H5N1 has been found in commercially available milk – but gaps in testing of cattle and humans are hampering effort to stop virus
Archived version: https://archive.ph/3fdP3
Well if you don’t test, you’ll have less cases.
crosses a few test results off of a list with a sharpie
And now there’s even less!
Well, yeah, and testing would cut into profits and possibly / probably require culling, which would cut into profits even more.
God bless capitalism! 🫠
That worked for the pandemic! We got lower numbers of Covid because we stopped testing for it!
That’s the same logic as racists:
“If everyone would stop talking about shitting on minorities, nobody would know the minorities are being shat on!”
Well duh that’s american health policy 101
As far as I have been able to read, nobody wants to pay for it.
Fyi, people are mostly safe, for now, so long as the milk drank is pasteurized.
Though its spread everywhere (most recently in Walrus - click “Bird flu” in red at the bottom of the article to see a list of recent developments) indicates that it might start jumping to humans soon. Whatever that means, it doesn’t sound ideal.
Though its spread everywhere … indicates that it might start jumping to humans soon
While this is certainly a possibility, and we should be prepared for it, there isn’t any indication to think it will suddenly become transmissible between humans this time. There have been over a thousand confirmed cases of H5N1 in humans over the past 20 years, and all were caught directly from an animal and not spread between humans.
While this is certainly a possibility, and we should be prepared for it,
This is mostly what I was going for:-). But yeah, you bring up a good perspective: companies aren’t known for paying for things that are not needed, and since the milk is safe after pasteurization…
In my other comment in this thread (I have no idea how to properly make links to comments, without kicking you off your instance to view it), I quoted a linked article describing how the fatality rate was extremely high, as in literally over half - though I did not dig further to see e.g. how many were immunocompromised to begin with.
Thank you for sharing the detail that they all were caught directly from animals. That makes sense:-).
The mortality rate is high, but the sample is also heavily skewed toward low income, rural farming populations in developing countries like Indonesia, Egypt, and Cambodia, where outbreaks of 10-30 cases are not uncommon. Survival rates among the few cases in the US and Europe have been 100%, with one death in Canada
Thank you for the helpful additions there.
Knowing that it’s already been possible for the virus to make the jump, and that there is an upswing of the virus overall, does make it seem quite likely that it will make another jump again soon.
Is there a reason you think it unlikely that once it does so, it will just immediately stop there and not undergo human-to-human transmission?
Because it’s been transmitted to humans over a thousands times over the past 20 years, and this upswing isn’t particularly worse than previous outbreaks, it’s just in the news more because it’s happening in the US. There have been massive avian flu outbreaks before in other countries
if a human is infected with a normal human flu and gets exposed to h5n1 at the same time, stuff could go really bad really quickly
“We must have a government which protects us from threats and that’s why it’s cool when they buy sick jet planes and stuff.”
“What about diseases?”
“Nah bro that shit’s BOR-ING”
Capitalism: “If it don’t make profit, we ain’t for-it.”
It’ll just bring the population down to a more manageable level. You know, get rid of a few more of The Poors. bUt ThE eCoNoMy ThO!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/11/bird-flu-strain-found-in-us-cows-flown-to-uk-lab-for-testing - another one linked to from this article - says:
If bird flu did begin to spread between humans, it would be a cause for significant concern because the H5N1 virus has a high mortality rate. From 2003 to 2024, 889 cases were reported in 23 countries, and more than half of those people died, according to WHO. So pre-pandemic vaccines have already been stockpiled.
Tbf, those people might have been the ones at greatest risk like the elderly and immunocompromised, so the actual fatality rate in the general population would probably be significantly lower… possibly more like a bad flu than anywhere close to COVID, but it’s still not great to have to contemplate no matter what.
So I have a thought: let’s totally ignore it, b/c we all (
the Elitesuh I mean “everyone”, yeah totally that’s what I meant) will be safe forever, whoo-hoo! :-PYou can absolutely bet this strain is being accounted for in the annual flu vaccine that will be released in the fall
Hrm, I thought one of these various articles mentioned some significant technical hurdles to building up sufficient stocks of that, over a perhaps 2-3 year period. But maybe that meant worldwide whereas what you are most likely referring to is the stock distributed solely within the USA.
It’s already been developed, it would just need to be produced. The timeline on mass producing a flu vaccine is a matter of a few months since the infrastructure to produce hundreds of millions of doses each year already exists
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/11/bird-flu-human-transmission-prepared-pandemic mentions that:
the US has accumulated a national reserve of four types of flu vaccine that could provide some protection against H5N1 in case of any future outbreak. But even this stockpile would not be sufficient for the entire country, and Digard explains that governments face a desperately difficult decision when it comes to balancing the economic cost of vaccines against trying to ensure that they are as ready as possible for an outbreak.
and later that:
The World Health Organization (WHO) says its estimates suggest that 4-8bn doses of influenza vaccines could be produced within a year in an H5N1 pandemic. Experts say that would require a significant expansion of the global capacity for making flu vaccines, placed at about 1.2bn doses. “Remember that it takes two doses, three to four weeks apart, to achieve protective immunity,” says Poland. “You can quickly do the maths and see where that leaves us.”
Also more generally that:
“There is increasing concern at the scientific and public health levels,” says Dr Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s vaccine research group, who has previously compared the rising infection rates among animals to “the rumbles prior to an earthquake”.
Although perhaps he means people getting sick, rather than people dying? Still, a more-virulent-than-usual flu seems likely to be dangerous for the elderly and immunocompromised people?
This is I think the part that I only vaguely recalled:
While manufacturers have been working on H5N1 vaccines since the mid-2000s, research has always indicated that they pose a much greater technical challenge than the seasonal flu vaccines distributed each year. In particular, the jabs seem to require a far larger dose to generate a sufficient immune response. A dose of the H5N1 vaccine candidate manufactured by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi is 90 micrograms, six times the size of a typical seasonal flu vaccine. Poland says this would make it far more challenging to produce the jab at the scale required.
(emphasis added)
So… yeah, it sounds like the
eliteUSA citizenry will be okay - or at least, those who have access to healthcare plans and/or who can afford the cost themselves - but the rest of the world would not be so fortunate, just like with COVID?It also seems to cast doubt on whether H5N1 - which hasn’t been shown to infect people yet, lately - will be included in the Fall, if that would raise their costs significantly? Does whoever make those care more about costs or saving lives & easing suffering?
Even if this next pandemic is a thousandth the severity compared to COVID, our brokenness and lack of trust in the healthcare system within the USA will create panic regardless. Then again, the Biden administration really does seem to listen to scientific advisors, rather than tell people to inject bleach into themselves, so perhaps they will make the right call after all.
It feels like you’re picking quotes from articles that are lacking context. Yes, the US has a stockpile of several hundred thousand H5N1 vaccines, and no, that wouldn’t cover everyone, but the capacity exists to ramp up production quickly and have hundreds of millions of doses available to the US public within 3-4 months.
Yes, producing 4-8 billion doses of any vaccine is going to take time. Obviously the country that develops, tests, and manufactures a new vaccine is going to fund production for its own people first. That “
elite” dig is just not necessary.
Ooof.
The Classic American solution of waiting until a bunch of people die before we consider acting because to act now means a lot of companies would lose money.
We must always keep the needs of the truest victim in every scenario first and foremost (and exclusively) in our thoughts, and ask ourselves: how will this impact tHe EcOnoMy ThO?
Lol this happened in Michigan with Covid-19
There were like 10 reported cases total because hospitals would only send for a test with a solid match up of symptoms and if the patient had recently traveled from China.
Then when they opened up testing for everyone after CA and NY started going up in flames, it went from 10 to like 1000 cases reported every day.
All in a span of like two weeks.
Went from meme to pandemic so fast Whitmer closed public schools faster than the schools themselves could.
Oh and then Trump got mad and refused to send aid or allow harsher restrictions lol.
Doesnt Bird Flu have like a 10% mortality rate? Thats kind of a big deal.
Holy dry goods batman! I’m off to the supermarket to buy 3 pallets of toilet paper to start my new “arbitrage” business because I’m a fucking asshole like that.
