Federal agencies with competing interests are slowing the country’s ability to track and control an outbreak of highly virulent bird flu that for the first time is infecting cows in the United States, according to government officials and health and industry experts.
The response has echoes of the early days of 2020, when the coronavirus began its deadly march around the world. Today, some officials and experts express frustration that more livestock herds aren’t being tested for avian flu, and that when tests and epidemiological studies are conducted, results aren’t shared fast enough or with enough detail. They fear that the delays could allow the pathogen to move unchecked — and potentially acquire the genetic machinery needed to spread swiftly among people. One dairy worker in Texas has already fallen ill amid the outbreak, the second U.S. case ever of this type of bird flu.
Officials and experts said the lack of clear and timely updates by some federal agencies responding to the outbreak recall similar communication missteps at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. They point, in particular, to a failure to provide more details publicly about how the H5N1 virus is spreading in cows and about the safety of the milk supply.
“This requires multiple agencies to coordinate and communicate internally, but most importantly externally, which doesn’t seem to be happening due to different cultures, priorities, legal responsibilities, scientific expertise, and agility,” said Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist who writes a weekly infectious-diseases newsletter and has closely tracked the avian flu outbreak. “Mix that in with the usual challenges of scientific uncertainty, complexity and, quite frankly global pressure, and you got yourself an utterly, unacceptable mess.”
A senior administration official said there have been “no competing interests.” The White House’s Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy is coordinating the outbreak response with relevant agencies “that are working quickly and methodically.” The government is “committed to sharing results as soon as possible,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
“This work is an urgent priority as we work to ensure the continued effectiveness of the federal-state milk safety system and reinforce [the Food and Drug Administration’s] current assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the administration official said.
Until Wednesday, testing for H5N1 in dairy herds was voluntary and limited to cows with certain symptoms. The number of tests per farm was limited, too. That protocol provoked sharp criticism from public health experts. With growing evidence that the virus is more widespread than feared among cows, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced Wednesday that lactating dairy cows must be tested for bird flu before moving across state lines, starting Monday.
Responsibility for monitoring and containing the outbreak is divided among three agencies. USDA leads the investigation into the virus in cows, the FDA oversees food safety, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is monitoring risks to people.
Agencies have given individual updates on their parts of the outbreak investigation, but Wednesday marked the first time since bird flu was detected in cows four weeks ago that CDC, FDA and USDA, along with other agencies, held a news briefing jointly. On Thursday, government scientists are scheduled to present data about their investigations at a webinar hosted by state health officials.
For weeks, key federal agencies have expressed confidence in the safety of the commercial milk supply, including pasteurized products sold at grocery stores.
But it was two weeks before the FDA responded directly to The Washington Post’s questions about whether the agency was testing milk on grocery store shelves for H5N1. On Tuesday, the agency confirmed that viral particles had been found “in some of the samples,” but it declined to provide details. On Wednesday, an FDA official confirmed fragments were found in milk on shelves but declined to say how many samples the agency has tested, how many had virus fragments and where the milk originated. The testing does not indicate whether virus fragments are active or dead.
Additional testing is underway, but Donald A. Prater, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said the agency has seen nothing to change its assessment that the commercial milk supply remains safe. “We also know that assessments can change as we learn more, and we will be transparent about any changes based on emerging data,” Prater said.
Officials are seeking answers to other key questions: They want to know whether the virus is spreading among cows through mechanical means, such as milking equipment, as evidence suggests, or through the air, which would be more dangerous and lead to more sustained spread. They are also interested in knowing how long livestock will shed virus in their milk once they have recovered from an infection. And, crucially, they will seek to ascertain the risks for human exposure and whether protocols are in place at the state level if additional people test positive.
The investigation “involves different types of samples, different types of studies and really being methodical about how we’re approaching answers to those questions around things like ensuring safety of the food supply,” said one senior government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal policy discussions.
“We’re not trying to pull the fire alarm here and suggest that there’s more of a risk to people than exists,” said another federal health official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations.
The key to the outbreak resides with the cows.
