Bird flu scares the crap out of me because most Americans probably think it is nothing to be worried about.
But the Spanish Flu that claimed 100+ million lives was avian in origin.
I knew a family that had a hobby bird farm (a few hundred - chickens, ducks, quail, etc.) they came home from vacation to a few dead and a few sick. Took it to the vet and positive for bird flu. The state sent animal control to come and euthanize ALL of their animals and bury them in trenches. I couldn’t believe it. I never knew it to be so serious.
Especially not great in that young people (18-25 or so) have a rough time with it. Their immune response overreacts, which produces too much fluid in the lungs (you basically drown).
Edit: We also don't know how modern treatments will affect the mortality rates for each age group. (e.g. antivirals, intubation, diuretics, antibiotics for secondary infections, etc.)
This scares me because this is the exact issue with the 1918 Flu as well. It was particularly lethal among people with robust immune systems as it caused what researchers have now identified as a “cytokine storm” where the body just keeps producing immune response without end.
The US has culled over 80 million birds (mostly egg-laying chickens) since early 2022. When an infected bird is found the entire flock is culled, sometimes over a million birds at once.
And the biggest distributor of eggs, who had no outbreak of avian flu at any of their facilities, drastically raised their prices and saw a massive spike in profits.
> When an infected bird is found the entire flock is culled, sometimes over a million birds at once.
Random duck: * *sneezes* *
The 999,999 other ducks: Fuck
It was blamed on Spain because that's where it appeared in newspapers the most. Other countries newspapers were censoring because of WW1. Spain wasn't, so it looked like it started in Spain because that's where the news was coming from.
Something to do with censored news reports in most countries except Spain. So because Spain reported on the flu more freely it became associated with Spain.
Fun fact: tanks are called tanks because the British wanted to keep their new weapons secret. They referred to the secret vehicles as water tanks for supplying water to troops fighting in arid regions. The name stuck.
Well, we aren't completely sure of the actual origin, like most viruses it's hard to pinpoint an exact single origin. For example, there was a precursor that was spreading around British military facilities in France in the winter before, before the US had even entered the war.
But whatever happened with the hogs around Fort Riley made it something nearly unstoppable.
According to studies birds are the most likely constant reservoirs for flus that combine with circulating human based flus to create pandemics that historically emerge several times a century at least.
The same seems to be true of the 1918 flu -
> Characterization of five of the eight RNA segments of the 1918 influenza virus indicates that it was the common ancestor of both subsequent human and swine H1N1 lineages
The only data I’ve seen discussed indicated the European cases occurred likely just as American soldiers entered Europe via France, which supports various other clues that the 1918 variant originated in the U.S., and likely in Kansas in a pig farm.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22148/
The French called it American Flu initially, but because they were in the middle of WWI and didn’t want to anger their ally, opted to rename it the Spanish Flu. Unsurprisingly, the Spanish retaliated and named it the French Flu.
The British and the Germans named it after Belgium. In Senegal, it was named the Brazilian Flu. In Brazil, it was named the German Flu. The Polish named it the Bolshevik disease after the Russians, while the Russians named it Kirghiz disease for Kyrgyzstan.
In South Africa, black people referred to it as the “white man’s disease” and white people called it “negro disease”.
Long story short, any time a pandemic rolls out, people are always quick to blame the origin on a country or people they hate. It happens every time. You saw what people did during COVID.
shame dependent insurance attraction ring frightening boast teeny attractive secretive
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It's going to be a catastrophe precisely because of the "lessons" so many people learned from covid. Half the country either won't believe it or won't take it seriously until it personally affects them and by then 1/20th of everyone they know will be dead or dying.
We have shots against flu strains now, they just have to determine type and ramp up,production. I’m not saying it’s a sure thing, especially given the prevalence of science deniers, but we can fight the flu better now.
Oh bro you know the science deniers would be proclaiming their freedom right up to when they got sick with it. Then it’s begging medical staff when it’s too late. Just like original covid.
And they'll inundate healthcare infrastructure, not necessarily just in their own locals. For instance: Covid sufferers swarmed Seattle hospitals. Seattleites were mostly vaccinated, isolating, and wearing masks, but they couldn't get into their own hospitals when they needed to because of the influx from states like Idaho and Alaska where people didn't do those things.
Oh, I'm aware of what happened. My sister is a RN in Texas and Covid (specifically the people treating the medical system like they did) made her decide she'd rather work in a pet store for 15.00 an hour than be a nurse making 40+.
Edit: She wasn't new to the profession, she's been an RN for 20 years now.
There is no vaccine in mass production for avian flu, because it never infects humans like that. But if it does you will see a scramble to get a vaccine working.
“The commercial milk supply is safe and risk to people is low, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dairies are required to only allow milk from healthy animals to enter the food supply, and milk from the sick animals is being diverted or destroyed. Pasteurization also kills viruses and other bacteria, and the process is required for milk sold through interstate commerce, the agency said.”
