• OT? Dairy flu

    From RonO@21:1/5 to All on Sat May 25 08:44:20 2024
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu. The
    CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the virus and
    the threat to humans. They knew from the first detections that humans
    were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and contact
    tracing. Humans had already likely spread the virus to other dairy
    herds for some time. They knew from the first sequencing results that
    many states did not get cattle but ended up with the virus. People were
    the obvious vector for spread of the virus between herds. We have known
    for years that the flu virus only survives for around 5 hours on the
    skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but we also know that you
    have to be infected within a few minutes of getting it on your skin or
    clothing because the virus doesn't seem to be infective after a few
    minutes on those surfaces. The virus survives the longest on hard
    surfaces and is infective off those surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected by the dairy virus in the same counties
    as the infected herds would have had little reason to exchange
    equipment. Infected humans likely took the virus to those poultry
    farms. The two known human cases were shedding infective virus. The
    CDC has understood this from the very beginning of their involvement,
    but they failed to act on it. They claim that it isn't their policy to
    force testing onto farm workers, so they never checked to determine the
    rate that humans were being infected even though there was ancedotal
    evidence of other dairy workers with red eye (eye infection). The crazy
    thing is these red eye individuals can infect other humans. They got
    infected, and they are shedding virus. If the CDC had started testing
    and contact tracing they would already know how the other herds and
    poultry flocks got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
    quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
    interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases. They
    both claimed to rely on farm reporting. This is stupid. The FDA tested
    milk products from 38 states. They tested products that came from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with H5N1 positive
    milk samples, but would not release the names of the states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the food chain.
    Pasteurization was found to kill the virus. When the FDA finally did
    release the names of the states a couple weeks later it was found that 9
    new states not yet identified as having positive dairy herds had
    produced milk products that were positive for the dairy virus. 3 of the
    states already known to have infected herds were not found to have
    positive dairy products, so they likely missed some positive states of
    the 38 tested. The CDC could have predicted the results because they
    started to monitor waste water and most of the new states that were
    found to have positive dairy products had also shown flu virus in the
    waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
    the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
    will start killing people. Currently the infected humans only have mild
    eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently tear
    ducts). The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
    already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
    sample collections. As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
    probably the most likely to be selected for. The virus is infecting a
    lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
    herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus. I
    should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had high mortality because the virus infected their brains. Influenza virus is
    normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to infecting
    human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus. It doesn't
    sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to limit the
    first human cases with severe symptoms. In order to do that you have to identify them as soon as you can. The humans currently being infected
    are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the infected herds and
    monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts. The next pandemic
    could have already started in one of the states with unidentified
    infected dairy herds. They need to track down the dairies that
    contributed to the milk of the processing plants that produced positive
    milk samples. They need to go to the counties with positive waste water
    (these include multiple sites in California that has not yet claimed to
    have positive herds and several of these sites are in rural areas
    surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare scenario) and identify
    infected herds. They need to track the contacts of the dairy workers so
    that they can identify more infected herds in states that are already
    known to have infected herds. Once they identify all the possible
    sources of infection they can monitor those herds and people and then
    try to keep any virus from spreading and becoming a pandemic.

    Ron Okimoto

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From *Hemidactylus*@21:1/5 to RonO on Sat May 25 14:49:19 2024
    RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu. The
    CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the virus and
    the threat to humans. They knew from the first detections that humans
    were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and contact
    tracing. Humans had already likely spread the virus to other dairy
    herds for some time. They knew from the first sequencing results that
    many states did not get cattle but ended up with the virus. People were
    the obvious vector for spread of the virus between herds. We have known
    for years that the flu virus only survives for around 5 hours on the
    skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but we also know that you
    have to be infected within a few minutes of getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to be infective after a few
    minutes on those surfaces. The virus survives the longest on hard
    surfaces and is infective off those surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected by the dairy virus in the same counties
    as the infected herds would have had little reason to exchange
    equipment. Infected humans likely took the virus to those poultry
    farms. The two known human cases were shedding infective virus. The
    CDC has understood this from the very beginning of their involvement,
    but they failed to act on it. They claim that it isn't their policy to
    force testing onto farm workers, so they never checked to determine the
    rate that humans were being infected even though there was ancedotal
    evidence of other dairy workers with red eye (eye infection). The crazy thing is these red eye individuals can infect other humans. They got infected, and they are shedding virus. If the CDC had started testing
    and contact tracing they would already know how the other herds and
    poultry flocks got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
    quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases. They
    both claimed to rely on farm reporting. This is stupid. The FDA tested
    milk products from 38 states. They tested products that came from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with H5N1 positive
    milk samples, but would not release the names of the states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the food chain.
    Pasteurization was found to kill the virus. When the FDA finally did
    release the names of the states a couple weeks later it was found that 9
    new states not yet identified as having positive dairy herds had
    produced milk products that were positive for the dairy virus. 3 of the states already known to have infected herds were not found to have
    positive dairy products, so they likely missed some positive states of
    the 38 tested. The CDC could have predicted the results because they
    started to monitor waste water and most of the new states that were
    found to have positive dairy products had also shown flu virus in the
    waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
    the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
    will start killing people. Currently the infected humans only have mild
    eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently tear
    ducts). The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
    already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
    sample collections. As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are probably the most likely to be selected for. The virus is infecting a
    lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
    herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus. I
    should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had high mortality because the virus infected their brains. Influenza virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to infecting
    human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus. It doesn't
    sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to limit the
    first human cases with severe symptoms. In order to do that you have to identify them as soon as you can. The humans currently being infected
    are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the infected herds and
    monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts. The next pandemic
    could have already started in one of the states with unidentified
    infected dairy herds. They need to track down the dairies that
    contributed to the milk of the processing plants that produced positive
    milk samples. They need to go to the counties with positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that has not yet claimed to
    have positive herds and several of these sites are in rural areas
    surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare scenario) and identify
    infected herds. They need to track the contacts of the dairy workers so
    that they can identify more infected herds in states that are already
    known to have infected herds. Once they identify all the possible
    sources of infection they can monitor those herds and people and then
    try to keep any virus from spreading and becoming a pandemic.

    My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
    dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell them
    not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RonO@21:1/5 to All on Sat May 25 12:49:10 2024
    On 5/25/2024 9:49 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
    RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning for
    "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu. The
    CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the virus and
    the threat to humans. They knew from the first detections that humans
    were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and contact
    tracing. Humans had already likely spread the virus to other dairy
    herds for some time. They knew from the first sequencing results that
    many states did not get cattle but ended up with the virus. People were
    the obvious vector for spread of the virus between herds. We have known
    for years that the flu virus only survives for around 5 hours on the
    skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but we also know that you
    have to be infected within a few minutes of getting it on your skin or
    clothing because the virus doesn't seem to be infective after a few
    minutes on those surfaces. The virus survives the longest on hard
    surfaces and is infective off those surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the
    poultry farms that were infected by the dairy virus in the same counties
    as the infected herds would have had little reason to exchange
    equipment. Infected humans likely took the virus to those poultry
    farms. The two known human cases were shedding infective virus. The
    CDC has understood this from the very beginning of their involvement,
    but they failed to act on it. They claim that it isn't their policy to
    force testing onto farm workers, so they never checked to determine the
    rate that humans were being infected even though there was ancedotal
    evidence of other dairy workers with red eye (eye infection). The crazy
    thing is these red eye individuals can infect other humans. They got
    infected, and they are shedding virus. If the CDC had started testing
    and contact tracing they would already know how the other herds and
    poultry flocks got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
    quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
    interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases. They
    both claimed to rely on farm reporting. This is stupid. The FDA tested
    milk products from 38 states. They tested products that came from milk
    processing plants in those states and found 17 states with H5N1 positive
    milk samples, but would not release the names of the states because they
    claimed to only be worried about the safety of the food chain.
    Pasteurization was found to kill the virus. When the FDA finally did
    release the names of the states a couple weeks later it was found that 9
    new states not yet identified as having positive dairy herds had
    produced milk products that were positive for the dairy virus. 3 of the
    states already known to have infected herds were not found to have
    positive dairy products, so they likely missed some positive states of
    the 38 tested. The CDC could have predicted the results because they
    started to monitor waste water and most of the new states that were
    found to have positive dairy products had also shown flu virus in the
    waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
    the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
    will start killing people. Currently the infected humans only have mild
    eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently tear
    ducts). The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
    already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
    infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
    sample collections. As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
    probably the most likely to be selected for. The virus is infecting a
    lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
    herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus. I
    should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had high
    mortality because the virus infected their brains. Influenza virus is
    normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to infecting
    human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided to
    prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus. It doesn't
    sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to limit the
    first human cases with severe symptoms. In order to do that you have to
    identify them as soon as you can. The humans currently being infected
    are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the infected herds and
    monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts. The next pandemic
    could have already started in one of the states with unidentified
    infected dairy herds. They need to track down the dairies that
    contributed to the milk of the processing plants that produced positive
    milk samples. They need to go to the counties with positive waste water
    (these include multiple sites in California that has not yet claimed to
    have positive herds and several of these sites are in rural areas
    surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare scenario) and identify
    infected herds. They need to track the contacts of the dairy workers so
    that they can identify more infected herds in states that are already
    known to have infected herds. Once they identify all the possible
    sources of infection they can monitor those herds and people and then
    try to keep any virus from spreading and becoming a pandemic.

    My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
    dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell them
    not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.


    The dairy workers were resistant to be tested. Many were illegal aliens
    and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor. The Dairy owners
    were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
    do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
    poultry within a mile of the infected flock. The poultry flocks that
    were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated. 6 and a half
    million layers in Michigan alone. Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
    in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
    states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having infected herds. Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
    the state.

    So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
    virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
    movement in trying to stop the spread. Multiple waste water sites
    around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
    average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
    are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are testing dairies in those counties. The nightmare scenario is that
    patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
    international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
    anyone notices.

    One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
    distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop influenza infections. 30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
    each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
    during the masking required during Covid. It tells us that we could
    probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
    season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action. My take is
    that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
    required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
    environment around them by sneezing and coughing.

    Ron Okimoto

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From vallor@21:1/5 to RonO on Mon May 27 06:45:57 2024
    On Sat, 25 May 2024 12:49:10 -0500, RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote in <v2t8an$2vo1m$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 5/25/2024 9:49 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
    RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning
    for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu.
    The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the
    virus and the threat to humans. They knew from the first detections
    that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and
    contact tracing. Humans had already likely spread the virus to other
    dairy herds for some time. They knew from the first sequencing
    results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
    virus. People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between
    herds. We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for
    around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but
    we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
    getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to
    be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces. The virus
    survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
    surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected
    by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
    have had little reason to exchange equipment. Infected humans likely
    took the virus to those poultry farms. The two known human cases were
    shedding infective virus. The CDC has understood this from the very
    beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it. They
    claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers,
    so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
    infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
    workers with red eye (eye infection). The crazy thing is these red
    eye individuals can infect other humans. They got infected, and they
    are shedding virus. If the CDC had started testing and contact
    tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks
    got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
    quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
    interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
    They both claimed to rely on farm reporting. This is stupid. The FDA
    tested milk products from 38 states. They tested products that came
    from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with
    H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
    states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the
    food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus. When the FDA
    finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
    was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
    dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
    dairy virus. 3 of the states already known to have infected herds
    were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed
    some positive states of the 38 tested. The CDC could have predicted
    the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
    the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
    also shown flu virus in the waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by
    the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that
    will start killing people. Currently the infected humans only have
    mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently
    tear ducts). The initial sequencing results indicated that there were
    already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more
    infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
    sample collections. As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
    probably the most likely to be selected for. The virus is infecting a
    lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those
    herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus. I
    should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
    high mortality because the virus infected their brains. Influenza
    virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
    infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided
    to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus. It
    doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
    limit the first human cases with severe symptoms. In order to do that
    you have to identify them as soon as you can. The humans currently
    being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
    infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts.
    The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states
    with unidentified infected dairy herds. They need to track down the
    dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
    produced positive milk samples. They need to go to the counties with
    positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that
    has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites
    are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
    scenario) and identify infected herds. They need to track the
    contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected
    herds in states that are already known to have infected herds. Once
    they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor
    those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading
    and becoming a pandemic.