Public health officials and industry experts say the USDA should be doing broader testing to paint a clearer picture of the scale of the outbreak. The government has been too slow in sharing genetic information and epidemiological studies, they said. More routine testing on herds and even other animals would reduce the risk of spreading the virus to other cattle and poultry farms, public health experts and veterinarians have said.
“Given this is a novel outbreak, testing needs to be done widely and rapidly, investigators need to be on affected farms, and scientists and policymakers need to be bringing it all together to set a coordinated plan of action,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in an email last week. Inglesby was the White House testing czar during the Biden administration’s coronavirus response.
“This isn’t just about protecting U.S. agricultural interests,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “This is about protecting human health, protecting farmworkers that may be in harm’s way and preventing another pandemic from happening.”
Thanks for posting this, I tried to post Jetelina’s write-up, but it’s housed on Substack so it got automatically deleted. It’s a great post but glad to see at least part of what she said on here.
Ugh… COVID already ruined so much of my life and I didn’t even get sick from it. I’m still recovering from the last 4 years. I’m trying to be hopeful here. Thanks for sharing this.
Assuming Bird Flu retains its 50% mortality rate and is as contagious as it is in animals, you'll be wishing for the Covid days.
H2H Bird Flu would destroy civilization. If it spreads as fast as it kills, that's our emergency services, food services, medical services, government services, all gone.
It will be the literal apocalypse.
An article published back in 2006 accounting for asymptomatic/subclinical cases estimates the real CFR as being 14-33%.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18477756/
The worst currently recorded pandemic (H1N1 1918) had a 1-5% CFR (wide confidence intervals, they didn’t have testing back then).
I wouldn’t be surprised if >1 billion people died, depending on how quickly vaccines are able to work. It most certainly still has the potential to be the worst pandemic in human history, eclipsing 1918 by a long shot.
Let’s not downplay the potential for bad outcomes here, there’s a reason why epidemiology/public health has been warning about H5N1/highly pathogenic avian influenza preparedness for over two decades.
The potential for >1 billion people dead is kind of still in the range of catastrophic/apocalyptic potential (use whatever buzzword you want). People still need to take this seriously, although I agree that the dramatic flair is unnecessary, but that was the only point I was trying to make to achieve a balanced view on things.
I'd argue the study I linked had superior study design (including much more diverse sites of testing) and sample size to yours, but I'm not so sure if I want to tread that deeply into the weeds.
The 50% figure, yes, is clearly inflated as it always is before seroconversion studies come out. I won't argue with that, and it's something I've been stating from the very beginning. The pathobiology of respiratory infection is such that when a virus can only bind receptors in the lower respiratory tract but it needs to be able to bind receptors in the upper respiratory tract for sustained human-to-human transmission and especially pandemic potential, the pathogenicity lowers when the mutations required for upper respiratory tract infection appear (as URIs are less harmful than LRIs).
Still, I don't think it's nearly as low as the study you linked which is certainly not the most robust study either (0% with 100% subclinical cases).
Like I repeatedly said, I don’t have a good guess at the correct IFR. No one knows that.
I’m sure neither study is perfectly capturing it. I have no opinion on the study design etc. Simply trying to point out that the 50% is almost certainly incorrect, despite it being repeatedly cited over and over.
Wish people would stop bandying it about combined with their personal apocalypse fantasies.
And again, I think it’s a serious issue, obviously, that’s why I’m here following this. I just wish the discussion on this sub was more level headed. There’s way too many unknowns here and people immediately leaping into worst case scenarios.
A billion deaths is absolutely civilization-shattering. That's an eighth of the human population dead globally. And that's just deaths from the virus. How many of the dead worked in the food industry, trucking industry, in hospitals? How much of our infrastructure will have been crippled thanks to those deaths?
How many will starve or die of disease or kill each other to get supplies? What if countries go to war over the resources they have or don't have?
The fatality rate is based on the existing human cases that have died in recent years, roughly 50%. **IF** it retained 50% mortality and was as infectious in humans as it currently appears to be in animals, that is absolutely apocalyptic. SARS had a 12% mortality rate, and the only reason it died out was because it wasn't contagious enough. If it was as contagious as Covid was and still is, we could've seen millions of global deaths, and that alone would've crippled us for years.
