Re: Another California child infected by H5N1

On 12/10/2024 5:25 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 13:54:12 -0600, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>:
 

On 12/9/2024 2:47 PM, RonO wrote:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-12-h5n1-bird-flu-case-california.html
>
They haven't confirmed that it is the Dairy virus, but it seems to be
H5N1.  Marin County is North of San Francisco.  The first child was in
Alameda that is South of San Francisco.  The child has no known exposure
to animals.  If it is the dairy virus they have to start testing the
milk supply.  That is the direct contact that these kids have with dairy
cows, but they did not test the milk supply after the first child
because it is bad for the dairy industry.  Pasteurized milk is supposed
to be safe, but the CDC's own research indicated that the virus could
survive the most common pasteurization method and could survive in whole
milk for 4 days.  The FDA claimed that it was doing further tests on the
milk supply after that study, but nothing has been published about their
results (Project started in early Nov.) and they were doing the study
incorrectly.  They were asking for volunteers and claimed that they
would keep the dairies anonymous.  The processing plants that did not
volunteer are the ones that you want to test as the most likely to have
issues with their pasteurization.  The method may be 100% effective when
within specifications, but how often are those specifications not met?
That is the main question that the FDA has to answer.
>
Ron Okimoto
>

>
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-12092024.html
>
The CDC has just released that the virus that infected the first
California child was genotype B3.13 and is the virus that has infected
dairy cattle and dairy workers in California.
>
In their follow-up actions they continue to make the claim that there is
no evidence for human to human infection, and refuse to acknowledge that
the only contact to the dairy virus that this kid had was the dairy
products that they ingested.  How can they keep ignoring the most likely
avenue of infection?  They refuse to acknowledge their own research
indicating that the virus can survive the most common form of
pasteurization, and do not recommend testing of the California milk
supply.  They are in denial even though a second California child has
likely been infected by the dairy virus.  They should stop calling it
avian influenza when it is being spread by dairy cattle and dairy
workers.  These kids are likely getting infected by the dairy cattle
somehow, and dairy products are what they have been consuming.
>

*Is* there any evidence that it's "...being spread by dairy
cattle and dairy workers."? Were the infected children in
direct contact with dairy workers? Or are they being
infected by ingestion of dairy products? If that's the case,
then the claim that there's no evidence of human-to-human
infection seems justified.

