Re: New infections with the dairy virus not being counted

On 6/30/2025 5:09 PM, RonO wrote:

On 6/30/2025 4:42 PM, RonO wrote:

https://hogvet51.substack.com/p/h5n1-dairy-infection-narratives-and
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I found this site on dairy influenza, and this article notes most of what I have been reporting on.  The lack of testing and epidemiology studies.  They still do not know how the cows are getting infected.  The claim that contaminated milking equipment might be the source of infection or animal contact can't be replicated.  Cows living with infected cows do not get infected, and repeated contact with contaminated milking equipment failed to transmit the virus.
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The missing component in the tests were infected dairy workers working with the cattle.
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There is also the note that they do not know how the poultry farms are getting infected even though they go down around infected dairies. Again they fail to note that infected dairy workers likely also work at the poultry farms.
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It seems crazy that they haven't figured out how dairy workers are transmitting the virus to the cows and poultry.
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This article also notes that the USDA is not reporting new infections if they occur in states that have cleared the virus already.  Apparently Colorado has started to report more infected herds, but they aren't counted because the herds were previously infected last year.  They aren't even noting if it is the D1.1 virus or the B3.13 dairy infection.   Nevada and Arizona were infected with the D1.1 genotype, and it turned out to be the same lineage that infected the Washington state poultry workers, and the Wyoming human patient and the Nevada dairies and dairy worker.  These were the poultry workers that got caught leaving Washington (several of them were detected as positive in Oregon and sent back to Washington).  What likely happened is that some of the infected poultry workers or their contacts were not detected and managed to get to Nevada and eventually Wyoming and Arizona.  The epidemiology was never attempted.  They never tested the dairy workers and never did contact tracing between the dairies in Nevada and Arizona.  They knew that they didn't get cattle, but they refused to determine if dairy workers had moved from state to state.
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QUOTE:
We continue to have good evidence that both the B3.13 and D1.1 strains persist in infected herds and spread onward to new herds and to poultry flocks via unknown mechanisms despite assumed best efforts to contain spread with quarantines and increased biosecurity.
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 From this guys article the missing link to infecting more dairy cattle are the dairy workers.  The studies that failed to transmit the virus did not have infected dairy workers working with the cattle.  One early article noted that dairy workers were likely getting eye infections because they wiped their faces with the same towel that they washed the cows utters with before applying the suction cups.  Spreading the virus could work both ways with that towel.  They refuse to make restricting dairy worker movements a requirement for quarantine.  It is still only recommended that dairy workers do not work on other farms if they work at an infected dairy.  No one should wonder how it spreads to other herds after all the infected herds have been identified and quarantined.
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It has been known since the first flocks got infected in Michigan that dairy workers from infected dairies also worked on the commercial farms that got infected.  How the poultry flocks are being infected should be no mystery.
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This guy also notes that poultry flocks are going down with the dairy virus in the Midwest and those states are not reporting infected dairy herds as is likely the case.  Everyone understands that the poultry flocks are getting infected by the nearby dairy herds, but no one wants to admit that dairy workers are taking the virus to the poultry farms.
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Ron Okimoto
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 I should note that the Missouri study that found that most dairy cattle tested had antibodies to human influenza A (the samples were collected before the dairy epidemic hit Missouri).  They could not have gotten infected by wild birds because wild birds are not infected by human adapted influenza A.  The obvious vector of transmission to dairy cattle are infected dairy workers infecting the cattle.
 The study found that most dairy cattle were being infected by human influenza A or swine influenza A (can also infect humans).  So influenza infection of dairy cattle is not unusual, and since it was human adapted influenza A it was likely due to the spread of the virus among the human population (dairy workers were giving the virus to the cows).
 They are also likely infecting cattle with the dairy virus, since the animal to animal transmission and transmission from contaminated milking equipment doesn't seem to happen.
 Ron Okimoto
 

If they had done the dairy worker testing and contact tracing from the start they would know how the other dairies and poultry farms have been infected.  Michigan got Texas Cattle, those cattle likely infected Michigan dairy workers and the infected dairy workers spread the virus to other cattle and dairy herds.  The states that did not get infected cattle but were infected by the dairy virus likely got infected dairy workers from farms that were infected in other states.  That would be consistent with what is known so far, and what I have been claiming since the first Texas dairy worker was found to be shedding live virus. They even cultured the virus from the dairy worker and started using it as the test strain.
Ron Okimoto