    My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
    influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
    dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
    them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
    ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
    matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.


    The dairy workers were resistant to be tested. Many were illegal aliens
    and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor. The Dairy owners
    were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
    do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
    poultry within a mile of the infected flock. The poultry flocks that
    were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated. 6 and a half million layers in Michigan alone. Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
    in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having infected herds. Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
    the state.

    So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
    virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
    movement in trying to stop the spread. Multiple waste water sites
    around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
    average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
    are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are testing dairies in those counties. The nightmare scenario is that
    patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
    international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
    anyone notices.

    One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
    distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop influenza infections. 30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
    each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
    during the masking required during Covid. It tells us that we could
    probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
    season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action. My take is
    that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
    environment around them by sneezing and coughing.

    Ron Okimoto

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/

    Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk: Study

    Is this the flu you are referring to? (Wish you'd source your info...)

    (I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)

    ObOrigins:
    The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution. When people talk about how evolution is "only a theory", they get it wrong:
    the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
    _observed fact_ of evolution.

    --
    -v

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RonO@21:1/5 to vallor on Mon May 27 09:03:58 2024
    On 5/27/2024 1:45 AM, vallor wrote:
    On Sat, 25 May 2024 12:49:10 -0500, RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote in <v2t8an$2vo1m$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 5/25/2024 9:49 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
    RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning
    for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu. >>>> The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the
    virus and the threat to humans. They knew from the first detections
    that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and
    contact tracing. Humans had already likely spread the virus to other
    dairy herds for some time. They knew from the first sequencing
    results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
    virus. People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between >>>> herds. We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for
    around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but
    we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
    getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to
    be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces. The virus
    survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
    surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected
    by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
    have had little reason to exchange equipment. Infected humans likely
    took the virus to those poultry farms. The two known human cases were >>>> shedding infective virus. The CDC has understood this from the very
    beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it. They
    claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers,
    so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
    infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
    workers with red eye (eye infection). The crazy thing is these red
    eye individuals can infect other humans. They got infected, and they
    are shedding virus. If the CDC had started testing and contact
    tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks >>>> got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
    quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not
    interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
    They both claimed to rely on farm reporting. This is stupid. The FDA >>>> tested milk products from 38 states. They tested products that came
    from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with
    H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
    states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the >>>> food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus. When the FDA
    finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
    was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
    dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
    dairy virus. 3 of the states already known to have infected herds
    were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed
    some positive states of the 38 tested. The CDC could have predicted
    the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
    the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
    also shown flu virus in the waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by >>>> the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that >>>> will start killing people. Currently the infected humans only have
    mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently
    tear ducts). The initial sequencing results indicated that there were >>>> already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more >>>> infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the
    sample collections. As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are
    probably the most likely to be selected for. The virus is infecting a >>>> lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those >>>> herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus. I
    should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
    high mortality because the virus infected their brains. Influenza
    virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
    infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided
    to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus. It
    doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
    limit the first human cases with severe symptoms. In order to do that >>>> you have to identify them as soon as you can. The humans currently
    being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
    infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts. >>>> The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states
    with unidentified infected dairy herds. They need to track down the
    dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
    produced positive milk samples. They need to go to the counties with
    positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that
    has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites
    are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
    scenario) and identify infected herds. They need to track the
    contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected
    herds in states that are already known to have infected herds. Once
    they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor
    those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading
    and becoming a pandemic.

    My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
    influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
    dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
    them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
    ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
    matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.


    The dairy workers were resistant to be tested. Many were illegal aliens
    and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor. The Dairy owners
    were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to
    do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
    poultry within a mile of the infected flock. The poultry flocks that
    were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated. 6 and a half
    million layers in Michigan alone. Multiple turkey flocks have gone down
    in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the
    states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
    infected herds. Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in
    the state.

    So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
    virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
    movement in trying to stop the spread. Multiple waste water sites
    around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
    average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
    are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are
    testing dairies in those counties. The nightmare scenario is that
    patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
    international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
    anyone notices.

    One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
    distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
    influenza infections. 30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza
    each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
    during the masking required during Covid. It tells us that we could
    probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
    season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action. My take is
    that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
    required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
    environment around them by sneezing and coughing.

    Ron Okimoto

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/

    Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk: Study

    Is this the flu you are referring to? (Wish you'd source your info...)

    (I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)

    ObOrigins:
    The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution. When people talk about how evolution is "only a theory", they get it wrong:
    the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
    _observed fact_ of evolution.


    Look at the CDC waste water data for California. California has not
    started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites around the
    bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste water, as high as counties known to have infected dairy herds. It looks like the bay area
    is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but no one wants to check.
    Several of those counties have issued warnings not to drink raw milk,
    but they don't want to verify that they have the issue for some stupid
    reason.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by H5N1
    virus in raw milk. Pretty much from day 1 we have known that the virus
    in raw milk could infect cats.

    https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows

    The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm

    The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples 10
    days after they released the fact that they had found the positive
    samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as long as you
    didn't drink raw milk you were OK. They have contributed to the delay
    in identifying all the infected herds.

    https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai

    The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings and
    testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples. Both
    claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but that
    obviously is not working.

    The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds because
    of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be relying on self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy herds in the positive
    waste water counties.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy herds
    even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and the waste
    water data identifies even more, and it identifies some of the counties
    that they should be checking. Not only that, but the waste water data
    and positive milk data overlap and identify the counties that they
    should check in the positive milk states.

    They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the infected
    herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though the symptoms
    were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more chance of the
    virus evolving into something much worse. It looks like the USDA and
    CDC went into denial due to politics and being burned during Covid. It
    is crazy that they have been in denial that humans took the virus to
    other dairy herds and the poultry farms. How else has the virus spread
    to states that never got cattle, and then infected poultry farms in
    those states? Kansas and South Dakota never got cattle from Texas, but
    it looks like Kansas was infected and then the infection spread from
    Kansas to South Dakota even though South Dakota did not get cattle from
    Texas nor Kansas. Infected people obviously took the virus to those
    states. Influenza is known not to be infective off skin and clothing
    for more than a few minutes. It may survive on clothing for up to 12
    hours, but is only infective for around 30 minutes once it gets onto
    clothing. The infected humans were shedding live virus, and that is
    obviously how the virus has spread to so many herds.

    This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
    pandemic. Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up and
    are preparing for worse to come. They can still identify the infected
    herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they have decided
    to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off the dairies as
    something that is killing people. The stupid thing is that in order to
    do this effectively they still need to identify the infected herds in
    order to have the best chance of identifying patient zero that gets a
    mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.

    Ron Okimoto

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RonO@21:1/5 to RonO on Sun Jun 2 09:26:48 2024
    On 5/27/2024 9:03 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 1:45 AM, vallor wrote:
    On Sat, 25 May 2024 12:49:10 -0500, RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote in
    <v2t8an$2vo1m$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 5/25/2024 9:49 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
    RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning >>>>> for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy flu. >>>>>   The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the >>>>> virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first detections >>>>> that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and >>>>> contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to other >>>>> dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing
    results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
    virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus between >>>>> herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for >>>>> around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but >>>>> we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
    getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to >>>>> be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus
    survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
    surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected >>>>> by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would
    have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans likely >>>>> took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human cases were >>>>> shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the very >>>>> beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it.  They >>>>> claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers, >>>>> so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being
    infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
    workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these red >>>>> eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, and they >>>>> are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact
    tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry flocks >>>>> got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
    quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not >>>>> interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
    They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid.  The FDA >>>>> tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that came >>>>> from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with >>>>> H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the
    states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of the >>>>> food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When the FDA >>>>> finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it
    was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
    dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
    dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds
    were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed >>>>> some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have predicted >>>>> the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of
    the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had
    also shown flu virus in the waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be infected by >>>>> the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain that >>>>> will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have >>>>> mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently >>>>> tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that there were >>>>> already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them more >>>>> infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the >>>>> sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are >>>>> probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is infecting a >>>>> lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all those >>>>> herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I
    should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had
    high mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza
    virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to
    infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided >>>>> to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It
    doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to
    limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to do that >>>>> you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently >>>>> being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
    infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human contacts. >>>>>   The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states >>>>> with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track down the >>>>> dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that
    produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the counties with >>>>> positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that >>>>> has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites >>>>> are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
    scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the
    contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected >>>>> herds in states that are already known to have infected herds.  Once >>>>> they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor >>>>> those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading >>>>> and becoming a pandemic.

    My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very
    influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also
    dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell
    them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should
    ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
    matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.


    The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal aliens >>> and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy owners >>> were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for them to >>> do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
    poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks that
    were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a half
    million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have gone down >>> in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of the >>> states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having
    infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in >>> the state.

    So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the
    virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
    movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites
    around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
    average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they
    are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they are >>> testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that
    patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
    international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
    anyone notices.

    One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
    distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop
    influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza >>> each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred
    during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could
    probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
    season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My take is
    that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is
    required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
    environment around them by sneezing and coughing.

    Ron Okimoto

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/

    Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk:
    Study

    Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your info...)

    (I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)

    ObOrigins:
    The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution.  When >> people talk about how evolution is "only a theory", they get it wrong:
    the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
    _observed fact_ of evolution.


    Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has not
    started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites around the
    bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste water, as high as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It looks like the bay area
    is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but no one wants to check.
    Several of those counties have issued warnings not to drink raw milk,
    but they don't want to verify that they have the issue for some stupid reason.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known that the virus
    in raw milk could infect cats.

    https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows

    The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm

    The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples 10
    days after they released the fact that they had found the positive
    samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as long as you
    didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have contributed to the delay
    in identifying all the infected herds.

    https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai

    The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings and testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples.  Both
    claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but that
    obviously is not working.

    The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds because
    of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be relying on self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy herds in the positive waste water counties.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy herds
    even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and the waste
    water data identifies even more, and it identifies some of the counties
    that they should be checking.  Not only that, but the waste water data
    and positive milk data overlap and identify the counties that they
    should check in the positive milk states.

    They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the infected
    herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though the symptoms
    were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more chance of the
    virus evolving into something much worse.  It looks like the USDA and
    CDC went into denial due to politics and being burned during Covid.  It
    is crazy that they have been in denial that humans took the virus to
    other dairy herds and the poultry farms.  How else has the virus spread
    to states that never got cattle, and then infected poultry farms in
    those states?  Kansas and South Dakota never got cattle from Texas, but
    it looks like Kansas was infected and then the infection spread from
    Kansas to South Dakota even though South Dakota did not get cattle from
    Texas nor Kansas.  Infected people obviously took the virus to those states.  Influenza is known not to be infective off skin and clothing
    for more than a few minutes.  It may survive on clothing for up to 12
    hours, but is only infective for around 30 minutes once it gets onto clothing.  The infected humans were shedding live virus, and that is obviously how the virus has spread to so many herds.

    This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
    pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up and
    are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify the infected
    herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they have decided
    to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off the dairies as something that is killing people.  The stupid thing is that in order to
    do this effectively they still need to identify the infected herds in
    order to have the best chance of identifying patient zero that gets a
    mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.

