Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Blood tests have shown that about 7 per cent of workers on dairy farms that had H5N1 outbreaks had antibodies against the disease
There may be more bird flu cases in humans in the US than we previously thought. Health departments in two states took blood tests of workers on dairy farms known to have hosted infected cattle and found that about 7 per cent of them have antibodies for the disease. This included people who never experienced any flu symptoms.
Since March, a bird flu virus known as H5N1 has been circulating in dairy cows across the US. So far, 446 cows in 15 US states have tested positive for the virus. Since April, 44 people in the US have tested positive for H5 – the influenza subtype that includes H5N1. All but one of these cases occurred in workers on H5N1-infected poultry or dairy farms.
To better understand how many farm workers may have contracted the virus, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collaborated with state health departments in Colorado and Michigan to collect blood samples from 115 people working on dairy farms with H5N1-infected cattle. All of the samples were obtained between 15 and 19 days after cows on the farms had tested positive for the virus.
“This is critical because, before this point, the recommendations for [H5N1] testing largely have focused on symptomatic workers,” says Meghan Davis at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. “When workers don’t know that they are infected, they inadvertently may expose other people in their communities to the infection.”
H5N1 is poorly adapted to infecting humans and isn’t known to transmit between people. Still, more than 900 people globally are reported to have had the virus since 2003, roughly half of whom died from it. Each of these infections offers the virus an opportunity to develop mutations that may make it more dangerous to people.
“We in public health need to cast a wider net of who we offer a test,” said Shah at a press conference today. “Going forward, the CDC is expanding its testing recommendation to include workers who were exposed [to H5N1] and do not have symptoms.”
The agency is also recommending that antiviral medications be offered to asymptomatic workers who have a high-risk exposure, like those on dairy farms who may get raw milk splashed on their face. That way, if they do contract the virus, a lower amount of it will be circulating within them, which in turn lowers the risk of it spreading to other people. “The less room we give this virus to run, the fewer chances we give it to change,” said Shah.
This data also highlights that many H5N1 cases are going undetected – a concern public health officials have long suspected to be true. Yet “we can’t speculate on how many unidentified cases there may be” until we have more data, said Shah.
The CDC is now analysing an additional 150 blood samples collected from veterinarians who work with cattle. When these results become available, they should provide us with a clearer picture of how many cases may be slipping through the cracks, said Shah.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday November 13, @04:14AM
I remember the days when the characters of the comic strip Pogo panicked over the threat of cowpox.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Barenflimski on Wednesday November 13, @04:27AM
Anyone who thought pandemic hoaxes were about Democrats were wrong. Seems like these things follow Donald Trump around.
Mask up bitches!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday November 13, @06:19AM (2 children)
Rare but documented.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7135816/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 2) by sbgen on Wednesday November 13, @04:01PM (1 child)
What is rare today need not remain so later on. It can change quickly if the right conditions are made available to the pathogen.
Warning: Not a computer expert, but got to use it. Yes, my kind does exist.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday November 13, @08:55PM
I'm more afraid that some version of Ebola that is endemic to Madagascar will eventually be "the bad one".
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday November 13, @01:59PM (6 children)
The good news here is the antibodies show humans are capable of mounting an autoimmune response. Of course, that makes it more bad news for big pharma's desperate search for a Covid 2.0. They must already be reeling from the reckoning that's about to happen at the FDA. I can't wait to see how the FDA responds when they are forced to justify why almost five years later, Covid "vaccines" are still being approved through Emergency Use Authorizations rather than the normal approval process.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-and-authorizes-updated-mrna-covid-19-vaccines-better-protect-against-currently [fda.gov]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday November 13, @05:43PM (3 children)
Covid turned into a religion pretty quickly. I wonder about the outcome of bird flu. Will it merge into the existing covid religion or turn into a splinter cult of the covid religion or become a competing religion with its own ritual behaviors and ritual attire?
I'd be interested in the historical aspects of this undetected disease. People have been keeping chickens in very close proximity for a very long time indeed. I wonder what they find in archeological evidence.
