Scientists Confirm Bird Flu Is Now Spreading Between Mammals

I've been using this a lot lately

On the bright side, another lockdown might just put the kabosh on all this forced RTO nonsense lol
- "You're not a BIRD, Susan. I expect to see you at your desk on Monday." --asshole bosses
- Probably lower carbon emissions too
- The Canadian government would still bring ~~his~~ its employees back first, just to prove a point

I thought they'd confirmed that almost a year ago when it was spreading through sea mammals?

Yes. Literally killing dolphins.

https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2024/05/07/new-revelations-in-the-mystery-of-the-dolphin-with-the-bird-flu/

And inefficient airborne transmission from Mink to Ferret. (Not that they are aquatic, but the transmission is concerning.)

https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/h5n1-virus-2022-mink-outbreak-capable-inefficient-airborne-transmission/#:~:text=H5N1 avian influenza is widespread,Credit%3A Opla%2FGetty Images.

Not a fan of how many innocent people will die from another pandemic, but I don't think I'm going to be upset if the anti-vaxxers select themselves out of the population.

I wish they would do so without murdering immune compromised neighbors nor negligent homiciding their children.
- Except Darwin giggles with glee
This stuff will make us all go vegan. With a mortality rate of 50%, there won't be any anti-vaxxers as everyone will be scared for their lives.
- This isn't how people work I think. Instead you will have people who have been primed by prior experience that their ignorance worked out. EG people who by dint of age and health only ever had <1/10th of 1% of dying from covid didn't get vaccinated and had covid 3 times and are fine LEARNED that vaccinating isn't important.
  
  If there is a 50% mortality event they will have learned that their shit works long enough to catch it and die while listening to their facebook groups tell them they just need to take some vitamin C. They'll keep telling each other its all a scam, just normal flue, someone will chime in that they've already had it months prior to this being even possible. They'll shit talk until they die in their houses.
- I'm going to miss dairy cheese but I am willing to accept dramatic reductions in non-vegan food for the good of the world. Some people just lose their mind over the idea of eating less animal products though.

⊙﹏⊙

It is way too easy to win that game. Which is incredibly frightening.

The highly virulent B3.13 form of the H5N1 virus has already led to the culling of 90 million domestic birds in the US alone since 2022. The CDC says the risk to the general public from the H5N1 strain is currently low, with the 11 infected so far in the US reporting mild symptoms.

Yet a single confirmed death of a vulnerable person from the related H5N2 virus in Mexico serves as a stark reminder of the risks involved, should the pathogen evolve.

Of note, the H5N2 virus is a completely different strain of influenza from what this article is about, and this guy, who had severe comorbidities, is the only known person in the entire world to have contracted it. This case is completely unrelated to the H5N1 outbreak, but I guess it "serves as a stark reminder."

I'm nearly as far from an expert on infectious diseases as it gets, but - and if anyone who knows about influenza reproduction can chime in - I remember reading that influenza has incredible abilities to mutate wildly and recombine. The analogy was like, if human reproduction is like taking two decks of cards and randomly shuffling half of each deck together, then influenza is like taking any number of decks, randomly chopping up and re-splicing portions of random individual cards together, as well as resorting all of them back together without any regard for whether the results are going to even produce anything that can live or not. But the reproductions and randomizations are so voluminous that it doesn't matter - at least some of it will stick.

In other words, in addition to the wildly rapid mutation capabilities these viruses have - if you have animals that are carrying more than one strain of influenza simultaneously, those two or more strains can produce hybrids.

But again: citation needed.
- I'll honestly trust the CDC's opinion that is currently low risk, since they know all about viruses and their mutation rates and chances of jumping from other mammals to humans

Gee, maybe this is why "why is my dog/cat bleeding from the eyes" and similar Google searches have been trending around industrial scale meat processing hotspots for months.

Source?
- Google trends. Ask it questions like "why is my cat bleeding" or "why is my dog bleeding" and look at trends and localization over the last 3mo. Search in both English and Spanish to capture data from native Spanish speakers (the bulk of the workforce at meat processing plants) and their extended communities.
  
  Google h5n1 symptoms in cats and dogs (bleeding from the eyes, ass, high fever, pink eye, seizures, etc) and come up with queries that everyday people might Google (like: "why is my dog bleeding from his privates" because Americans can't say "anus") and go from there.
  
  I haven't really kept track of all of the queries we looked through over the last couple of months, this was more my SO's thing. Epidemiologist Twitter probably has some good data too.
  
  Off the top of my head pink eye in dogs, cats with seizures, cats bleeding from their eyes, dogs bleeding from the ass, high fevers, etc all had pretty narrow localization around major industrialized meat packing plants or industrial scale livestock farming.
What?!? How do you find that data? That's super alarming
- Google trends, see my reply to the other comment. Epidemiology Twitter has a bunch of related chatter on the topic too.
  
  If you want to dive into a data topic like this my first stop is Twitter to see what the experts are saying, then Google trends to see how that translates into searches the mass public are making while dealing with it.

If anyone wants help going vegan, I'd be happy to help. Even if it's infeasible to get enough people in the world to stop eating animals fast enough to avert the next pandemic, there is evidence that people who eat plant-based have better outcomes from getting sick, as well as just getting sick less in general. Not to mention getting animal products out of your homes reduces one of the vectors through which pathogens can spread. So at the very least you'd be giving yourself your own best chance (just keep in mind it's no replacement for vaccinations!)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=047C-mMQpSE

there is evidence that people who eat plant-based have better outcomes from getting sick

Sounds like a steak side salad would be beneficial.
- No, no it would not be beneficial. That would be the opposite of beneficial (unless it's plant-based steak).
I spent years feeling guilty eating factory farmed meat from fast food chains and supermarkets. I knew it was bad, but I gave into peer pressure and was lazy, I didn't want to sacrifice eating a bunch of foods that I liked, plus I believed all the myths about nutrition deficiency and so forth.

But eventually I watched the Food Inc. documentary, that pushed me over the edge. I couldn't keep being a hypocrite, I knew I had to make a change and I went 100% Vegetarian later that month. It's been over 4 years now and I am healthier than I've ever been in my life.

I actually still believed the myths about nutrition for vegans/vegetarians when I made the switch, I just excepted that it was morally right and I would just have to except being weak and somewhat malnourished. But about 6 months into my switch, I came across the Game Changers documentary which debunked all of the myths about nutrition I had been told.

I have cut out the majority of dairy products from my diet too and drink Soy or Oat milk now. I cook with it for pancakes and other recipes that traditionally call for milk.

Overall, it has been fantastic for my health, plus I've convinced several family members to cut down on their meat consumption significantly, and two of them have even gone Pescatarian.

pls not again

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It's almost like exploiting and killing trillions of sentient beings just so you can have five minutes of mouth pleasure is an inexcusably shitty thing to do and has its consequences. Let's keep it up /s

Seriously, most zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistance could be prevented entirely if we'd simply stop doing the most absurdly cruel things to animals. You should be vegan and be lobbying your governments to end subsidies to animal agriculture and replacing it with subsidies for other things we can eat.

exploiting and killing trillions of sentient beings just so you can have five minutes of mouth pleasure

no one does that
- Militent vegetarians and vegans have worms in their brains. You can't reason with them.
- The meat people eat is produced by killing animals. That's exactly what is being done, on insane scale. Billions of animals being treated as products.

Stock on toilet paper!

Well, we think we eradicated one of the existing flu strands during covid and we're wondering what to do with the extra capacity (more shots with less strains or find something new to add) and I guess we've found something new to add.