    Ron Okimoto




    A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
    There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers have
    already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively not
    trying to identify all the infected herds.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html

    The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about because infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not human to human,
    but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of the dairy workers, nor
    test them and their contacts. This fact just means that they have
    refused to do the work needed to know that they are wrong. They have
    known from day one that the other herds and poultry flocks did not get
    infected from virus on clothing or skin of dairy workers or their
    contacts, and had even proposed the laughable excuse that the poultry
    farm could have been infected by an exchange of equipment. Who would
    exchange equipment between a dairy farm and a 2 million bird layer
    facility? The most likely scenario has always been that people took the
    virus to the other herds and poultry farms, and they were likely
    infected and shedding virus. They knew from day one that Kansas and
    South Dakota had not gotten cattle, but they refused to do dairy worker
    contact tracing. The sequence indicates that someone took the virus to
    Kansas from Texas, and then from Kansas to South Dakota. Does anyone
    believe that they were exchanging equipment between those states? It
    looks like they have done it on purpose, but it is likely just denial
    and stupidity related to politics.

    A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health department
    wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to determine how many
    have been infected. They should also test the contacts of the positive
    dairy workers that they will be identifying. They should also do
    contact tracing so that they can identify more infected herds in
    Michigan. More and more herds Michgan herds are being identified every
    week, and there are probably a lot more that they don't know about since
    they were in denial of how the virus was spreading between herds. It is
    pretty much a fact that the CDC would know how all the other herds and
    poultry flocks got infected if they had just instituted testing and
    contact tracing two months ago. There are obviously a lot more states
    and a lot more infected herds than we currently have identified, and all
    of them are infecting dairy workers, and likely the dairy worker contacts.

    Ron Okimoto

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RonO@21:1/5 to RonO on Mon Jun 3 15:49:04 2024
    On 6/2/2024 9:26 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 9:03 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 1:45 AM, vallor wrote:
    On Sat, 25 May 2024 12:49:10 -0500, RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote in
    <v2t8an$2vo1m$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 5/25/2024 9:49 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
    RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning >>>>>> for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy
    flu.
      The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the >>>>>> virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first detections >>>>>> that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing and >>>>>> contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to other >>>>>> dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing
    results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the
    virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus
    between
    herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for >>>>>> around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but >>>>>> we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of
    getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't seem to >>>>>> be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus
    survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those
    surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were infected >>>>>> by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would >>>>>> have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans likely >>>>>> took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human cases >>>>>> were
    shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the very >>>>>> beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it.  They >>>>>> claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers, >>>>>> so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being >>>>>> infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy
    workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these red >>>>>> eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, and they >>>>>> are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact
    tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry
    flocks
    got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
    quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not >>>>>> interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases.
    They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid.  The >>>>>> FDA
    tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that came >>>>>> from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with >>>>>> H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the >>>>>> states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety of >>>>>> the
    food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When the FDA >>>>>> finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it >>>>>> was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive
    dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the
    dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds >>>>>> were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely missed >>>>>> some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have predicted >>>>>> the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of >>>>>> the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had >>>>>> also shown flu virus in the waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be
    infected by
    the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain
    that
    will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have >>>>>> mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently >>>>>> tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that there >>>>>> were
    already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them
    more
    infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of the >>>>>> sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these variants are >>>>>> probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is
    infecting a
    lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all
    those
    herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I >>>>>> should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had >>>>>> high mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza >>>>>> virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to >>>>>> infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has decided >>>>>> to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It >>>>>> doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to >>>>>> limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to do >>>>>> that
    you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently >>>>>> being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the
    infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human
    contacts.
      The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states >>>>>> with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track down the >>>>>> dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that >>>>>> produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the counties with >>>>>> positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California that >>>>>> has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these sites >>>>>> are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
    scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the
    contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more infected >>>>>> herds in states that are already known to have infected herds.  Once >>>>>> they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor >>>>>> those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading >>>>>> and becoming a pandemic.

    My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very >>>>> influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also >>>>> dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell >>>>> them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should >>>>> ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for
    matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs.


    The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal
    aliens
    and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy owners >>>> were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for
    them to
    do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
    poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks that >>>> were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a half >>>> million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have gone
    down
    in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one of
    the
    states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to having >>>> infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water locations in >>>> the state.

    So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the >>>> virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
    movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites
    around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
    average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that they >>>> are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that they
    are
    testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that
    patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
    international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before
    anyone notices.

    One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
    distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop >>>> influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of influenza >>>> each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred >>>> during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could
    probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu
    season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My take is >>>> that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is >>>> required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
    environment around them by sneezing and coughing.

    Ron Okimoto

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/

    Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk:
    Study

    Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your info...) >>>
    (I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)

    ObOrigins:
    The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution.
    When
    people talk about how evolution is "only a theory", they get it wrong:
    the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
    _observed fact_ of evolution.


    Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has not
    started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites around the
    bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste water, as high
    as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It looks like the bay
    area is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but no one wants to check.
    Several of those counties have issued warnings not to drink raw milk,
    but they don't want to verify that they have the issue for some stupid
    reason.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by
    H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known that the
    virus in raw milk could infect cats.

    https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows

    The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm

    The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples 10
    days after they released the fact that they had found the positive
    samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as long as you
    didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have contributed to the delay
    in identifying all the infected herds.

    https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai

    The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings and
    testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples.  Both
    claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but that
    obviously is not working.

    The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds because
    of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be relying on
    self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy herds in the
    positive waste water counties.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy herds
    even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and the waste
    water data identifies even more, and it identifies some of the
    counties that they should be checking.  Not only that, but the waste
    water data and positive milk data overlap and identify the counties
    that they should check in the positive milk states.

    They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the infected
    herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though the
    symptoms were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more chance
    of the virus evolving into something much worse.  It looks like the
    USDA and CDC went into denial due to politics and being burned during
    Covid.  It is crazy that they have been in denial that humans took the
    virus to other dairy herds and the poultry farms.  How else has the
    virus spread to states that never got cattle, and then infected
    poultry farms in those states?  Kansas and South Dakota never got
    cattle from Texas, but it looks like Kansas was infected and then the
    infection spread from Kansas to South Dakota even though South Dakota
    did not get cattle from Texas nor Kansas.  Infected people obviously
    took the virus to those states.  Influenza is known not to be
    infective off skin and clothing for more than a few minutes.  It may
    survive on clothing for up to 12 hours, but is only infective for
    around 30 minutes once it gets onto clothing.  The infected humans
    were shedding live virus, and that is obviously how the virus has
    spread to so many herds.

    This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
    pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up
    and are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify the
    infected herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they
    have decided to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off
    the dairies as something that is killing people.  The stupid thing is
    that in order to do this effectively they still need to identify the
    infected herds in order to have the best chance of identifying patient
    zero that gets a mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.

    Ron Okimoto




    A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
    There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers have
    already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively not
    trying to identify all the infected herds.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html

    The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about because infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not human to human,
    but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of the dairy workers, nor
    test them and their contacts.  This fact just means that they have
    refused to do the work needed to know that they are wrong.  They have
    known from day one that the other herds and poultry flocks did not get infected from virus on clothing or skin of dairy workers or their
    contacts, and had even proposed the laughable excuse that the poultry
    farm could have been infected by an exchange of equipment.  Who would exchange equipment between a dairy farm and a 2 million bird layer facility?  The most likely scenario has always been that people took the virus to the other herds and poultry farms, and they were likely
    infected and shedding virus.  They knew from day one that Kansas and
    South Dakota had not gotten cattle, but they refused to do dairy worker contact tracing.  The sequence indicates that someone took the virus to Kansas from Texas, and then from Kansas to South Dakota.  Does anyone believe that they were exchanging equipment between those states?  It
    looks like they have done it on purpose, but it is likely just denial
    and stupidity related to politics.

    A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health department
    wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to determine how many
    have been infected.  They should also test the contacts of the positive dairy workers that they will be identifying.  They should also do
    contact tracing so that they can identify more infected herds in
    Michigan.  More and more herds Michgan herds are being identified every week, and there are probably a lot more that they don't know about since
    they were in denial of how the virus was spreading between herds.  It is pretty much a fact that the CDC would know how all the other herds and poultry flocks got infected if they had just instituted testing and
    contact tracing two months ago.  There are obviously a lot more states
    and a lot more infected herds than we currently have identified, and all
    of them are infecting dairy workers, and likely the dairy worker contacts.

    Ron Okimoto


    A vaccine manufaturer has announced that it has been tasked to produce 5 million H5 antigen flu vaccines for this summer. They likely need them now.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-06-03/u-s-will-make-millions-of-bird-flu-vaccines-this-summer

    There have already been recommendations that they start to vaccinate
    dairy workers. It is obvious that they are getting infected, and the
    last case had respiratory symptoms and was more easily spreading the
    virus into the environment than the previous eye infections. The CDC is
    still in denial even though they are only monitoring some of the
    infected herds in Texas and Michigan. The dairy workers are likely
    getting infected in all the states that have infected herds, but there
    is still no movement by the USDA and CDC to identify all the infected
    herds and dairy workers. Both are continuing to rely on "self
    reporting", and there is no doubt that, that is not working. This is
    really not the way to prevent the next pandemic.

    The Michigan health department wants to do antibody testing for the H5
    antigen among the dairy workers so that they can get a handle on how
    many have been infected and no longer are showing symptoms. That should
    likely be done in both states (Texas and Michigan) that the CDC has
    bothered to monitor. 9 states currently are known to have infected
    herds, and the actual number is likely twice that if not more.

    Ron Okimoto

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RonO@21:1/5 to RonO on Tue Jun 4 08:57:42 2024
    On 6/3/2024 3:49 PM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/2/2024 9:26 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 9:03 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 1:45 AM, vallor wrote:
    On Sat, 25 May 2024 12:49:10 -0500, RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote in
    <v2t8an$2vo1m$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 5/25/2024 9:49 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
    RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating planning >>>>>>> for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the dairy >>>>>>> flu.
      The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of the >>>>>>> virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first detections >>>>>>> that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate testing >>>>>>> and
    contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to >>>>>>> other
    dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing >>>>>>> results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the >>>>>>> virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus
    between
    herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only survives for >>>>>>> around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, but >>>>>>> we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of >>>>>>> getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't
    seem to
    be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus
    survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those >>>>>>> surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were
    infected
    by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would >>>>>>> have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans
    likely
    took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human cases >>>>>>> were
    shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the very >>>>>>> beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it.  They >>>>>>> claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm workers, >>>>>>> so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being >>>>>>> infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy >>>>>>> workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these red >>>>>>> eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, and >>>>>>> they
    are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact >>>>>>> tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry
    flocks
    got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and
    quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were not >>>>>>> interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases. >>>>>>> They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid.
    The FDA
    tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that came >>>>>>> from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states with >>>>>>> H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the >>>>>>> states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety
    of the
    food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When the >>>>>>> FDA
    finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it >>>>>>> was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive >>>>>>> dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the >>>>>>> dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds >>>>>>> were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely
    missed
    some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have predicted >>>>>>> the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of >>>>>>> the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had >>>>>>> also shown flu virus in the waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be
    infected by
    the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a strain >>>>>>> that
    will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have >>>>>>> mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and apparently >>>>>>> tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that there >>>>>>> were
    already variants of the virus with mutations that would make them >>>>>>> more
    infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time of >>>>>>> the
    sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these variants >>>>>>> are
    probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is
    infecting a
    lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all >>>>>>> those
    herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I >>>>>>> should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had >>>>>>> high mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza >>>>>>> virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to >>>>>>> infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has
    decided
    to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It >>>>>>> doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to >>>>>>> limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to do >>>>>>> that
    you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently >>>>>>> being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the >>>>>>> infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human
    contacts.
      The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states >>>>>>> with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track down the >>>>>>> dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that >>>>>>> produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the counties >>>>>>> with
    positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California >>>>>>> that
    has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these
    sites
    are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare
    scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the
    contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more
    infected
    herds in states that are already known to have infected herds.  Once >>>>>>> they identify all the possible sources of infection they can monitor >>>>>>> those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from spreading >>>>>>> and becoming a pandemic.

    My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a very >>>>>> influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are also >>>>>> dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell >>>>>> them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should >>>>>> ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for >>>>>> matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs. >>>>>>

    The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal
    aliens
    and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy
    owners
    were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for
    them to
    do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all
    poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks that >>>>> were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a half >>>>> million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have gone >>>>> down
    in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one
    of the
    states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to
    having
    infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water
    locations in
    the state.

    So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that the >>>>> virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any
    movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites
    around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above
    average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that
    they
    are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that
    they are
    testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that
    patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
    international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before >>>>> anyone notices.

    One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
    distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to stop >>>>> influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of
    influenza
    each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities occurred >>>>> during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could >>>>> probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu >>>>> season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My take is >>>>> that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected person is >>>>> required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
    environment around them by sneezing and coughing.

    Ron Okimoto

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/

    Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw milk:
    Study

    Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your info...) >>>>
    (I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)

    ObOrigins:
    The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution.
    When
    people talk about how evolution is "only a theory", they get it wrong: >>>> the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
    _observed fact_ of evolution.


    Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has not
    started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites around
    the bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste water, as
    high as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It looks like
    the bay area is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but no one wants
    to check. Several of those counties have issued warnings not to drink
    raw milk, but they don't want to verify that they have the issue for
    some stupid reason.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by
    H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known that
    the virus in raw milk could infect cats.

    https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows

    The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm

    The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples
    10 days after they released the fact that they had found the positive
    samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as long as you
    didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have contributed to the
    delay in identifying all the infected herds.

    https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai

    The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings
    and testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples.
    Both claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but
    that obviously is not working.

    The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds
    because of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be
    relying on self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy
    herds in the positive waste water counties.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy herds
    even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and the waste
    water data identifies even more, and it identifies some of the
    counties that they should be checking.  Not only that, but the waste
    water data and positive milk data overlap and identify the counties
    that they should check in the positive milk states.

    They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the
    infected herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though
    the symptoms were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more
    chance of the virus evolving into something much worse.  It looks
    like the USDA and CDC went into denial due to politics and being
    burned during Covid.  It is crazy that they have been in denial that
    humans took the virus to other dairy herds and the poultry farms.
    How else has the virus spread to states that never got cattle, and
    then infected poultry farms in those states?  Kansas and South Dakota
    never got cattle from Texas, but it looks like Kansas was infected
    and then the infection spread from Kansas to South Dakota even though
    South Dakota did not get cattle from Texas nor Kansas.  Infected
    people obviously took the virus to those states.  Influenza is known
    not to be infective off skin and clothing for more than a few
    minutes.  It may survive on clothing for up to 12 hours, but is only
    infective for around 30 minutes once it gets onto clothing.  The
    infected humans were shedding live virus, and that is obviously how
    the virus has spread to so many herds.

    This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
    pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up
    and are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify the
    infected herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they
    have decided to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off
    the dairies as something that is killing people.  The stupid thing is
    that in order to do this effectively they still need to identify the
    infected herds in order to have the best chance of identifying
    patient zero that gets a mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.

    Ron Okimoto




    A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
    There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers have
    already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively not
    trying to identify all the infected herds.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html

    The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about because
    infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not human to human,
    but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of the dairy workers,
    nor test them and their contacts.  This fact just means that they have
    refused to do the work needed to know that they are wrong.  They have
    known from day one that the other herds and poultry flocks did not get
    infected from virus on clothing or skin of dairy workers or their
    contacts, and had even proposed the laughable excuse that the poultry
    farm could have been infected by an exchange of equipment.  Who would
    exchange equipment between a dairy farm and a 2 million bird layer
    facility?  The most likely scenario has always been that people took
    the virus to the other herds and poultry farms, and they were likely
    infected and shedding virus.  They knew from day one that Kansas and
    South Dakota had not gotten cattle, but they refused to do dairy
    worker contact tracing.  The sequence indicates that someone took the
    virus to Kansas from Texas, and then from Kansas to South Dakota.
    Does anyone believe that they were exchanging equipment between those
    states?  It looks like they have done it on purpose, but it is likely
    just denial and stupidity related to politics.

    A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health
    department wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to
    determine how many have been infected.  They should also test the
    contacts of the positive dairy workers that they will be identifying.
    They should also do contact tracing so that they can identify more
    infected herds in Michigan.  More and more herds Michgan herds are
    being identified every week, and there are probably a lot more that
    they don't know about since they were in denial of how the virus was
    spreading between herds.  It is pretty much a fact that the CDC would
    know how all the other herds and poultry flocks got infected if they
    had just instituted testing and contact tracing two months ago.  There
    are obviously a lot more states and a lot more infected herds than we
    currently have identified, and all of them are infecting dairy
    workers, and likely the dairy worker contacts.

    Ron Okimoto


    A vaccine manufaturer has announced that it has been tasked to produce 5 million H5 antigen flu vaccines for this summer.  They likely need them
    now.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-06-03/u-s-will-make-millions-of-bird-flu-vaccines-this-summer

    There have already been recommendations that they start to vaccinate
    dairy workers.  It is obvious that they are getting infected, and the
    last case had respiratory symptoms and was more easily spreading the
    virus into the environment than the previous eye infections.  The CDC is still in denial even though they are only monitoring some of the
    infected herds in Texas and Michigan.  The dairy workers are likely
    getting infected in all the states that have infected herds, but there
    is still no movement by the USDA and CDC to identify all the infected
    herds and dairy workers.  Both are continuing to rely on "self
    reporting", and there is no doubt that, that is not working.  This is
    really not the way to prevent the next pandemic.

    The Michigan health department wants to do antibody testing for the H5 antigen among the dairy workers so that they can get a handle on how
    many have been infected and no longer are showing symptoms.  That should likely be done in both states (Texas and Michigan) that the CDC has
    bothered to monitor.  9 states currently are known to have infected
    herds, and the  actual number is likely twice that if not more.

    Ron Okimoto


    It should be noted that this is a recombinant virus. When the Eurasian
    strain of H5N1 got into North America it recombined with a North
    American strain of avian influenza. It isn't fully the Eurasian virus
    that has a 50% mortality rate among infected humans. At least 4 humans
    have been infected by the dairy H5N1 (the first before it was a dairy
    virus) and they have all had mild symptoms. The fear is that it will
    mutate or recombine again with a human influenza A and become more
    infective with more severe symptoms.

    They really want to keep this virus off of pig farms because a swine
    influenza recombinant could be more deadly to humans. The sad fact is
    that by not identifying and quarantining the infected dairy herds they
    are just making it more possible to transfer the virus to pig farms.
    They already know that humans are likely taking it to poultry farms, so
    they need to identify all the infected dairies and make sure that the
    workers and their contacts do not go to other farms. At this time the
    CDC and USDA are still only "recommending" that dairy workers at
    infected farms and their contacts do not go to other farms. They should
    make it more than a recommendation.

    The dairy virus has the HA and NA (H5N1) antigen genes of the Eurasian
    virus. It also has the PA and M gene segments (sort of RNA chromosomes)
    of the Eurasian H5N1. The PB1, PB2, NP and NS gene segments are from
    another wild bird influenza virus. In the news the HA clade 2.3.4.4b
    HPAI A(H5N1) name is used. This is it's H5 gene clade designation, but
    it is genotype (full genome) B3.13 of that clade.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-analysis-texas.htm

    Ron Okimoto

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RonO@21:1/5 to RonO on Tue Jun 4 15:17:22 2024
    On 6/4/2024 8:57 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/3/2024 3:49 PM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/2/2024 9:26 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 9:03 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 1:45 AM, vallor wrote:
    On Sat, 25 May 2024 12:49:10 -0500, RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote in >>>>> <v2t8an$2vo1m$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 5/25/2024 9:49 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
    RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating
    planning
    for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the
    dairy flu.
      The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution of >>>>>>>> the
    virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first
    detections
    that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate
    testing and
    contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to >>>>>>>> other
    dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing >>>>>>>> results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the >>>>>>>> virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus >>>>>>>> between
    herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only survives >>>>>>>> for
    around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on clothing, >>>>>>>> but
    we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of >>>>>>>> getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't
    seem to
    be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus >>>>>>>> survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those >>>>>>>> surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were
    infected
    by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds would >>>>>>>> have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans >>>>>>>> likely
    took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human
    cases were
    shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the >>>>>>>> very
    beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it.  They >>>>>>>> claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm
    workers,
    so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being >>>>>>>> infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy >>>>>>>> workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these red >>>>>>>> eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, and >>>>>>>> they
    are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact >>>>>>>> tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry >>>>>>>> flocks
    got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and >>>>>>>> quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC were >>>>>>>> not
    interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases. >>>>>>>> They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid. >>>>>>>> The FDA
    tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that >>>>>>>> came
    from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states >>>>>>>> with
    H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the >>>>>>>> states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety >>>>>>>> of the
    food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When >>>>>>>> the FDA
    finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks later it >>>>>>>> was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive >>>>>>>> dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the >>>>>>>> dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds >>>>>>>> were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely >>>>>>>> missed
    some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have
    predicted
    the results because they started to monitor waste water and most of >>>>>>>> the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had >>>>>>>> also shown flu virus in the waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be
    infected by
    the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a
    strain that
    will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only have >>>>>>>> mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and
    apparently
    tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that
    there were
    already variants of the virus with mutations that would make
    them more
    infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time >>>>>>>> of the
    sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these
    variants are
    probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is
    infecting a
    lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in all >>>>>>>> those
    herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I >>>>>>>> should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had >>>>>>>> high mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza >>>>>>>> virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus adapted to >>>>>>>> infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has
    decided
    to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It >>>>>>>> doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you want to >>>>>>>> limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to >>>>>>>> do that
    you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans currently >>>>>>>> being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the >>>>>>>> infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human
    contacts.
      The next pandemic could have already started in one of the states >>>>>>>> with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track down >>>>>>>> the
    dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that >>>>>>>> produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the counties >>>>>>>> with
    positive waste water (these include multiple sites in California >>>>>>>> that
    has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these >>>>>>>> sites
    are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare >>>>>>>> scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the >>>>>>>> contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more
    infected
    herds in states that are already known to have infected herds. >>>>>>>> Once
    they identify all the possible sources of infection they can
    monitor
    those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from
    spreading
    and becoming a pandemic.

    My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a >>>>>>> very
    influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are >>>>>>> also
    dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. Tell >>>>>>> them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They should >>>>>>> ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for >>>>>>> matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs. >>>>>>>

    The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal >>>>>> aliens
    and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy
    owners
    were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for
    them to
    do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all >>>>>> poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks that >>>>>> were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a >>>>>> half
    million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have
    gone down
    in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one
    of the
    states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to
    having
    infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water
    locations in
    the state.

    So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is that >>>>>> the
    virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any >>>>>> movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites >>>>>> around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above >>>>>> average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is that >>>>>> they
    are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that
    they are
    testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that >>>>>> patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
    international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before >>>>>> anyone notices.

    One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social
    distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to
    stop
    influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of
    influenza
    each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities
    occurred
    during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could >>>>>> probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu >>>>>> season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My
    take is
    that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected
    person is
    required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
    environment around them by sneezing and coughing.

    Ron Okimoto

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/ >>>>>
    Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw
    milk: Study

    Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your
    info...)

    (I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.)

    ObOrigins:
    The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of evolution.
    When
    people talk about how evolution is "only a theory", they get it wrong: >>>>> the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
    _observed fact_ of evolution.


    Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has not
    started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites around
    the bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste water, as
    high as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It looks like
    the bay area is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but no one wants
    to check. Several of those counties have issued warnings not to
    drink raw milk, but they don't want to verify that they have the
    issue for some stupid reason.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by
    H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known that
    the virus in raw milk could infect cats.

    https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows

    The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm

    The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples
    10 days after they released the fact that they had found the
    positive samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as
    long as you didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have
    contributed to the delay in identifying all the infected herds.

    https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai

    The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings
    and testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples.
    Both claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but
    that obviously is not working.

    The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds
    because of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be
    relying on self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy
    herds in the positive waste water counties.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy herds
    even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and the
    waste water data identifies even more, and it identifies some of the
    counties that they should be checking.  Not only that, but the waste
    water data and positive milk data overlap and identify the counties
    that they should check in the positive milk states.

    They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the
    infected herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though
    the symptoms were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more
    chance of the virus evolving into something much worse.  It looks
    like the USDA and CDC went into denial due to politics and being
    burned during Covid.  It is crazy that they have been in denial that
    humans took the virus to other dairy herds and the poultry farms.
    How else has the virus spread to states that never got cattle, and
    then infected poultry farms in those states?  Kansas and South
    Dakota never got cattle from Texas, but it looks like Kansas was
    infected and then the infection spread from Kansas to South Dakota
    even though South Dakota did not get cattle from Texas nor Kansas.
    Infected people obviously took the virus to those states.  Influenza
    is known not to be infective off skin and clothing for more than a
    few minutes.  It may survive on clothing for up to 12 hours, but is
    only infective for around 30 minutes once it gets onto clothing.
    The infected humans were shedding live virus, and that is obviously
    how the virus has spread to so many herds.

    This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
    pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up
    and are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify the
    infected herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they
    have decided to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off
    the dairies as something that is killing people.  The stupid thing
    is that in order to do this effectively they still need to identify
    the infected herds in order to have the best chance of identifying
    patient zero that gets a mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.

    Ron Okimoto




    A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
    There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers have
    already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively not
    trying to identify all the infected herds.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html

    The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about
    because infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not human
    to human, but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of the dairy
    workers, nor test them and their contacts.  This fact just means that
    they have refused to do the work needed to know that they are wrong.
    They have known from day one that the other herds and poultry flocks
    did not get infected from virus on clothing or skin of dairy workers
    or their contacts, and had even proposed the laughable excuse that
    the poultry farm could have been infected by an exchange of
    equipment.  Who would exchange equipment between a dairy farm and a 2
    million bird layer facility?  The most likely scenario has always
    been that people took the virus to the other herds and poultry farms,
    and they were likely infected and shedding virus.  They knew from day
    one that Kansas and South Dakota had not gotten cattle, but they
    refused to do dairy worker contact tracing.  The sequence indicates
    that someone took the virus to Kansas from Texas, and then from
    Kansas to South Dakota. Does anyone believe that they were exchanging
    equipment between those states?  It looks like they have done it on
    purpose, but it is likely just denial and stupidity related to politics. >>>
    A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health
    department wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to
    determine how many have been infected.  They should also test the
    contacts of the positive dairy workers that they will be identifying.
    They should also do contact tracing so that they can identify more
    infected herds in Michigan.  More and more herds Michgan herds are
    being identified every week, and there are probably a lot more that
    they don't know about since they were in denial of how the virus was
    spreading between herds.  It is pretty much a fact that the CDC would
    know how all the other herds and poultry flocks got infected if they
    had just instituted testing and contact tracing two months ago.
    There are obviously a lot more states and a lot more infected herds
    than we currently have identified, and all of them are infecting
    dairy workers, and likely the dairy worker contacts.

    Ron Okimoto


    A vaccine manufaturer has announced that it has been tasked to produce
    5 million H5 antigen flu vaccines for this summer.  They likely need
    them now.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-06-03/u-s-will-make-millions-of-bird-flu-vaccines-this-summer

    There have already been recommendations that they start to vaccinate
    dairy workers.  It is obvious that they are getting infected, and the
    last case had respiratory symptoms and was more easily spreading the
    virus into the environment than the previous eye infections.  The CDC
    is still in denial even though they are only monitoring some of the
    infected herds in Texas and Michigan.  The dairy workers are likely
    getting infected in all the states that have infected herds, but there
    is still no movement by the USDA and CDC to identify all the infected
    herds and dairy workers.  Both are continuing to rely on "self
    reporting", and there is no doubt that, that is not working.  This is
    really not the way to prevent the next pandemic.

    The Michigan health department wants to do antibody testing for the H5
    antigen among the dairy workers so that they can get a handle on how
    many have been infected and no longer are showing symptoms.  That
    should likely be done in both states (Texas and Michigan) that the CDC
    has bothered to monitor.  9 states currently are known to have
    infected herds, and the  actual number is likely twice that if not more.

    Ron Okimoto


    It should be noted that this is a recombinant virus.  When the Eurasian strain of H5N1 got into North America it recombined with a North
    American strain of avian influenza.  It isn't fully the Eurasian virus
    that has a 50% mortality rate among infected humans.  At least 4 humans
    have been infected by the dairy H5N1 (the first before it was a dairy
    virus) and they have all had mild symptoms.  The fear is that it will
    mutate or recombine again with a human influenza A and become more
    infective with more severe symptoms.

    They really want to keep this virus off of pig farms because a swine influenza recombinant could be more deadly to humans.  The sad fact is
    that by not identifying and quarantining the infected dairy herds they
    are just making it more possible to transfer the virus to pig farms.
    They already know that humans are likely taking it to poultry farms, so
    they need to identify all the infected dairies and make sure that the
    workers and their contacts do not go to other farms.  At this time the
    CDC and USDA are still only "recommending" that dairy workers at
    infected farms and their contacts do not go to other farms.  They should make it more than a recommendation.

    The dairy virus has the HA and NA (H5N1) antigen genes of the Eurasian virus.  It also has the PA and M gene segments (sort of RNA chromosomes)
    of the Eurasian H5N1.  The PB1, PB2, NP and NS gene segments are from another wild bird influenza virus.  In the news the HA clade 2.3.4.4b
    HPAI A(H5N1) name is used.  This is it's H5 gene clade designation, but
    it is genotype (full genome) B3.13 of that clade.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-analysis-texas.htm

    Ron Okimoto

    Deborah Birx is claiming that we are making the same mistakes with the
    dairy flu as we did with Covid. She claims that we should be testing
    every cow and every dairy worker. I agree with her. They know that
    there are a lot more states with positive herds than have come forward,
    and they know that there are a lot more postive herds in the states that already know they have positive herds because we keep identifying more
    every week, and we aren't even trying to find them. They likely
    understand by now that it was infected humans that took the virus to
    these other states and herds, so they really do need to start testing
    all the dairy workers if they want to have a chance at limiting the
    spread, but they should have started doing it 2 months ago.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/04/health/video/dr-deborah-birx-interview-pandemic-preparedness-transparent-communication-digvid

    Ron Okimoto

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RonO@21:1/5 to RonO on Thu Jun 6 08:51:45 2024
    On 6/4/2024 3:17 PM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/4/2024 8:57 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/3/2024 3:49 PM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/2/2024 9:26 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 9:03 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 1:45 AM, vallor wrote:
    On Sat, 25 May 2024 12:49:10 -0500, RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote in >>>>>> <v2t8an$2vo1m$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 5/25/2024 9:49 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
    RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating
    planning
    for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the
    dairy flu.
      The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution >>>>>>>>> of the
    virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first
    detections
    that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate
    testing and
    contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus to >>>>>>>>> other
    dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing >>>>>>>>> results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the >>>>>>>>> virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus >>>>>>>>> between
    herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only
    survives for
    around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on
    clothing, but
    we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of >>>>>>>>> getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't >>>>>>>>> seem to
    be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus >>>>>>>>> survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those >>>>>>>>> surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were >>>>>>>>> infected
    by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds >>>>>>>>> would
    have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans >>>>>>>>> likely
    took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human >>>>>>>>> cases were
    shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from the >>>>>>>>> very
    beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it. >>>>>>>>> They
    claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm
    workers,
    so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were being >>>>>>>>> infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy >>>>>>>>> workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is these >>>>>>>>> red
    eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, >>>>>>>>> and they
    are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact >>>>>>>>> tracing they would already know how the other herds and poultry >>>>>>>>> flocks
    got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and >>>>>>>>> quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC
    were not
    interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases. >>>>>>>>> They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid. >>>>>>>>> The FDA
    tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products that >>>>>>>>> came
    from milk processing plants in those states and found 17 states >>>>>>>>> with
    H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of the >>>>>>>>> states because they claimed to only be worried about the safety >>>>>>>>> of the
    food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When >>>>>>>>> the FDA
    finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks
    later it
    was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive >>>>>>>>> dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the >>>>>>>>> dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected herds >>>>>>>>> were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely >>>>>>>>> missed
    some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have
    predicted
    the results because they started to monitor waste water and
    most of
    the new states that were found to have positive dairy products had >>>>>>>>> also shown flu virus in the waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be
    infected by
    the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a
    strain that
    will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only >>>>>>>>> have
    mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and
    apparently
    tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that >>>>>>>>> there were
    already variants of the virus with mutations that would make >>>>>>>>> them more
    infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time >>>>>>>>> of the
    sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these
    variants are
    probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is
    infecting a
    lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in >>>>>>>>> all those
    herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving virus.  I >>>>>>>>> should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus had >>>>>>>>> high mortality because the virus infected their brains.  Influenza >>>>>>>>> virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus
    adapted to
    infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has >>>>>>>>> decided
    to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It >>>>>>>>> doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you
    want to
    limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to >>>>>>>>> do that
    you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans
    currently
    being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the >>>>>>>>> infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human >>>>>>>>> contacts.
      The next pandemic could have already started in one of the >>>>>>>>> states
    with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track >>>>>>>>> down the
    dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants that >>>>>>>>> produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the
    counties with
    positive waste water (these include multiple sites in
    California that
    has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of these >>>>>>>>> sites
    are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare >>>>>>>>> scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the >>>>>>>>> contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more >>>>>>>>> infected
    herds in states that are already known to have infected herds. >>>>>>>>> Once
    they identify all the possible sources of infection they can >>>>>>>>> monitor
    those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from
    spreading
    and becoming a pandemic.

    My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with a >>>>>>>> very
    influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They are >>>>>>>> also
    dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. >>>>>>>> Tell
    them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They
    should
    ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for >>>>>>>> matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs. >>>>>>>>

    The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were illegal >>>>>>> aliens
    and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy >>>>>>> owners
    were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for >>>>>>> them to
    do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all >>>>>>> poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks >>>>>>> that
    were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and a >>>>>>> half
    million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have
    gone down
    in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is one >>>>>>> of the
    states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to >>>>>>> having
    infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water
    locations in
    the state.

    So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is
    that the
    virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any >>>>>>> movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites >>>>>>> around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above >>>>>>> average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is
    that they
    are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that
    they are
    testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that >>>>>>> patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
    international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco before >>>>>>> anyone notices.

    One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social >>>>>>> distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well to >>>>>>> stop
    influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of
    influenza
    each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities
    occurred
    during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we could >>>>>>> probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during flu >>>>>>> season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My
    take is
    that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected
    person is
    required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the
    environment around them by sneezing and coughing.

    Ron Okimoto

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/ >>>>>>
    Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw
    milk: Study

    Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your
    info...)

    (I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.) >>>>>>
    ObOrigins:
    The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of
    evolution. When
    people talk about how evolution is "only a theory", they get it
    wrong:
    the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the
    _observed fact_ of evolution.


    Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has
    not started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites
    around the bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste
    water, as high as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It
    looks like the bay area is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but
    no one wants to check. Several of those counties have issued
    warnings not to drink raw milk, but they don't want to verify that
    they have the issue for some stupid reason.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected by
    H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known that
    the virus in raw milk could infect cats.

    https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows

    The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm

    The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk samples
    10 days after they released the fact that they had found the
    positive samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so as
    long as you didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have
    contributed to the delay in identifying all the infected herds.

    https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai

    The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings
    and testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk samples.
    Both claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self report, but
    that obviously is not working.

    The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds
    because of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be
    relying on self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy
    herds in the positive waste water counties.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy
    herds even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and
    the waste water data identifies even more, and it identifies some
    of the counties that they should be checking.  Not only that, but
    the waste water data and positive milk data overlap and identify
    the counties that they should check in the positive milk states.