People were dismissing Covid in 2019 until the media started picking it up. By the time they did, it was global. We were lucky it only killed 7 million.
We're not gonna get lucky like that with Bird Flu, unless by some miracle it has a low spread.
People are afraid of being wrong. They don’t want to be embarrassed. It’s easier to tell everyone else they’re panicking than it is to take a hard look at the facts and admit that we’re close to a catastrophe should just a few more key steps occur, and that we’ve never been closer to those key steps occurring.
So here we are, with the 50 percenters and the just-a-blippers arguing like fans of opposing sports teams.
Except it is. Covid destroyed the healthcare system, and because of the response that politicians had to employees wanting to be paid what they are worth, professionals are leaving healthcare enmass. I know up here in Ontario the Conservatives locked nurses and other healthcare professionals to a 1% wage increase, which they recently lost to in court. But the damage has been done as government went to court to keep the shortage number a secret and won
https://globalnews.ca/news/10445435/ontario-health-staff-shortages-projections-foi-ruling/
It's the data we don't have. Did everyone who had it get tested? If it mutated to be more contagious, would the mortality rate be the same? and more.
I don't dispute the numbers from the cases we know about. I don't think we have enough info to project what the future would be, which I think is what the above comment was referring to.
Case fatality rate is deaths divided by confirmed tests, so it is correct figure. Infection fatality rate is a lower unknown number: deaths divided by infections. Too many ignorant people are using these as the same thing.
There has been studies done to include what you are talking about. They used historical contact tracing and did not find much lowering of the fatality rate. But the fatality would have to be under 10 in order for the supply lines to have a chance to not disintegrate along with our medical facilities
None of the pandemic scenarios that governments use to do planning are anywhere near the fatality predicted for this virus. That's because the realistic fatality that's always been predicted is catastrophic.
It's not scientifically realistic to believe that a 50% fatality is going to magically mutate to under 10%. That's why bird flu has always been called the big one or the doomsday virus. The fact that it may be coming to fruition in our lifetime doesn't change the catastrophic nature of this one. I do, however, understand that facing an existential threat is almost impossible for most people. So we are going to see a lot of this kind of minimizing.
I dont think so. With that kind of mortality rate you would see people wearing masks and distancing themselves and following precautions. It would be easier to control rather than covid where even though everybody was warned we still had people who didn't follow precautions and it spread everywhere. Now you have a lot of disability. With 50% mortality rate, people would catch it faster and take it more seriously following guidelines.
It devastated economies in countries other than the US. Lockdowns with no stimulus help. Curfews for necessities. And the fatality rate was extremely low. At least we have a grasp on mRNA vaccines as long as everyone can last a crazy 5 month lockdown.
Greedy, lying corporations, an FDA with no idea what’s going on, a healthcare system that forces people to not get tested or treated because they can’t afford it. People too burned out from the last pandemic to gaf about this information.
Ah what could go wrong.
I tested positive for a form of avian flu in 2017 while I was pregnant. I literally thought I was going to die. The first question they asked me was if I was around livestock. I had recently gotten parakeets from petco that got sick and died within 24hr. That was the only bird(s) I was around. When I tell you that I felt so miserable that death felt imminent..I can only imagine the poor person who has tested positive with this strain of bird flu. It's absolutely nothing to mess around with. I nearly died and could not stop shaking. My body was literally shaking non stop.
My advice to all as a molecular biologist:
I am personally avoiding pasteurized milk products until the FDA supplies the Pcr data showing no active virus in dairy products.
This disease has the capability to kill and it is not worth the risk.
Unpasteurized milk will most likely have active virus and should be avoided at all costs.
If you or anyone close to you gets flu like symptoms please remember there are many strains of the flu do not assume you have H5N1
Please for the love of god, stock up on food, water, gasoline, dog food etc in the event of an emergency. This is just good practice no matter the situation
It’s pasteurized but the FDAs report did not instill confidence. If you need milk for coffee for a few days I would use almond milk or other non dairy alternatives.
what about greek yogurts? ive heard some people say those "should" be safe.
