Is this heaven? Hell no, it's Iowa.
It's really not that bad as long as you don't drink unpasteurized milk. Chicken farms are where the problem will come from. Pasteurization still works. People need to stop listening to YouTube influencers who promote Raw milk.
And if because of that human-to-human transmission starts occurring, it'll very much be an issue for everyone else too unfortunately :/
On another side note: Raw milk is very much problematic, but there is some evidence to suggest that flash pasteurization may not be fully effective at neutralizing. We don't have enough evidence to fully say with 100% certaintaty that all pasteurization methods work. They might, but there some of them might not
It should be noted this article is from 3 weeks ago, and this whole thing started well before that, so we would probably have already been seeing infections in people for some time if current pasteurization techniques were not effective.
Yeah I looked up the preventative steps across a few different places and they all pretty much say the same. "Don't drink raw milk. This is why people stopped drinking raw milk and why pasteurization was such a hip thing. Stop being stupid".
I swear stupid people are going to kill us all.
You won't even get a pandemic stimulus check this time. Get back to work.
Seems like from all the cows that have been infected, none have fallen seriously ill and all have fully recovered. Among the hundreds (thousands?) of cows that have been infected, are we at 3 total people who have caught it from them? And all had a minor illness and made a full recovery.
Keep in mind that testing volumes are rather low. The number of cases is like higher than what we're seeing reported. Both for cows, humans, and other species. In general, other species than cows have not fared as well:
One month ago:
More than half of cats around the first Texas dairy farm to test positive for bird flu this spring died after drinking raw milk from the infected cows, scientists reported this week
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cats-died-after-drinking-milk-bird-flu-infected-cows/
In general, at least with previous variants of H5N1, it's usually seen an ~50% mortality rate in humans. Its possible the current spreading variant could be different, but we should not undermine its potential to be very deadly.
But in the hundreds of cases where humans have been infected through contact with animals over the past 20 years, “the mortality rate is extraordinarily high”, Farrar said, because humans have no natural immunity to the virus.
From 2003 to 2024, 889 cases and 463 deaths caused by H5N1 have been reported worldwide from 23 countries, according to the WHO, putting the case fatality rate at 52%.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/18/risk-bird-flu-spreading-humans-enormous-concern-who
What you're saying is all true. It's also true that that 50% mortality rate is almost certainly also heavily skewed because of a lack of testing, meaning that fatal cases are much more likely to be tested for the specific variant responsible. This is even more probable given the overwhelming majority of cases and deaths over the past 20 years have occurred in developing nations, in the same way the overwhelming majority of all flu deaths occur in developing nations. It remains to be seen what the actual case fatality rate is, which due to the rarity of infection we won't be able to determine unless it starts passing between humans.
Over 700,000 people die every year from common variants of the flu, where 463 people total have died over the past 20 years from H5N1. We should always be working to reduce flu mortality, and this H5N1 outbreak is certainly something to watch closely and be prepared for potentialities, but also the sky is not falling.
We've gone from "COVID is just the flu" to "bird flu is just COVID" 😂
Did you make that one up all by yourself
The same COVID denial playbook will be trotted out for this next pandemic and you'll just nod along. There will be no mask mandates, nothing will be shut down, we will not go back to any of the lockdown policies, we'll get nothing and you'll be just fine with that because it's just the flu.
I'll be watching what China does. They seem to take this shit seriously, unlike our clown county.
I didn't deny COVID at all, instead I worked in a hospital the entire pandemic, asshole. You're so bent out of shape by someone who has a slightly different idea of reality than you that you just make shit up about them in your head to justify your negative thoughts. Go to therapy.
The pandemic didn't end, people are still dying from COVID; we just stopped caring because it's too hard to deal with sustainably. I'd say you're pretty normal, but that's still denial.
COVID is just the flu and bird flu is just COVID, nothing matters, let the bodies pile up.
COVID is just the flu and bird flu is just COVID, nothing matters, let the bodies pile up.
I didn't say this. No one here said this. This is called a straw man.
Seems like from all the cows that have been infected, none have fallen seriously ill and all have fully recovered. Among the hundreds (thousands?) of cows that have been infected, are we at 3 total people who have caught it from them? And all had a minor illness and made a full recovery.
You're clearly saying it's no big deal. 🙄
Over 700,000 people die every year from common variants of the flu, where 463 people total have died over the past 20 years from H5N1. We should always be working to reduce flu mortality, and this H5N1 outbreak is certainly something to watch closely and be prepared for potentialities, but also the sky is not falling.
It's literally not a big deal right now, because there have been zero cases of human to human transmission. You're treating this like it's the same as COVID already, but it's not
No, I'm treating this like it will inevitably become another pandemic. Viruses mutate, and this one has already jumped from birds to cows. It's only a matter of time.
That sounds exhausting. How have you changed your behavior to affect something that doesn't yet exist and that you have zero control over?
Well I don't eat eggs or drink milk, so I'm not contributing to the petri dishes of laying ops and dairy farms. Maybe if we didn't pack animals together and torture them for money we could slow down the emergence of new diseases. It always comes back to animal exploitation.
But I think you misunderstood me. I was only saying that when this inevitably becomes a pandemic there will be zero government response. I wasn't saying that we should be shutting down society this instant, but rather, that when this jumps human-to-human we'll just ignore it.
The government has already funded the production of several million doses of vaccine against H5N1, and is planning to produce more, so it seems the government is already doing something.
Vaccines millions won't take.
But you're right, one thing our society can do is produce medicines. That's it. When this jumps human-to-human we'll be told "take your vaccine, get back to work, pay no attention to the bodies piling up."
Did you know our life expectancies are falling? Why do you think that is?