    They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the
    infected herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and though
    the symptoms were mild the more cattle and humans infected the more
    chance of the virus evolving into something much worse.  It looks
    like the USDA and CDC went into denial due to politics and being
    burned during Covid.  It is crazy that they have been in denial
    that humans took the virus to other dairy herds and the poultry
    farms. How else has the virus spread to states that never got
    cattle, and then infected poultry farms in those states?  Kansas
    and South Dakota never got cattle from Texas, but it looks like
    Kansas was infected and then the infection spread from Kansas to
    South Dakota even though South Dakota did not get cattle from Texas
    nor Kansas. Infected people obviously took the virus to those
    states.  Influenza is known not to be infective off skin and
    clothing for more than a few minutes.  It may survive on clothing
    for up to 12 hours, but is only infective for around 30 minutes
    once it gets onto clothing. The infected humans were shedding live
    virus, and that is obviously how the virus has spread to so many
    herds.

    This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
    pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given up >>>>> and are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify the
    infected herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but they
    have decided to try to contain the influenza after it has moved off
    the dairies as something that is killing people.  The stupid thing
    is that in order to do this effectively they still need to identify
    the infected herds in order to have the best chance of identifying
    patient zero that gets a mutated virus from a cow or dairy worker.

    Ron Okimoto




    A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
    There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers
    have already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively
    not trying to identify all the infected herds.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html

    The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about
    because infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not human
    to human, but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of the dairy
    workers, nor test them and their contacts.  This fact just means
    that they have refused to do the work needed to know that they are
    wrong. They have known from day one that the other herds and poultry
    flocks did not get infected from virus on clothing or skin of dairy
    workers or their contacts, and had even proposed the laughable
    excuse that the poultry farm could have been infected by an exchange
    of equipment.  Who would exchange equipment between a dairy farm and
    a 2 million bird layer facility?  The most likely scenario has
    always been that people took the virus to the other herds and
    poultry farms, and they were likely infected and shedding virus.
    They knew from day one that Kansas and South Dakota had not gotten
    cattle, but they refused to do dairy worker contact tracing.  The
    sequence indicates that someone took the virus to Kansas from Texas,
    and then from Kansas to South Dakota. Does anyone believe that they
    were exchanging equipment between those states?  It looks like they
    have done it on purpose, but it is likely just denial and stupidity
    related to politics.

    A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health
    department wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to
    determine how many have been infected.  They should also test the
    contacts of the positive dairy workers that they will be
    identifying. They should also do contact tracing so that they can
    identify more infected herds in Michigan.  More and more herds
    Michgan herds are being identified every week, and there are
    probably a lot more that they don't know about since they were in
    denial of how the virus was spreading between herds.  It is pretty
    much a fact that the CDC would know how all the other herds and
    poultry flocks got infected if they had just instituted testing and
    contact tracing two months ago. There are obviously a lot more
    states and a lot more infected herds than we currently have
    identified, and all of them are infecting dairy workers, and likely
    the dairy worker contacts.

    Ron Okimoto


    A vaccine manufaturer has announced that it has been tasked to
    produce 5 million H5 antigen flu vaccines for this summer.  They
    likely need them now.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-06-03/u-s-will-make-millions-of-bird-flu-vaccines-this-summer

    There have already been recommendations that they start to vaccinate
    dairy workers.  It is obvious that they are getting infected, and the
    last case had respiratory symptoms and was more easily spreading the
    virus into the environment than the previous eye infections.  The CDC
    is still in denial even though they are only monitoring some of the
    infected herds in Texas and Michigan.  The dairy workers are likely
    getting infected in all the states that have infected herds, but
    there is still no movement by the USDA and CDC to identify all the
    infected herds and dairy workers.  Both are continuing to rely on
    "self reporting", and there is no doubt that, that is not working.
    This is really not the way to prevent the next pandemic.

    The Michigan health department wants to do antibody testing for the
    H5 antigen among the dairy workers so that they can get a handle on
    how many have been infected and no longer are showing symptoms.  That
    should likely be done in both states (Texas and Michigan) that the
    CDC has bothered to monitor.  9 states currently are known to have
    infected herds, and the  actual number is likely twice that if not more. >>>
    Ron Okimoto


    It should be noted that this is a recombinant virus.  When the
    Eurasian strain of H5N1 got into North America it recombined with a
    North American strain of avian influenza.  It isn't fully the Eurasian
    virus that has a 50% mortality rate among infected humans.  At least 4
    humans have been infected by the dairy H5N1 (the first before it was a
    dairy virus) and they have all had mild symptoms.  The fear is that it
    will mutate or recombine again with a human influenza A and become
    more infective with more severe symptoms.

    They really want to keep this virus off of pig farms because a swine
    influenza recombinant could be more deadly to humans.  The sad fact is
    that by not identifying and quarantining the infected dairy herds they
    are just making it more possible to transfer the virus to pig farms.
    They already know that humans are likely taking it to poultry farms,
    so they need to identify all the infected dairies and make sure that
    the workers and their contacts do not go to other farms.  At this time
    the CDC and USDA are still only "recommending" that dairy workers at
    infected farms and their contacts do not go to other farms.  They
    should make it more than a recommendation.

    The dairy virus has the HA and NA (H5N1) antigen genes of the Eurasian
    virus.  It also has the PA and M gene segments (sort of RNA
    chromosomes) of the Eurasian H5N1.  The PB1, PB2, NP and NS gene
    segments are from another wild bird influenza virus.  In the news the
    HA clade 2.3.4.4b HPAI A(H5N1) name is used.  This is it's H5 gene
    clade designation, but it is genotype (full genome) B3.13 of that clade.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-analysis-texas.htm

    Ron Okimoto

    Deborah Birx is claiming that we are making the same mistakes with the
    dairy flu as we did with Covid.  She claims that we should be testing
    every cow and every dairy worker.  I agree with her.  They know that
    there are a lot more states with positive herds than have come forward,
    and they know that there are a lot more postive herds in the states that already know they have positive herds because we keep identifying more
    every week, and we aren't even trying to find them.  They likely
    understand by now that it was infected humans that took the virus to
    these other states and herds, so they really do need to start testing
    all the dairy workers if they want to have a chance at limiting the
    spread, but they should have started doing it 2 months ago.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/04/health/video/dr-deborah-birx-interview-pandemic-preparedness-transparent-communication-digvid

    Ron Okimoto


    An H5N2 avian influenza has killed a person in Mexico. It sounds like a recombinant with the Eurasian H5N1. H5 has been showing up in wild bird influenza isolates since 2022 when the Eurasian H5N1 migrated into North America. The Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant, but retains the two main
    antigen designations for the Eurasian strain. The WHO citation notes
    that there is also an H5N3 and H5N8 circulating. There are two H5N2
    variants circulating in Mexico. One is High Path AI (HPAI) and the
    other is low path. The Dairy H5N1 is HPAI. This just means that it is
    highly pathological and kills poultry. Low path has a much lower
    mortality rate, and can circulate in wild birds and poultry. They don't
    know if it is the H5N2 HPAI or the low path that infected the Mexican
    patient. They do not know how this person got the virus. He had no
    exposure to poultry or other animals.

    https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2024-DON520#:~:text=On%2023%20May%202024%2C%20the,was%20hospitalized%20in%20Mexico%20City.

    Ron Okimoto

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RonO@21:1/5 to RonO on Fri Jun 7 08:53:30 2024
    On 6/6/2024 8:51 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/4/2024 3:17 PM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/4/2024 8:57 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/3/2024 3:49 PM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/2/2024 9:26 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 9:03 AM, RonO wrote:
    On 5/27/2024 1:45 AM, vallor wrote:
    On Sat, 25 May 2024 12:49:10 -0500, RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote in >>>>>>> <v2t8an$2vo1m$1@dont-email.me>:

    On 5/25/2024 9:49 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
    RonO <rokimoto@cox.net> wrote:
    The CDC issued an alert yesterday that they were initiating >>>>>>>>>> planning
    for "possiblity of increased risk to human health" from the >>>>>>>>>> dairy flu.
      The CDC has screwed up by the numbers in terms of evolution >>>>>>>>>> of the
    virus and the threat to humans.  They knew from the first >>>>>>>>>> detections
    that humans were being infected, but they didn't initiate
    testing and
    contact tracing.  Humans had already likely spread the virus >>>>>>>>>> to other
    dairy herds for some time.  They knew from the first sequencing >>>>>>>>>> results that many states did not get cattle but ended up with the >>>>>>>>>> virus.  People were the obvious vector for spread of the virus >>>>>>>>>> between
    herds.  We have known for years that the flu virus only
    survives for
    around 5 hours on the skin and maybe up to 12 hours on
    clothing, but
    we also know that you have to be infected within a few minutes of >>>>>>>>>> getting it on your skin or clothing because the virus doesn't >>>>>>>>>> seem to
    be infective after a few minutes on those surfaces.  The virus >>>>>>>>>> survives the longest on hard surfaces and is infective off those >>>>>>>>>> surfaces for up to 24 hours, but the poultry farms that were >>>>>>>>>> infected
    by the dairy virus in the same counties as the infected herds >>>>>>>>>> would
    have had little reason to exchange equipment.  Infected humans >>>>>>>>>> likely
    took the virus to those poultry farms.  The two known human >>>>>>>>>> cases were
    shedding infective virus.  The CDC has understood this from >>>>>>>>>> the very
    beginning of their involvement, but they failed to act on it. >>>>>>>>>> They
    claim that it isn't their policy to force testing onto farm >>>>>>>>>> workers,
    so they never checked to determine the rate that humans were >>>>>>>>>> being
    infected even though there was ancedotal evidence of other dairy >>>>>>>>>> workers with red eye (eye infection).  The crazy thing is >>>>>>>>>> these red
    eye individuals can infect other humans.  They got infected, >>>>>>>>>> and they
    are shedding virus.  If the CDC had started testing and contact >>>>>>>>>> tracing they would already know how the other herds and
    poultry flocks
    got infected.

    What they needed to do was identify all the infected herds and >>>>>>>>>> quarantine the herds and farm workers, but the USDA and CDC >>>>>>>>>> were not
    interested in contact tracing and tracking down additional cases. >>>>>>>>>> They both claimed to rely on farm reporting.  This is stupid. >>>>>>>>>> The FDA
    tested milk products from 38 states.  They tested products >>>>>>>>>> that came
    from milk processing plants in those states and found 17
    states with
    H5N1 positive milk samples, but would not release the names of >>>>>>>>>> the
    states because they claimed to only be worried about the
    safety of the
    food chain. Pasteurization was found to kill the virus.  When >>>>>>>>>> the FDA
    finally did release the names of the states a couple weeks >>>>>>>>>> later it
    was found that 9 new states not yet identified as having positive >>>>>>>>>> dairy herds had produced milk products that were positive for the >>>>>>>>>> dairy virus.  3 of the states already known to have infected >>>>>>>>>> herds
    were not found to have positive dairy products, so they likely >>>>>>>>>> missed
    some positive states of the 38 tested.  The CDC could have >>>>>>>>>> predicted
    the results because they started to monitor waste water and >>>>>>>>>> most of
    the new states that were found to have positive dairy products >>>>>>>>>> had
    also shown flu virus in the waste water.

    The CDC knows that the longer that they allow humans to be >>>>>>>>>> infected by
    the dairy virus the more likely that it will evolve into a >>>>>>>>>> strain that
    will start killing people.  Currently the infected humans only >>>>>>>>>> have
    mild eye irritation (the virus infects mammary glands and
    apparently
    tear ducts).  The initial sequencing results indicated that >>>>>>>>>> there were
    already variants of the virus with mutations that would make >>>>>>>>>> them more
    infective in mammals, but they were minor variants at the time >>>>>>>>>> of the
    sample collections.  As the virus adapts to cattle these
    variants are
    probably the most likely to be selected for.  The virus is >>>>>>>>>> infecting a
    lot more herds than they are tracking, and it is evolving in >>>>>>>>>> all those
    herds and the dairy workers are exposed to that evolving
    virus.  I
    should note that the cats that got infected by the dairy virus >>>>>>>>>> had
    high mortality because the virus infected their brains.
    Influenza
    virus is normally a respiratory virus, but if this virus
    adapted to
    infecting human brains that would be a real tragedy.