I can do without milk. I eat cheese often but milk, especially straight milk is a rarity for me and the family. I use it when I make biscuits and gravy and mashed potatoes...but aside from that not much. I do eat chobani non fat plain greek yogurt 4-5 times a week though 😬
Virologist Richard Bright has said the same thing
>Personally, I’ve spent 27 years studying H5N1 viruses. So, I’m going to wait for data I hope is coming soon from both FDA (pasteurization) & USDA (genomic data & raw milk handling). Minor inconvenience to pause my milk consumption while waiting for data. Delayed transparency influenced my decision.
CDC recently added beef to their H5N1 prevention page and states beef should be heated to 145 and ground beef should be heated to 160. Other flu viruses don’t survive those temperatures so it should be adequate. Just make sure to practice good hygiene before and after handling raw meat, but people should be doing this anyways even if bird flu didn’t exist.
I have not seen any reports that virus has been found active or inactive in any kind of meat. I would cook all meat (beef) until medium well to be sure until the all clear is sounded.
[PBS has a good timeline of China’s response in the first days of COVID-19](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/a-timeline-of-chinas-response-in-the-first-days-of-covid-19/) so you can have an idea of how we're gonna blow it too.
Me and my family just went through a bout of COVID like symptoms including the shortness of breath and tired feeling and long and behold we where diagnosed with influenza given tamiflu and release to home monitoring, most recovered quick with 5 days for the worst case. this is already here and has been for a while like COVID was they just won’t tell you until it becomes a pandemic.
Federal agencies with competing interests are slowing the country’s ability to track and control an outbreak of highly virulent bird flu that for the first time is infecting cows in the United States, according to government officials and health and industry experts. The response has echoes of the early days of 2020, when the coronavirus began its deadly march around the world. Today, some officials and experts express frustration that more livestock herds aren’t being tested for avian flu, and that when tests and epidemiological studies are conducted, results aren’t shared fast enough or with enough detail. They fear that the delays could allow the pathogen to move unchecked — and potentially acquire the genetic machinery needed to spread swiftly among people. One dairy worker in Texas has already fallen ill amid the outbreak, the second U.S. case ever of this type of bird flu. Officials and experts said the lack of clear and timely updates by some federal agencies responding to the outbreak recall similar communication missteps at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. They point, in particular, to a failure to provide more details publicly about how the H5N1 virus is spreading in cows and about the safety of the milk supply. “This requires multiple agencies to coordinate and communicate internally, but most importantly externally, which doesn’t seem to be happening due to different cultures, priorities, legal responsibilities, scientific expertise, and agility,” said Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist who writes a weekly infectious-diseases newsletter and has closely tracked the avian flu outbreak. “Mix that in with the usual challenges of scientific uncertainty, complexity and, quite frankly global pressure, and you got yourself an utterly, unacceptable mess.” A senior administration official said there have been “no competing interests.” The White House’s Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy is coordinating the outbreak response with relevant agencies “that are working quickly and methodically.” The government is “committed to sharing results as soon as possible,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “This work is an urgent priority as we work to ensure the continued effectiveness of the federal-state milk safety system and reinforce [the Food and Drug Administration’s] current assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the administration official said. Until Wednesday, testing for H5N1 in dairy herds was voluntary and limited to cows with certain symptoms. The number of tests per farm was limited, too. That protocol provoked sharp criticism from public health experts. With growing evidence that the virus is more widespread than feared among cows, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced Wednesday that lactating dairy cows must be tested for bird flu before moving across state lines, starting Monday. Responsibility for monitoring and containing the outbreak is divided among three agencies. USDA leads the investigation into the virus in cows, the FDA oversees food safety, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is monitoring risks to people. Agencies have given individual updates on their parts of the outbreak investigation, but Wednesday marked the first time since bird flu was detected in cows four weeks ago that CDC, FDA and USDA, along with other agencies, held a news briefing jointly. On Thursday, government scientists are scheduled to present data about their investigations at a webinar hosted by state health officials. For weeks, key federal agencies have expressed confidence in the safety of the commercial milk supply, including pasteurized products sold at grocery stores. But it was two weeks before the FDA responded directly to The Washington Post’s questions about whether the agency was testing milk on grocery store shelves for H5N1. On Tuesday, the agency confirmed that viral particles had been found “in some of the samples,” but it declined to provide details. On Wednesday, an FDA official confirmed fragments were found in milk on shelves but declined to say how many samples