This was interesting to read. The article story starts in 1996 and ends in 2012 although surely "something" was circulating before '96. Apparently they claim farm birds in China caught it from migratory birds in the early 90s, but there's thousands of years of history of farmers farming birds exposed to other birds; interesting. Surely this not the first time i history an undomesticated bird was in the presence of a domesticated bird.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3787969/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bussdriver on Thursday November 14, @12:13AM (1 child)
I question if you even know what a religion is.
Oh, BTW, somebody eventually wins the lottery and the odds are slim but still there are things with lower odds. Such as a once in a century disaster, or pandemic, etc. The odds can change; you can put more energy into the atmosphere, or increase how many birds interact , throw around antibiotics recklessly, etc.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday November 14, @01:16PM
The propaganda from their religion is that the end of the world is near to punish what they consider sinners, like this winter. Its very tiresome.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ChrisMaple on Thursday November 14, @03:41AM
It seems like COVID quickly devolved into a whole range of opinions of varying intensities. Some people on each side of the vaccine issue panicked, and many on each side stridently voiced their views while ignoring conflicting evidence. Alternatives to injections were treated as cure-alls or poison. Censorship was widespread and draconian. Abuse of government and private employees was commonplace.
It's almost 5 years since the first news about COVID reached the public, and still most of the information is unknown by the general public. Few of the widespread lies have been refuted in the popular press.
The distinction between science and the pronouncements of scientists has been deliberately blurred. It's not at all clear that the overreach by government has been recognized, nor steps to prevent its recurrence taken.
(Score: 2) by bussdriver on Thursday November 14, @12:06AM
The biggest "test" in history already happened with the COVID shot and it did great!
What is wrong with that? Why does it need any approval BS?
Oh and changes that are slight tweaks to a new kind of vaccine that allows for slight tweaks doesn't need a forever approval process that is slower than the mutations. Furthermore, when they get this affordable for custom mRNA cures to attack your specific cancer cells -- we'll need a different process to handle those... how do you do a test process for something that works only on 1 person?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14, @12:14PM
I'm not sure whether to be more dismayed by your troll comment or the fact that someone else modded it up. You did post that comment for the purpose of trolling, right?
The word "autoimmune" refers to disorders where the immune system incorrectly attacks otherwise healthy tissue in the body. Such an immune response would *not* be good news.
I'll reply to the rest of the comment under the assumption that you meant "immune" instead of "autoimmune".
Humans also produce an immune response to SARS-CoV-2, and serology tests revealed that many people had antibodies but only experienced minor symptoms or did not recall any symptoms at all. Of course, people who had minor symptoms were still able to spread the virus to others. Also, people who were elderly or had certain underlying health conditions were much more likely to experience severe illness. The fact that humans can generate an immune response to a virus should not be conflated with the ability of the virus to cause severe illness. There simply isn't good data on how many people have been infected by H5N1 and the outcomes of those infections, meaning that we simply don't know how widespread or deadly it really is. It's not clear at all that the population of farm workers is representative of the general public, meaning that we don't know how much risk there is to groups of people who may be more vulnerable to severe illness.
Novel viruses that can be transmitted easily tend to spread rapidly through the human population, causing a pandemic. It's very likely that H5N1 will eventually acquire the ability to be readily transmitted from person to person. Then the question is how deadly the virus is once it acquires that ability. We simply don't know the answer to this. But we do know that there was a very deadly pandemic in 1918-1920 when a strain of H1N1 influenza that originated in birds spread rapidly in humans. It makes sense to be develop and test vaccines for H5N1 because we know that influenza is capable of causing a dangerous pandemic.
They are vaccines, not "vaccines". The mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 have been quite effective at preventing severe illness. The fear mongering about the safety of the vaccines is just not supported by the actual data about adverse events following vaccination.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday November 15, @01:44AM
What is the incidence in the general population? I certainly have bird flu antibodies, because I've had bird flu, there was a strain one year that traveled from human to human. I had no birds or cows.
I only skimmed, so I may have missed the part where it said what the incidence is in non farm workers.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron