible source of the infection.
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They do not seem to be doing things that they should be doing.  The California report repeats the claim that pasteurization kills the virus, and it does, but they do not admit to the CDC research indicating that the the 72 degree C for 15 to 20 sec method of pasteurization did not kill the virus and some infective virus survived the treatment to be detected as infective virus.  The FDA is supposed to be doing more testing, but they don't seem to be doing it properly, and have not reported their results at this time.  The CDC results were reported in October, but no one is taking the results seriously, at least, no one wants to consider the possibility.  Has anyone else even heard of the CDC tests and results?  I only found out because they published the results in their November newsletter published in October.  I haven't seen anyone else citing that newsletter report.  In early November the FDA claimed that they were going to start another round of testing, but it didn't sound like they were going to do the testing the way that they should.  It is stupid to ask for volunteers and claim to just forget where the milk came from.  They need to test the milk out of each truck, and test the milk after pasteurization to see if any positive loads leaked viable virus, and they need to test each pasteurization method multiple times at multiple processing plants handling infected milk. This isn't rocket science and doing things with the intent to fail is just stupid.
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What this article doesn't say is that San Francisco, San Jose, and Palo Alto have had H5N1 detected in their city waste water.  Look at were Alameda county is (the child is claimed to live in Alameda county). This child would have been putting virus into their city waste water.
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Ron Okimoto
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https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/avian-flu- infects- more-poultry-4-us-states
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Another dairy farm in California confirmed (total 336).  3 more commercial poultry farms went down in California.  Everyone should know by now that they get infected by dairy workers that also work on poultry farms.
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Hawaii, Minnesota, and Washington have more poultry outbreaks.  They need to sequence to determine if it is the dairy virus.  Minnesota should know by now that they have infected herds because multiple poultry farms have gone down with the dairy virus, but they won't test their herds.  Where do these guys think that the virus comes from?
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4 states that the USDA wasn't going to test by bulk milk tank testing are going to test their dairy herds.  Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Massachusettes.  Massachusettes may already know that the infection did not get into their state.  I recall that they claimed that they were going to test over a month ago. Oklahoma already had some positive herds, but didn't test after the first couple of positives.  Arkansas was on the first FDA list of states producing positive milk products back in May, and they may finally be testing.
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More detections in wild birds, but they likely need to confirm what virus infected them.
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Ron Okimoto
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The CDC is listing the Oregon case as among the dairy virus infections, but Oregon is still calling it bird flu.  They have had a couple of commercial flocks go down, apparently, with the dairy virus, but they refuses to test their dairies.  Oregon is recommending that people do not drink unpasteurized dairy products, so they likely have a good idea where the virus is coming from.
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https://www.opb.org/article/2024/11/15/oregon-first-human-case-bird- avian-flu-influenza/
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The refusal to identify all the infected dairies and try to contain the infection is just crazy at this time.
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The workers do not know that they should be wearing protective gear, and more of them can expect to be infected.
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Ron Okimoto
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https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/mammals.html
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It looks like a lot of herds since the last update 11/18, with most having 11/18 confirmation dates, have been added to Californias total today the total on the excel sheet went up to 398.  It was 336 before the update.  It may be a glitch in how they updated their data, but the highest sample submission number is now CA417 so there are still unconfirmed samples in the que.
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The USDA still haven't posted any numbers from their state wide bulk milk tank testing that they were going to start within 30 days a couple weeks ago.  Who knows what they are going to find.  It looks like California has identified around 400 herds so far just by contact tracing of dairies that share workers and equipment.  There are only 1300 dairies in the state, and samples have been submitted for over 400 of them for verification.  Just think what they would have found if Texas and Michigan had started contact tracing and testing herds at the beginning of this fiasco.  California was confident that they could contain the infection because most of the dairies were large enough to have full time staff and would not have workers working on multiple dairies like states with smaller herds and part time staff.
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There are obviously more states than 15 with infected herds, and more infected herds in the infected states that are not looking for infected herds.
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Ron Okimoto
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https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/avian-flu- confirmed-62-more-california-dairy-farms-virus-strikes-more
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CIDRAP is confirming that 62 more California dairies have been confirmed to be infected, and multiple poultry flocks around the mid west and West coast.  It is likely time that the USDA bites the bullet on this one and starts recommending that commercial poultry farms do not allow dairy workers to work among poultry until their dairy farm is cleared. California just lost another million bird layer flock.  Over 25 million commercial birds have been affected and most of them are layers.  The claim is that egg prices are going to go up again even though it isn't as bad as it was in 2022.  If these multimillion bird flocks are allowed to keep getting infected you likely will see egg prices as high as they got in 2022.  It takes a long time to replace a layer flock.  When a poultry flock goes down with the dairy virus everyone knows that it is because there is a local infected dairy.  This was just proven in Utah where they found 8 infected dairies in the same county as the poultry flock.  The USDA has to come up with a plan to stop that from happening, but they can't do it without giving up on their denial and start testing every dairy in every state.