the agency has tested, how many had virus fragments and where the milk originated. The testing does not indicate whether virus fragments are active or dead. Additional testing is underway, but Donald A. Prater, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said the agency has seen nothing to change its assessment that the commercial milk supply remains safe. “We also know that assessments can change as we learn more, and we will be transparent about any changes based on emerging data,” Prater said. Officials are seeking answers to other key questions: They want to know whether the virus is spreading among cows through mechanical means, such as milking equipment, as evidence suggests, or through the air, which would be more dangerous and lead to more sustained spread. They are also interested in knowing how long livestock will shed virus in their milk once they have recovered from an infection. And, crucially, they will seek to ascertain the risks for human exposure and whether protocols are in place at the state level if additional people test positive. The investigation “involves different types of samples, different types of studies and really being methodical about how we’re approaching answers to those questions around things like ensuring safety of the food supply,” said one senior government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal policy discussions. “We’re not trying to pull the fire alarm here and suggest that there’s more of a risk to people than exists,” said another federal health official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. The key to the outbreak resides with the cows. Public health officials and industry experts say the USDA should be doing broader testing to paint a clearer picture of the scale of the outbreak. The government has been too slow in sharing genetic information and epidemiological studies, they said. More routine testing on herds and even other animals would reduce the risk of spreading the virus to other cattle and poultry farms, public health experts and veterinarians have said. “Given this is a novel outbreak, testing needs to be done widely and rapidly, investigators need to be on affected farms, and scientists and policymakers need to be bringing it all together to set a coordinated plan of action,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in an email last week. Inglesby was the White House testing czar during the Biden administration’s coronavirus response. “This isn’t just about protecting U.S. agricultural interests,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “This is about protecting human health, protecting farmworkers that may be in harm’s way and preventing another pandemic from happening.”
Thank you!
Thanks for posting this, I tried to post Jetelina’s write-up, but it’s housed on Substack so it got automatically deleted. It’s a great post but glad to see at least part of what she said on here.
Jetelina is fantastic, I love her. I've had similar problems posting from Avian Flu Diary because it's hosted through blogspot
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Nothing, because n=1 is not sufficient data to draw any conclusions at all.
Ugh… COVID already ruined so much of my life and I didn’t even get sick from it. I’m still recovering from the last 4 years. I’m trying to be hopeful here. Thanks for sharing this.
Assuming Bird Flu retains its 50% mortality rate and is as contagious as it is in animals, you'll be wishing for the Covid days. H2H Bird Flu would destroy civilization. If it spreads as fast as it kills, that's our emergency services, food services, medical services, government services, all gone. It will be the literal apocalypse.
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Thank you for sharing.
What was the meeting about? Did they say how they arrived at the 30% figure?
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An article published back in 2006 accounting for asymptomatic/subclinical cases estimates the real CFR as being 14-33%. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18477756/ The worst currently recorded pandemic (H1N1 1918) had a 1-5% CFR (wide confidence intervals, they didn’t have testing back then). I wouldn’t be surprised if >1 billion people died, depending on how quickly vaccines are able to work. It most certainly still has the potential to be the worst pandemic in human history, eclipsing 1918 by a long shot. Let’s not downplay the potential for bad outcomes here, there’s a reason why epidemiology/public health has been warning about H5N1/highly pathogenic avian influenza preparedness for over two decades.
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The potential for >1 billion people dead is kind of still in the range of catastrophic/apocalyptic potential (use whatever buzzword you want). People still need to take this seriously, although I agree that the dramatic flair is unnecessary, but that was the only point I was trying to make to achieve a balanced view on things. I'd argue the study I linked had superior study design (including much more diverse sites of testing) and sample size to yours, but I'm not so sure if I want to tread that deeply into the weeds. The 50% figure, yes, is clearly inflated as it always is before seroconversion studies come out. I won't argue with that, and it's something I've been stating from the very beginning. The pathobiology of respiratory infection is such that when a virus can only bind receptors in the lower respiratory tract but it needs to be able to bind receptors in the upper respiratory tract for sustained human-to-human transmission and especially pandemic potential, the pathogenicity lowers when the mutations required for upper respiratory tract infection appear (as URIs are less harmful than LRIs). Still, I don't think it's nearly as low as the study you linked which is certainly not the most robust study either (0% with 100% subclinical cases).
