CDC study with willful misinformation?

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/31/2/24-1147_article#r3
This should have been a simple straight forward study, but the CDC uses it to put out misinformation (they are lying by the lie of omission and making misleading conclusions)
Recently after the Washington poultry workers were found to have been infected by the dairy virus (H5N1 genotype B3.13) the CDC stopped identifying infections as that genotype for Oregon poultry worker, and the California and Washington cat cases.  If they had the dairy virus it would mean that Oregon likely had infected dairies and that the virus might have gotten into the cattle meat supply for Washington and California cat food.
It is wrong to withhold that information and wrong to not act upon it. The USDA and FDA should have started to look to see if infected cattle were being processed in those states.  Instead they just recalled the cat food and made the big cat sanctuary get rid of their meat supply.
This should have been a straight forward study comparison of the dairy virus with the the original Asian H5N1 virus that had 50% mortality in humans.  The dairy virus (genotype B3.13) was already known to have half it's genome come from the Asian strain including the H5 and N1 genes, but the other half of the genome came from two other avian influenza virus one of which was low path.  The Texas isolate has been known to have a different sequence than the virus that eventually spread through the Texas herds.  It must have come from early in the infection of dairy cattle.  The Ohio strain is more closely related to what they have now circulating in California, but still has a different sequence than the B3.13 that infected the Missouri patient.
The study shows that the Asian virus infection of lung tissue is more severe than either the Texas or Ohio dairy virus.  They did not have the D1.1 genotype that is another reassorted H5N1 influenza, but it produces very severe respiratory infections in humans (the Louisiana patient died of the infection and the Canadian patient was in critical condition at one point and could not breath without assistance).
The sad thing about this study is the misinformation that the CDC wants to spread about the dairy virus.  Because they have failed to control the virus spread among dairy workers (they didn't even try) they are making stupid claims about how the workers are being infected.
QUOTE:
By January 6, 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed 66 human cases of HPAI H5N1 virus infection in the United States (https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html). Many of those cases were linked to exposure to infected cattle. However, recent outbreaks in Colorado have resulted in identification of additional human cases linked to infected poultry (3). Virus isolated from a worker at a dairy farm in Texas (A/Texas/37/2024) was shown to be closely related to viruses circulating in cattle, suggesting that this case was likely a result of direct cow-to-human transmission (4). Reported human symptoms included conjunctivitis, 1 person reported mild respiratory symptoms (5) , and 1 person died (https://ldh.la.gov/news/H5N1-deathExternal Link). Those symptoms starkly contrast prior HPAI H5N1 virus infections in humans, which resulted in severe respiratory disease and death in nearly 50% of cases (6). To assess the risk for developing severe disease after infection with contemporary HPAI H5N1 virus, we evaluated virus replication, host cell survival, and induction of innate immune responses in human alveolar epithelium infected with A/Texas/37/2024 or cattle isolate A/bovine/Ohio/B24OSU-342/2024, compared with a historic H5N1 isolate (A/Vietnam/1203/2004) derived from a fatal human case in 2004 (7).
END QUOTE:
For some reason the CDC does not want to make the distinction between the dairy virus and the D1.1 genotype that is coming from wild birds. It looks like they want to blame birds for human infections.  They note that poultry workers get infected by virus infecting poultry, but do not identify that all these infections were due to the dairy virus that was brought onto those poultry farms by dairy workers who work on both dairy and poultry farms.  It looks like they want to start blaming birds instead of dairy cattle for the issues that we may have with the next pandemic due to their inaction.
As stupid as it may seem they do not make the distinction between the fatality in Louisiana from the dairy infections.  The D1.1 genotype came from wild birds infecting backyard poultry that infected the human patient in Louisiana.  The CDC needs to deal with these infections in a totally different way than they are not dealing with the dairy virus.
The Dairy infection would have likely been over by now if the CDC and USDA had implemented contact tracing and testing dairy herds and dairy workers.  Instead they allowed the disease to freely spread by infected dairy workers.  If they had identified all the infected herds and tested the workers on each farm they would have known which workers could not go to other farms.  Nearly all the commercial poultry infections could have been avoided by restricting infected dairy workers from going to poultry farms, and many states would have not been infected if they had restricted infected dairy workers from going to other states and working on dairy farms.
For the D1.1 genotype the CDC needs to start tracking people with wild bird contact (pet birds and commercial free range farms).  They need to warn these people that they need to monitor their animals and at the first signs of infection they need to contact the proper authorities and minimize contact with the animals.  The D1.1 virus is a respiratory infection and the mutations needed to better infect humans are selected for very rapidly in the infection (both D1.1 patients produced virus with the mutations needed to better infect humans and both had very severe symptoms).  The possiblity of infection has to be minimized for people with bird contact.  The CDC should be thinking about vaccinating these people against the D1.1 genotype.  They need to survey wild birds and find out where the D1.1 genotype exists at this time.  We know that it is spread across North America.  They know what mutations are selected for in the two known patients and they can use those virus in the D1.1 vaccine.
What the CDC is not acknowledging is that both D1.1 patients produced the next pandemic virus, but fortunately they did not infect other people.  Both patients produced virus with the mutations that we do not want to see in an avian influenza virus.  The CDC should be doing everything that it can to reduce the chance of the next human infection.
Ron Okimoto