    So instead of trying to limit the current spread, the CDC has >>>>>>>>>> decided
    to prepare for human transmission of the next pandemic virus.  It >>>>>>>>>> doesn't sound like they are preparing correctly because you >>>>>>>>>> want to
    limit the first human cases with severe symptoms.  In order to >>>>>>>>>> do that
    you have to identify them as soon as you can.  The humans >>>>>>>>>> currently
    being infected are dairy workers, so you need to identify all the >>>>>>>>>> infected herds and monitor the dairy workers and their human >>>>>>>>>> contacts.
      The next pandemic could have already started in one of the >>>>>>>>>> states
    with unidentified infected dairy herds.  They need to track >>>>>>>>>> down the
    dairies that contributed to the milk of the processing plants >>>>>>>>>> that
    produced positive milk samples.  They need to go to the
    counties with
    positive waste water (these include multiple sites in
    California that
    has not yet claimed to have positive herds and several of
    these sites
    are in rural areas surrounding the bay area, the CDC nightmare >>>>>>>>>> scenario) and identify infected herds.  They need to track the >>>>>>>>>> contacts of the dairy workers so that they can identify more >>>>>>>>>> infected
    herds in states that are already known to have infected herds. >>>>>>>>>> Once
    they identify all the possible sources of infection they can >>>>>>>>>> monitor
    those herds and people and then try to keep any virus from >>>>>>>>>> spreading
    and becoming a pandemic.

    My hot and possibly wrong takes are that they are dealing with >>>>>>>>> a very
    influential and somewhat litigious industry. Ask Oprah. They >>>>>>>>> are also
    dealing with a subset of the population induced with reactance. >>>>>>>>> Tell
    them not to drink raw milk and its popularity will rise. They >>>>>>>>> should
    ramp up H5 based flu shot production but that’s a crap shoot for >>>>>>>>> matching and effectiveness and this virus is not friendly to eggs. >>>>>>>>>

    The dairy workers were resistant to be tested.  Many were
    illegal aliens
    and didn't want to be interviewed nor go to a doctor.  The Dairy >>>>>>>> owners
    were reluctant to participate because there was no incentive for >>>>>>>> them to
    do so, and the USDA policy was to depopulate poultry flocks and all >>>>>>>> poultry within a mile of the infected flock.  The poultry flocks >>>>>>>> that
    were infected with the dairy virus were all depopulated.  6 and >>>>>>>> a half
    million layers in Michigan alone.  Multiple turkey flocks have >>>>>>>> gone down
    in Minnesota and have had to be depopulated, and Minnesota is
    one of the
    states that had positive milk products, but they do not admit to >>>>>>>> having
    infected herds.  Minnesota also has 3 positive waste water
    locations in
    the state.

    So there is a lot of politics involved, but the end result is
    that the
    virus has been allowed to spread, and there doesn't seem to be any >>>>>>>> movement in trying to stop the spread.  Multiple waste water sites >>>>>>>> around the bay area in Northern California are claimed to be above >>>>>>>> average in influenza content of the waste water (the claim is
    that they
    are orders of magnitude higher) but there isn't any claims that >>>>>>>> they are
    testing dairies in those counties.  The nightmare scenario is that >>>>>>>> patient zero is in the bay area and their contacts board an
    international flight as the virus takes hold in San Francisco
    before
    anyone notices.

    One thing of note is the infamous masking requirements and social >>>>>>>> distancing required for Covid was found to work extremely well >>>>>>>> to stop
    influenza infections.  30,000 to 70,000 people usually die of >>>>>>>> influenza
    each year in the USA, but only a minimal number of fatalities
    occurred
    during the masking required during Covid.  It tells us that we >>>>>>>> could
    probably save around 40,000 people a year if we masked up during >>>>>>>> flu
    season, and had the surface sanitation policies in action.  My >>>>>>>> take is
    that the biggest advantage of masking is that if an infected
    person is
    required to wear a mask they deposit a lot less virus into the >>>>>>>> environment around them by sneezing and coughing.

    Ron Okimoto

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4684694-mice-bird-flu-raw-milk/ >>>>>>>
    Mice experienced high levels of bird flu after being given raw
    milk: Study

    Is this the flu you are referring to?  (Wish you'd source your
    info...)

    (I live in the SF bay area, but I don't drink unpasteurized milk.) >>>>>>>
    ObOrigins:
    The _fact_ that diseases evolve is part of the _fact_ of
    evolution. When
    people talk about how evolution is "only a theory", they get it
    wrong:
    the _theory_ of evolution is the scientific theory explaining the >>>>>>> _observed fact_ of evolution.


    Look at the CDC waste water data for California.  California has
    not started testing dairy herds, but multiple waste water sites
    around the bay area have high levels of influenza in their waste
    water, as high as counties known to have infected dairy herds.  It >>>>>> looks like the bay area is surrounded by infected dairy herds, but >>>>>> no one wants to check. Several of those counties have issued
    warnings not to drink raw milk, but they don't want to verify that >>>>>> they have the issue for some stupid reason.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    The NIH did the mice study and found that mice could be infected
    by H5N1 virus in raw milk.  Pretty much from day 1 we have known
    that the virus in raw milk could infect cats.

    https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-h5n1-influenza-levels-found-mice-given-raw-milk-infected-dairy-cows

    The CDC and USDA have been releasing information even if slowly.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm

    The FDA released the names of the states with positive milk
    samples 10 days after they released the fact that they had found
    the positive samples, but pasteurization was killing the virus, so >>>>>> as long as you didn't drink raw milk you were OK.  They have
    contributed to the delay in identifying all the infected herds.

    https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai

    The USDA nor the CDC have claimed to be acting on the FDA findings >>>>>> and testing dairy herds in those states with positive milk
    samples. Both claim that they are relying on dairy farms to self
    report, but that obviously is not working.

    The CDC also knows that more states likely have positive herds
    because of their waste water surveys, but again they claim to be
    relying on self reporting and are not actively investigating dairy >>>>>> herds in the positive waste water counties.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/wastewater-surveillance/Flu-A-data.html

    They really are actively not trying to identify infected dairy
    herds even though the FDA has told them 9 new states to check and
    the waste water data identifies even more, and it identifies some
    of the counties that they should be checking.  Not only that, but >>>>>> the waste water data and positive milk data overlap and identify
    the counties that they should check in the positive milk states.

    They have known from Day 1 that they need to identify all the
    infected herds because the cattle were infecting humans, and
    though the symptoms were mild the more cattle and humans infected
    the more chance of the virus evolving into something much worse.
    It looks like the USDA and CDC went into denial due to politics
    and being burned during Covid.  It is crazy that they have been in >>>>>> denial that humans took the virus to other dairy herds and the
    poultry farms. How else has the virus spread to states that never
    got cattle, and then infected poultry farms in those states?
    Kansas and South Dakota never got cattle from Texas, but it looks
    like Kansas was infected and then the infection spread from Kansas >>>>>> to South Dakota even though South Dakota did not get cattle from
    Texas nor Kansas. Infected people obviously took the virus to
    those states.  Influenza is known not to be infective off skin and >>>>>> clothing for more than a few minutes.  It may survive on clothing >>>>>> for up to 12 hours, but is only infective for around 30 minutes
    once it gets onto clothing. The infected humans were shedding live >>>>>> virus, and that is obviously how the virus has spread to so many
    herds.

    This is an example of what not to do in order to prevent the next
    pandemic.  Now the CDC has put out an alert that they have given
    up and are preparing for worse to come.  They can still identify
    the infected herds and quarantine them and the human workers, but
    they have decided to try to contain the influenza after it has
    moved off the dairies as something that is killing people.  The
    stupid thing is that in order to do this effectively they still
    need to identify the infected herds in order to have the best
    chance of identifying patient zero that gets a mutated virus from
    a cow or dairy worker.

    Ron Okimoto




    A third human was found to be infected by dairy cattle in Michigan.
    There likely is no longer any doubt that many more dairy workers
    have already been infected, but the CDC and USDA are still actively
    not trying to identify all the infected herds.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-response-053124.html

    The CDC is still claiming that there is nothing to worry about
    because infections seem to be limited to cow to human, and not
    human to human, but the CDC has refused to do contact tracing of
    the dairy workers, nor test them and their contacts.  This fact
    just means that they have refused to do the work needed to know
    that they are wrong. They have known from day one that the other
    herds and poultry flocks did not get infected from virus on
    clothing or skin of dairy workers or their contacts, and had even
    proposed the laughable excuse that the poultry farm could have been
    infected by an exchange of equipment.  Who would exchange equipment >>>>> between a dairy farm and a 2 million bird layer facility?  The most >>>>> likely scenario has always been that people took the virus to the
    other herds and poultry farms, and they were likely infected and
    shedding virus. They knew from day one that Kansas and South Dakota
    had not gotten cattle, but they refused to do dairy worker contact
    tracing.  The sequence indicates that someone took the virus to
    Kansas from Texas, and then from Kansas to South Dakota. Does
    anyone believe that they were exchanging equipment between those
    states?  It looks like they have done it on purpose, but it is
    likely just denial and stupidity related to politics.

    A news article I read claimed that the Michigan state health
    department wants to start testing the dairy workers in order to
    determine how many have been infected.  They should also test the
    contacts of the positive dairy workers that they will be
    identifying. They should also do contact tracing so that they can
    identify more infected herds in Michigan.  More and more herds
    Michgan herds are being identified every week, and there are
    probably a lot more that they don't know about since they were in
    denial of how the virus was spreading between herds.  It is pretty
    much a fact that the CDC would know how all the other herds and
    poultry flocks got infected if they had just instituted testing and
    contact tracing two months ago. There are obviously a lot more
    states and a lot more infected herds than we currently have
    identified, and all of them are infecting dairy workers, and likely
    the dairy worker contacts.

    Ron Okimoto


    A vaccine manufaturer has announced that it has been tasked to
    produce 5 million H5 antigen flu vaccines for this summer.  They
    likely need them now.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-06-03/u-s-will-make-millions-of-bird-flu-vaccines-this-summer

    There have already been recommendations that they start to vaccinate
    dairy workers.  It is obvious that they are getting infected, and
    the last case had respiratory symptoms and was more easily spreading
    the virus into the environment than the previous eye infections.
    The CDC is still in denial even though they are only monitoring some
    of the infected herds in Texas and Michigan.  The dairy workers are
    likely getting infected in all the states that have infected herds,
    but there is still no movement by the USDA and CDC to identify all
    the infected herds and dairy workers.  Both are continuing to rely
    on "self reporting", and there is no doubt that, that is not
    working. This is really not the way to prevent the next pandemic.

    The Michigan health department wants to do antibody testing for the
    H5 antigen among the dairy workers so that they can get a handle on
    how many have been infected and no longer are showing symptoms.
    That should likely be done in both states (Texas and Michigan) that
    the CDC has bothered to monitor.  9 states currently are known to
    have infected herds, and the  actual number is likely twice that if
    not more.

    Ron Okimoto


    It should be noted that this is a recombinant virus.  When the
    Eurasian strain of H5N1 got into North America it recombined with a
    North American strain of avian influenza.  It isn't fully the
    Eurasian virus that has a 50% mortality rate among infected humans.
    At least 4 humans have been infected by the dairy H5N1 (the first
    before it was a dairy virus) and they have all had mild symptoms.
    The fear is that it will mutate or recombine again with a human
    influenza A and become more infective with more severe symptoms.

    They really want to keep this virus off of pig farms because a swine
    influenza recombinant could be more deadly to humans.  The sad fact
    is that by not identifying and quarantining the infected dairy herds
    they are just making it more possible to transfer the virus to pig
    farms. They already know that humans are likely taking it to poultry
    farms, so they need to identify all the infected dairies and make
    sure that the workers and their contacts do not go to other farms.
    At this time the CDC and USDA are still only "recommending" that
    dairy workers at infected farms and their contacts do not go to other
    farms.  They should make it more than a recommendation.