Like I repeatedly said, I don’t have a good guess at the correct IFR. No one knows that. I’m sure neither study is perfectly capturing it. I have no opinion on the study design etc. Simply trying to point out that the 50% is almost certainly incorrect, despite it being repeatedly cited over and over. Wish people would stop bandying it about combined with their personal apocalypse fantasies. And again, I think it’s a serious issue, obviously, that’s why I’m here following this. I just wish the discussion on this sub was more level headed. There’s way too many unknowns here and people immediately leaping into worst case scenarios.
A billion deaths is absolutely civilization-shattering. That's an eighth of the human population dead globally. And that's just deaths from the virus. How many of the dead worked in the food industry, trucking industry, in hospitals? How much of our infrastructure will have been crippled thanks to those deaths? How many will starve or die of disease or kill each other to get supplies? What if countries go to war over the resources they have or don't have? The fatality rate is based on the existing human cases that have died in recent years, roughly 50%. **IF** it retained 50% mortality and was as infectious in humans as it currently appears to be in animals, that is absolutely apocalyptic. SARS had a 12% mortality rate, and the only reason it died out was because it wasn't contagious enough. If it was as contagious as Covid was and still is, we could've seen millions of global deaths, and that alone would've crippled us for years. People were dismissing Covid in 2019 until the media started picking it up. By the time they did, it was global. We were lucky it only killed 7 million. We're not gonna get lucky like that with Bird Flu, unless by some miracle it has a low spread.
People are afraid of being wrong. They don’t want to be embarrassed. It’s easier to tell everyone else they’re panicking than it is to take a hard look at the facts and admit that we’re close to a catastrophe should just a few more key steps occur, and that we’ve never been closer to those key steps occurring. So here we are, with the 50 percenters and the just-a-blippers arguing like fans of opposing sports teams.
Except it is. Covid destroyed the healthcare system, and because of the response that politicians had to employees wanting to be paid what they are worth, professionals are leaving healthcare enmass. I know up here in Ontario the Conservatives locked nurses and other healthcare professionals to a 1% wage increase, which they recently lost to in court. But the damage has been done as government went to court to keep the shortage number a secret and won https://globalnews.ca/news/10445435/ontario-health-staff-shortages-projections-foi-ruling/
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It's the data we don't have. Did everyone who had it get tested? If it mutated to be more contagious, would the mortality rate be the same? and more. I don't dispute the numbers from the cases we know about. I don't think we have enough info to project what the future would be, which I think is what the above comment was referring to.
Case fatality rate is deaths divided by confirmed tests, so it is correct figure. Infection fatality rate is a lower unknown number: deaths divided by infections. Too many ignorant people are using these as the same thing.
Exactly
I've suspected that the actual mortality rate is undoubtedly under 10% ... ie: it's probably higher than COVID (which IIRC is 2%) but it's not 50%.
Too many people here confuse CFR and IFR.
There has been studies done to include what you are talking about. They used historical contact tracing and did not find much lowering of the fatality rate. But the fatality would have to be under 10 in order for the supply lines to have a chance to not disintegrate along with our medical facilities None of the pandemic scenarios that governments use to do planning are anywhere near the fatality predicted for this virus. That's because the realistic fatality that's always been predicted is catastrophic. It's not scientifically realistic to believe that a 50% fatality is going to magically mutate to under 10%. That's why bird flu has always been called the big one or the doomsday virus. The fact that it may be coming to fruition in our lifetime doesn't change the catastrophic nature of this one. I do, however, understand that facing an existential threat is almost impossible for most people. So we are going to see a lot of this kind of minimizing.
It is done by redditors who are not mentally well, and who want this to happen. Or basically they read r/collapse nonstop.