>

The first dairy worker found to be infected in Texas was found to be shedding live infective virus that they were able to culture and it became the standard test virus even though the sequence indicates that it branched off early in the dairy infection.  Poultry farms started to go down (+million bird layer flocks) in both Texas and Michigan in March and April.  Both states found that around 7% of dairy workers on infected farms also worked on poultry farms.  Dairy work is part time at most dairies so the Dairy workers work at more than one dairy or at other farms like poultry farms.  They Have known this since May, but no one ever started contact tracing to determine how the poultry farms are being infected except Utah that after their layer flock went down they started testing the nearby dairies and found 8 infected herds in the same county as the layer flock.  None of those 8 dairies had self reported being infected so the dairy workers were free to move from farm to farm.
The USDA and CDC have known from the beginning that the virus is viable and infective off skin and clothing for less than 30 minutes, so they proposed that equipment was exchanged between dairy and poultry farms, but no such equipment exchange was ever verified.  Influenza virus can survive as infectious virus for 24 hours on a smooth surface.  The only verification was that dairy workers from infected farms also worked on Poultry farms.  Infected dairy workers were known to be shedding live virus, but the CDC kept claiming that there was no human to human transmission mainly because they never tested for it, and they ignored the possibility that the dairy workers were taking live virus to poultry farms and other dairies.  Dairy workers are the only way that dairy cattle got infected in states that never got infected cattle.  Kansas and South Dakota were both infected by the same lineage of the Dairy virus that was one lineage most closely related to some Texas dairy herds, but they never got Texas cattle.  The only way that they could have been infected is if a dairy worker was infected in Texas and shed virus in those states, but they never implemented contact tracing in any state with infected cattle.  My guess is that a migrant dairy worker left one of the infected dairy herds in Texas, and worked in Kansas for a bit before moving on to South Dakota or another infected worker in Kansas took the virus to South Dakota, but Kansas and South Dakota never tried to identify all their infected herds, nor did they implement contact tracing.
California is the only state that implemented contact tracing of dairy workers, and equipment and started identifying a boat load of infected herds.  They also identified a lot of infected dairy workers (total 31), and for some reason they stopped testing dairy workers after the first 20 were confirmed.  The CDC may still be working on the first batch of 39 samples sent to them by California before November.  The CDC has claimed to have confirmed 31 with one failure to confirm, so far.
I predicted early on that it would only take around 5% of the dairy workers to be infected to account for the spread and infection to the nearby poultry flocks.  The study that should have been done months before was finally put out late October where they found 7% of the dairy workers tested had been infected with the virus, but had not been tested previously.  39 samples included in that study were the initial samples that Michigan collected from dairy workers that had never shown symptoms, and they found them all the be negative, so there were only around 80 samples in the study that had been collected randomly (as they came to the workers whether they had shown symptoms or not) so the 8 positives they found made the findings closer to 10% than the 7% claimed.  Only 2 of the 8 positives claimed to have not had symptoms. Texas had previously only tested 13 dairy workers that had shown symptoms and had found 2 antibody positives in July (one of the positives had not had contact with cattle, and had only contact with other dairy workers).  So it was already known that the positives could be a significant number of dairy workers, and that the virus was infecting people that did not have direct contact with animals.  The Texas study claimed that it was evidence for person to person infection (the two positives worked on the same farm) but the CDC has never acknowledged these results, and still do not list them as dairy workers that have been infected by the virus.  It seems to be policy to not include any antibody positive results in the number of infected humans. They have not included the Colorado and Michigan study positives nor the Missouri close contact that was found to be antibody positive.
The CDC and USDA continue to deny that the dairy workers are responsible for a significant portion of the spread of the dairy virus, but California and all the infected poultry farms are telling them that they are lying to themselves.  There is very little chance that live virus is coming onto poultry farms on the workers skin and clothing.  The infected dairy workers are shedding live virus, and can obviously infect other cattle and the birds that they work with.  The USDA and CDC want to deny this simple fact because they do not want to admit that there has likely been human to human transmission between close contacts of dairy workers, and they have refused to test the close contacts to find out.  They haven't even tested the dairy workers to find out if they were infected in order to test their contacts.  California wanted to test the close contacts of the positive dairy workers, but that never seems to have happened.  In October California claimed that they wanted to test the close contacts of the dairy workers, but they either never started, and they seem to have quit testing dairy workers.  After the Colorado and Michigan antibody results and the fact that asymptomatic workers had been infected the CDC claims to have implemented some testing scheme for dairy workers so that the infected can be identified and treated with antivirals to reduce the virus production in those individuals, but no results have been released at this time.  They should also be testing the close contacts of the dairy workers they find to be infected.
They have waited too long to test for antibodies.  The current virus is significantly different from their test strain that they isolated from the first dairy worker.  The CDC had to make a synthetic antigen to test for antibodies to the virus that infected the Missouri patient, and still 2 or the 3 tests failed.
The only contact that the children had with dairy cattle was the milk that they drank.  The CDC claims that they can find no means of infection.  None of the contacts of the children had bird or dairy cattle contact.  They ignore their own results that the most common method of pasteurization did not kill all the virus and that infective virus could survive 4 days in refrigerated milk.  It is mind boggling that no news outlets have picked up on the pasteurization findings by the CDC.  The FDA responded immediately with the claim that they were going to start looking for "volunteers" to check out the safety of the milk supply.  This was late October and nothing has come out of their efforts.  The CDC published the results in their November Newsletter that they put out in October, but the CDC never made a big deal about the issue, and just recommended that the safety of the milk supply should be evaluated.  The FDA is supposed to be doing that reevaluation, but their published protocol is stupid and inadequate to test the system.  They are looking for volunteer dairies and processing plants when the ones that will likely show issues are the ones that are not volunteering.  Dairy farms are supposed to take sick cows out of the milk supply, but it is the dairies still milking infected cattle whose milk that they want to test.  They need to go to, probably, a hundred plants in states with known infected herds and start testing the milk as it comes into the plant and after pasteurization.  They need to review any issues the process might have with shift changes and equipment maintenence.  This is an issue where the process can be 99% effective, but it is that 1% of the time that can cause serious issues where a few gallons that do not pass spec can be an issue for some kid somewhere. It is likely going to be children that have not had influenza nor been vaccinated that are most likely to be infected because they would have no antibodies against influenza A (H5N1 is an influenza A virus).  The current vaccine strains are expected to have little effect on the dairy virus, but they are expected to have some general effect as they do against any influenza A it is just usually not enough to not be infected by some strains of human adapted influenza A.  H5N1 dairy virus hasn't yet adapted to infect humans effectively.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/30/11/24-0772_article
QUOTE:
Abstract
Highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) detected in dairy cows raises concerns about milk safety. The effects of pasteurization-like temperatures on influenza viruses in retail and unpasteurized milk revealed virus resilience under certain conditions. Although pasteurization contributes to viral inactivation, influenza A virus, regardless of strain, displayed remarkable stability in pasteurized milk.
END QUOTE:
They found that infective virus could survive the 72 degree C pasteurization method and would be stable in refrigerated milk for at least 4 days.
The 72 degree C treatment for 15 to 20 seconds is the most common pasteurization method in use in the US.
They have known from the beginning that cats could be infected by ingesting raw milk.  It has since been found that mice can also be infected by drinking infected milk.
Ron Okimoto