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It may be hard on the dairy workers, but they likely need to start limiting dairy workers from working on poultry farms only if their dairy has been cleared, and their dairy needs to be tested, at least, weekly.
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Ron Okimoto

 https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/AHFSS/Animal_Health/Avian_Influenza.html
 The Nov. 21 update claims that poultry flock infection is a growing issue in California.  They mention the latest incidence, but do not acknowledge that it was a million bird flock.  When a poultry flock gets infected they depopulate the entire facility.  When a dairy gets infected they quarantine (not very effectively).  The regulations state that no cattle can be moved from an infected farm for 30 days, and then has to be tested again, but looking at the regulations they do not limit people going to other farms.  This seems to be just stupid.
 California is claiming that they don't know how the poultry flocks are getting infected by the dairy virus.  This is plainly a stupid lie. Utah understood imediately after finding out that it was the dairy virus that infected their layer flock.  They had no dairies admitting to being infected, but when they tested the dairies in the same county they identified 8 infected dairies.  Everyone understands by now that dairy cattle are infecting the poultry farms, and it is likely due to dairy workers also working on the poultry farms.  Dairy work is often part time work, and these workers work at more than one dairy, and 7% of the dairy workers on infected farms were found to also work on poultry farms in Texas and Michigan (both had around the same percentage of workers working on poultry farms there were also twice as many that had close contacts that worked on poultry farms).  If I were the owner of a multi million bird layer flock I would not allow dairy workers onto the farm unless their dairy has been cleared, and even then I would have second thoughts.  California has no excuse for this lame denial since they have detected the most dairy workers shedding live virus.  They have also identified the most infected dairies by contact tracing the dairy workers, so there isn't any reason that they should not have traced the dairy workers to the poultry farms by now.
 Ron Okimoto

The California health authorities did the right thing in contact tracing to identify infected herds, but they now seem to be gun shy at being so successful.  There seems to be a shell of denial that the USDA and CDC are casting over everything.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bird-flu-pandemic-potential/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bird-flu-pandemic-potential/
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Dr. Gounder: This is important because we are wondering, how did this child get infected? The other two most likely sources would be a wild bird or a human. If it's a human, that means that there is human-to-human transmission going under the radar, and that is one of the signs a virus could be on the verge of becoming a pandemic — when you have human-to-human transmission.
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Everyone wants to ignore the fact that the infection could have come from dairy products.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/30/11/24-0772_article
I found the above article in October.  It claims that the dairy virus can survive the most common method of pasteurization in an infective form and survive in milk for 4 days.  This is the CDC's own research, but they have suppressed it from the public.  It has been published in their November EID Journal, but they have not publically offered it to the general population in any news briefing on the subject.  The FDA did respond and decided to do another round of testing, but their protocol is deficient.  They want volunteers when what they need to do is test the milk coming into the plant, and test it after it goes through pasteurization.  They need to test multiple truck loads and multiple pasteurization methods (the 30 minute treatment was effective, but the 15 to 20 seconds at 72 degrees C was not totally effective).  If they only test plants using the 30 minute pasteurization method they will fail at testing the milk supply.
https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/investigation-avian-influenza-h5n1-virus-dairy-cattle
You have to scroll down to Research Studies and open the "Silo Study".
The bad science involving the dairy influenza fiasco is just crazy.
They can't ask for volunteers, they have to go into multiple random plants using the various pasteurization methods, they can't tell the plant ahead of time and give them a chance to reset their equipment, and these plants need to be targeted as plants likely to be getting infected milk.  It won't do them any good to go somewhere that has no infected herds.  They need to test the milk coming out of the trucks and after pasteurization.  They need to check the equipment and the process.  How often is the system recalibrated.  How far out of specs does the system get?  Is the process as effective 7 hours after the shift starts as it is at the start of the shift?  All you need is a few bottles of milk a shift with enough infective virus to cause an infection, and you have an issue.
The initial articles that I saw on the Missouri case claimed that the patient had ingested dairy products, and that would be the primary source of infection if anyone was aware of the CDC research on pasteurization.  They should have been testing the milk processing plant and the dairies contributing to that plant.  The California child needs to have the virus sequenced and determined if it is the dairy H5N1.  If it is, dairy products would again be the primary source for infection. Pasteurization may be effective 99.9% of the time, but some employee lapse or equipment failure and infective virus is probably always a possibility.  Just that fact coupled with the CDC's research indicating that some virus can survive the most common pasteurization method and the inaction of the CDC and FDA is just stupid.
Ron Okimoto