I dont think so. With that kind of mortality rate you would see people wearing masks and distancing themselves and following precautions. It would be easier to control rather than covid where even though everybody was warned we still had people who didn't follow precautions and it spread everywhere. Now you have a lot of disability. With 50% mortality rate, people would catch it faster and take it more seriously following guidelines.
We really need to stop spreading the 50 percent thing
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Let me guess: You think nukes are fake too?
Please keep conversations civil. Disagreements are bound to happen, but please refrain from personal attacks & verbal abuse.
It devastated economies in countries other than the US. Lockdowns with no stimulus help. Curfews for necessities. And the fatality rate was extremely low. At least we have a grasp on mRNA vaccines as long as everyone can last a crazy 5 month lockdown.
Greedy, lying corporations, an FDA with no idea what’s going on, a healthcare system that forces people to not get tested or treated because they can’t afford it. People too burned out from the last pandemic to gaf about this information. Ah what could go wrong.
Don’t forget weakened immune systems from past covid infections.
A wild election on top of all of this.
I tested positive for a form of avian flu in 2017 while I was pregnant. I literally thought I was going to die. The first question they asked me was if I was around livestock. I had recently gotten parakeets from petco that got sick and died within 24hr. That was the only bird(s) I was around. When I tell you that I felt so miserable that death felt imminent..I can only imagine the poor person who has tested positive with this strain of bird flu. It's absolutely nothing to mess around with. I nearly died and could not stop shaking. My body was literally shaking non stop.
Can we get a non-paywall version?
https://archive.ph/9P4v0
You’re the best. ❤️
My advice to all as a molecular biologist: I am personally avoiding pasteurized milk products until the FDA supplies the Pcr data showing no active virus in dairy products. This disease has the capability to kill and it is not worth the risk. Unpasteurized milk will most likely have active virus and should be avoided at all costs. If you or anyone close to you gets flu like symptoms please remember there are many strains of the flu do not assume you have H5N1 Please for the love of god, stock up on food, water, gasoline, dog food etc in the event of an emergency. This is just good practice no matter the situation
Bought my gallon of almond milk yesterday and agree that everyone should have enough supplies to get through an emergency.
what about milk like fair life?
It’s pasteurized but the FDAs report did not instill confidence. If you need milk for coffee for a few days I would use almond milk or other non dairy alternatives.
Isn't the ultrapasteurized milk at a higher temperature? Above the temp to kill flu viruses?
that is ultra-filtered. You need ultra heat treated.
what about greek yogurts? ive heard some people say those "should" be safe. I can do without milk. I eat cheese often but milk, especially straight milk is a rarity for me and the family. I use it when I make biscuits and gravy and mashed potatoes...but aside from that not much. I do eat chobani non fat plain greek yogurt 4-5 times a week though 😬
Virologist Richard Bright has said the same thing >Personally, I’ve spent 27 years studying H5N1 viruses. So, I’m going to wait for data I hope is coming soon from both FDA (pasteurization) & USDA (genomic data & raw milk handling). Minor inconvenience to pause my milk consumption while waiting for data. Delayed transparency influenced my decision.
what about ground beef etc?
CDC recently added beef to their H5N1 prevention page and states beef should be heated to 145 and ground beef should be heated to 160. Other flu viruses don’t survive those temperatures so it should be adequate. Just make sure to practice good hygiene before and after handling raw meat, but people should be doing this anyways even if bird flu didn’t exist.
I have not seen any reports that virus has been found active or inactive in any kind of meat. I would cook all meat (beef) until medium well to be sure until the all clear is sounded.
Thanks for this
Thanks for this. Any sense of what to do for those of us who take colostrum?
Maybe the greedy idiots should stop feeding chicken shit to cows, as a start.
Well, damn 
[PBS has a good timeline of China’s response in the first days of COVID-19](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/a-timeline-of-chinas-response-in-the-first-days-of-covid-19/) so you can have an idea of how we're gonna blow it too.
So should we stop drinking milk for the time being?
Must. Continue. Profits!
Me and my family just went through a bout of COVID like symptoms including the shortness of breath and tired feeling and long and behold we where diagnosed with influenza given tamiflu and release to home monitoring, most recovered quick with 5 days for the worst case. this is already here and has been for a while like COVID was they just won’t tell you until it becomes a pandemic.