    The dairy virus has the HA and NA (H5N1) antigen genes of the
    Eurasian virus.  It also has the PA and M gene segments (sort of RNA
    chromosomes) of the Eurasian H5N1.  The PB1, PB2, NP and NS gene
    segments are from another wild bird influenza virus.  In the news the
    HA clade 2.3.4.4b HPAI A(H5N1) name is used.  This is it's H5 gene
    clade designation, but it is genotype (full genome) B3.13 of that clade. >>>
    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/h5n1-analysis-texas.htm

    Ron Okimoto

    Deborah Birx is claiming that we are making the same mistakes with the
    dairy flu as we did with Covid.  She claims that we should be testing
    every cow and every dairy worker.  I agree with her.  They know that
    there are a lot more states with positive herds than have come
    forward, and they know that there are a lot more postive herds in the
    states that already know they have positive herds because we keep
    identifying more every week, and we aren't even trying to find them.
    They likely understand by now that it was infected humans that took
    the virus to these other states and herds, so they really do need to
    start testing all the dairy workers if they want to have a chance at
    limiting the spread, but they should have started doing it 2 months ago.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/04/health/video/dr-deborah-birx-interview-pandemic-preparedness-transparent-communication-digvid

    Ron Okimoto


    An H5N2 avian influenza has killed a person in Mexico.  It sounds like a recombinant with the Eurasian H5N1.  H5 has been showing up in wild bird influenza isolates since 2022 when the Eurasian H5N1 migrated into North America.  The Dairy H5N1 is a recombinant, but retains the two main
    antigen designations for the Eurasian strain.  The WHO citation notes
    that there is also an H5N3 and H5N8 circulating.  There are two H5N2 variants circulating in Mexico.  One is High Path AI (HPAI) and the
    other is low path.  The Dairy H5N1 is HPAI.  This just means that it is highly pathological and kills poultry.  Low path has a much lower
    mortality rate, and can circulate in wild birds and poultry.  They don't know if it is the H5N2 HPAI or the low path that infected the Mexican patient.  They do not know how this person got the virus.  He had no exposure to poultry or other animals.

    https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2024-DON520#:~:text=On%2023%20May%202024%2C%20the,was%20hospitalized%20in%20Mexico%20City.

    Ron Okimoto


    It is now coming out that dozens of cattle have died or been sent to
    slaughter because they did not recover from the Dairy flu. Apparently,
    5 states are claiming cattle mortality. This should be more incentive
    to identify the infected herds so that the spread to more Dairy farms
    can be dealt with more effectively than now. At the current time it is
    only a recommendation that anyone that comes in contact with an infected
    animal and their human contacts do not go to another farm, but it is
    only a recommendation, and obviously doesn't apply to farms that refuse
    to be tested so that they do not know they have infected animals. The
    farms needed to be identified and quarantined months ago.

    The same article claims that Minnesota and Iowa (two states with
    positive dairy products identified by the FDA back in early May) have
    come forward and admitted that they have positive dairy herds. 7 other
    states were identified by the FDA as producing H5N1 positive dairy
    products, but had not had any identified infected herds back in early
    May. These states still do not claim to have infected herds. I should
    also mention that poultry flocks in Iowa and Minnesota have been
    infected by the dairy virus. Just like in the other states the dairy
    flu has likely been spread by dairy workers and their contacts, but no
    one wants to admit to that. People are spreading the virus to states
    like Iowa and Minnesota that did not get cattle from Texas, and people
    are spreading the virus to the poultry farms from the infected dairy farms.

    The CDC updated their page June 6th, but did not include the Iowa and
    Minnesota herds. The CDC and USDA need to start testing dairy herds in
    the positive waste water counties. Florida is a prime example of a
    state that should have their cattle tested. It is far from known
    infected states, but the FDA found H5N1 in milk products produced by
    Florida and it has high levels of influenza at some waste water
    collection sites.

    https://www.ntd.com/cows-with-bird-flu-have-died-in-5-us-states-officials_998183.html

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/mammals.htm

    Ron Okimoto

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  • From *Hemidactylus*@21:1/5 to RonO on Sat Jun 15 01:49:18 2024
    RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 6/13/2024 4:03 PM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/13/2024 2:25 PM, RonO wrote:
    On 6/13/2024 6:28 AM, jillery wrote:
    On Wed, 12 Jun 2024 17:23:28 -0500, RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
    wrote:

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dairy-industry-must-act-faster-to-keep-h5n1-bird-flu-from-starting-a/

    Scientific American has an opinion piece stating what I have been going >>>>> on about.  For some stupid reason the USDA and CDC decided to rely on >>>>> "self reporting" instead of going in and testing the herds and states >>>>> that likely had infected herds.  It has just allowed the virus to
    spread
    to more dairy herds, and they have no idea of the extent of the
    infection because the CDC chose to "monitor" only a few herds in two >>>>> states.

    It has been sad and the opinion piece notes that the poultry industry >>>>> has suffered because of it.  When the price of poultry products start >>>>> going up it is the USDA's and CDC's fault for not acting as they should >>>>> have acted.  You can't keep the avian flu off a poultry farm if
    changing
    clothing and even showering in, as is required at some commercial
    breeding facilities, when the worker is infected and shedding live
    virus.  For a poultry farm the infected flock is depopulated (killed >>>>> off) and poultry within a mile radius of the infected flock are also >>>>> disposed of.  Several 2 million bird layer flocks have had to be
    depopulated in several states, and they were infected by the dairy
    cattle with a likely human intermediate.

    They knew from day one that dairy workers were likely taking the virus >>>>> to other farms and infecting other herds, and poultry flocks, but they >>>>> only "recommended" that dairy workers and their contacts not go to
    other
    farms if they have come into contact with infected cattle.  The kicker >>>>> is that they refused to identify all the infected herds so most of the >>>>> dairy workers in contact with infected cattle were not under the
    "recommendation".  It has been sad and should never have unfolded as >>>>> it has.

    The more dairy herds that they allow to be infected, the more humans >>>>> will be infected.

    Ron Okimoto


    I wonder if the current policies you mention above aren't consequences >>>> of a lack of funding and a lack of political support, due to
    conspiracies fallout from the Covid pandemic.

    The USDA was given 800 million to control the dairy outbreak, but both
    the CDC and the USDA claimed that it was not their policy to require
    testing, so neither ever attempted to determine the extent of the
    spread of the virus, nor track dairy workers and their contacts.  It
    is obvious that most of the Dairies were infected by dairy workers or
    their contacts going to those other farms.  Early infections in states
    like Kansas, New Mexico, and South Dakota all claimed that they had
    not gotten any cattle from Texas, but herds in those states got
    infected. They have had a very good idea that the infection was being
    spread by humans, because of what is known about influenza survival on
    surfaces like clothing and skin (it remains infectious for less than
    30 minutes) and remains infectious on hard surfaces like door nobs for
    up to 24 hours.  The infected human was shedding live virus, and would
    have been an obvious vector to take the virus to other farms.  They
    have done nothing but "recommend" that dairy workers and their
    contacts exposed to infected cattle not go to other farms, but they
    never started a program to identify all the infected herds so that the
    workers would know not to go to other farms.  They should have started
    testing and contact tracing immediately, but they did not, and have
    not started.  If they had started contact tracing they would already
    have a good idea of how all the herds got infected.  Only one county
    in Michigan got infected cattle from Texas, but now 9 counties have
    infected herds.  People are the obvious vector.  2 people have been
    confirmed to have been infected in Michigan, and there have likely
    been a lot more.  They were shedding live virus and could have
    infected their human contacts, and if they or their contacts went to
    other dairy farms they would have been shedding virus.  It would not
    need to survive on their skin or clothing.

    Both the USDA and CDC have been screwing up by the numbers on this one.

    Ron Okimoto

    https://www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/hpai-h5n1-dairy-cattle-mi-epi-invest.pdf

    This report is dated June 13th.  They finally did what they should have
    done at the very beginning in terms of verifying the links between
    infected herds.

    QUOTE:
    Shared personnel between premises
    o 20% of affected dairies’ employees and 7% of dairies’ employees family >> members work on other dairy premises
    o 7% of affected dairies’ employees also work on poultry premises; 13%
    of affected dairies’ employees have family members who work on poultry
    premises
    o 31% of dairies have employees who own livestock or poultry at their
    personal residence
    END QUOTE:

    QUOTE:
    Based on the epidemiological findings, the majority of links between
    affected dairy premises, and between dairy and poultry premises, are
    indirect from shared people, vehicles, and equipment. As such, HPAI
    disease spread between dairy and poultry premises can be mitigated by
    identifying potential interconnections between operations (people,
    conveyances, etc.) and increasing biosecurity practices on all premises
    and associated animal businesses (e.g., milk haulers, deadstock/contract
    haulers and other shared vehicles/trailers between premises, livestock
    markets). Identifying as many affected herds as possible will assist in
    assessing the scope of the event and allow decision-makers to better
    manage the response.
    END QUOTE:

    It should be noted that people take the vehicles and equipment to other
    farms, and people are known to be infected by the virus, and the known
    infected humans were shedding live virus.

    This is what I have been claiming from the beginning, but neither the
    USDA nor the CDC acted on what they should have been doing.  We will
    have to wait to see if the USDA and CDC finally get their act together
    and start looking for all the infected herds and start doing the contact
    tracing that they should have been doing from day one.

    Ron Okimoto

    https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-06142024.html?ACSTrackingID=USCDC_7_3-DM130439&ACSTrackingLabel=Update%20on%20CDC%E2%80%99s%20Avian%20Influenza%20A(H5N1)%20%E2%80%9CBird%20Flu%E2%80%9D%20Response%20Activities%20June%2014%2C%202024&
    deliveryName=USCDC_7_3-DM130439

    This link seems to be long because the CDC is in the process of changing
    web sites for the information that they are releasing.

    https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/study-ferrets-eye-exposure.html

    The first link is the CDC's latest update and the second link is the new publication that they are talking about

    Their latest research just verified that the H5N1 variant can readily
    infect mammals through their eyes. It has been known for decades that
    people are often infected by touching infected surfaces and then rubbing their eyes or nose within around 5 minutes (the virus isn't infectious
    on skin for very long only a few minutes). So they have verified how
    the humans got infected and why the first two dairy virus patients were
    only infected in their eyes (nasal swabs were negative).

    The kicker is that they are still claiming that the risk is low even
    though they now know that a lot more humans were likely infected than
    they previously knew about. They have still only tested 45 people for
    H5N1 (three of the 45 were obviously positive), but this number includes
    the first over 30 individuals tested in Texas, but they were not tested correctly. Only nasal swabs were tested, and the one Texas positive and
    one Michigan positive were negative for nasal swabs, and only positive (shedding live virus) from their eyes. So over 30 tests were expected
    to not show anything even if the people had been infected. The
    situation really has been that bad in terms of CDC screw ups.

    So even though they don't make the claim their ferret research indicates
    that a lot more humans than have currently been identified could have
    been infected through their eyes, and likely spread the virus (because
    they were obviously shedding live virus) to other farms and could have
    likely infected their human contacts if those contacts rubbed their eyes after touching surfaces contaminated by dairy workers infected by the
    cattle.

    I wash my hands regularly and don’t associate with cattle. I worry when cleaning bird poop off my car and wonder about the squirrels I see running around as they inhabit the same tree limbs as birds.

    Do you think H5N1 might attenuate per humans by passing through cattle (ie- reducing our kill rate)?

    I guess face masks won’t protect you from getting virus particles in your eyes.

    I still wonder what ill effects a highly litigious industry may have on
    public health awareness about the prospects of H5 in livestock. Also there
    are those pesky food disparagement laws.

    That said I still enjoy my cheese and wondered if drinking pasteurized milk with inactivated H5 fragments might yield some degree of mucosal immunity
    in humans. I drink soy or mostly use it for my oatmeal so I don’t consume cattle milk.

    Definitely wouldn’t drink raw milk myself, though that seems to be the new Trump cult costly signal of tribal allegiance. How risky might that
    behavior be?

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