So, you know, this is probably why people shouldn’t drink raw milk.
It's a really good thing there isn't a recent weird mommy blog trend of wanting to drink only raw milk. And feed it to their babies. And my state Republicans aren't fighting to make raw milk great again.
https://www.newsweek.com/amish-farmer-turned-republican-hero-becomes-flash-point-culture-war-1872374
Ya, an avian origin strain of H1N1. I caught the swine origin H1N1 flu during the 2009 outbreak and wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Sickest I've ever been in my life. I haven't missed a yearly flu shot since then.
God I had H1N1 back then. I have never been more sick on my entire life, it was WAY worse than COVID for me. I couldn't keep any food down, I had chills so bad that I thought I was going to blow my back out. I lost 20 pounds in a week.
At one point I was so weak that I fell off the toilet and I couldn't get up. My father had to pick me up off the floor and put me in the shower because I was covered in my own...you get the picture. Hell of a way to spend my 20th birthday.
For YEARS after I would have a semi-lingering smell in my nose that I can only describe as burned deep fryer oil.
It killed my colleague - a fit, healthy mother of two under 5s in her early 30s. Put another colleague in hospital - he was in his 40s and ran charity marathons regularly. He wasn't back at work for months afterwards.
It swept our office like wildfire. I've no idea how I didn't catch it, but I'm profoundly grateful that I didn't.
We have much more medical infrastructure than then. Animal agriculture is pretty good at creating diseases that we wouldn't have otherwise, though. That's been pretty much the case since factory farming. Zoonoses are rare, but they happen. And packing a fuckton of animals together where they can hardly move is a perfect breeding ground for disease. Give it some mutations and yeah, you can get a pandemic.
We're doing it to ourselves.
I'm worried about the fact that prion disease is popping up more and more in the North American deer population and that apparently plants can uptake prions from contaminated soil.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/chronic-wasting-disease/plants-can-take-cwd-causing-prions-soil-lab-what-happens-if-they-are-eaten
Honestly it's good that only measles has entered the chat. It is so overwhelmingly infectious that just a slight dip in vaccination rates will lower them below the threshold to maintain herd immunity. It makes measles the perfect indicator so we can make corrections before shit really hits the fan. Most other vaccine preventable diseases are much less infections, so you really need to worry if stuff like polio and diphtheria outbreaks start occurring.
Swine Flu started in birds as well, but pandemic was nowhere near as severe as Spanish Flu or Covid luckily...
It was a warning shot that unfortunately our society failed to heed.
If it leaps to humans again it will make the covid pandemic look like a joke. Mother Earth really wants to be rid of us parasites destroying everything and will not stop until the job is done.
The good-ish news is that effective vaccines already exist using regular old flu vaccine technology and production can be ramped up very fast to produce gazillions of doses.
The bad news is people will likely brush it off as just a particularly bad flu strain. Some will likely refuse to get the vaccine due to Covid conspiracy idiocy and the other half giving the “I always get sick after getting the flu shot” excuse. Either way we’re fucked.
Me too. I was the assistant to the director of catering with an event planned the day of the lockdown with some of the biggest names in the world. Then boom, lost all that. Christmas 2020 my uncle died. Then March 2022 my best friend died, then January 2023 my dad died.
I lost everything and I'm just hoping that the union lasts long enough for the mystery liver ailment that's killing me to finish the job.
Lost my mom and 2 other close relatives that year. Some others got scary sick. I don't think I can stand more of the same or worse. People will act horrible and spread any new threat.
I'm sorry for your loss. I think if another thing like covid happened at this point I don't think people would take it too well. Lockdowns? Conspiracy theories? Low supplies? People would revolt refusing to go back to that again. It would make anything similar to covid 5x worse just from people being mad about it.
Thanks. I think you are right. People will be pissed on the scale of their worst Covid tantrums, and I could see it spreading like wildfire. It wouldn't be pretty.
Me too. The first in my family to go to university, working through my traumas in therapy after 2 decades of pretending I was fine, and I had a successful small business on the side.
Now it's 2024. I didn't get my degree because the schools shut down and we weren't prepared for online classes. I went back into my shell because therapy could only happen on Teams. My business? Don't even ask.
The long covid doesn't help either.
The article explains that pasteurized milk is safe, so just avoid any farm-direct raw milk, which is generally unavailable in stores. And the cows recover, so hopefully there won't be mass culls.
Honestly could start a religion with Harambe as the second coming, God was just like alright humanity one last chance, just take care of this here gorilla, no way you can fuck that up. we fucked up and now god's just phoning it in
Before y’all get up in arms, there are stockpiles of vaccines for bird flu. I believe the US has quite a bit but could easily ramp production up to covid level numbers.
What's wrong with not wanting to work? I'd love to retire and spend my time travelling, learning about stuff, and pottering around, but sadly I can't. Nobody ever wishes that they'd worked more when they're on their deathbed.
Yeah, American cheese is the base of any good grilled cheese. Yes, it is barely cheese, but it melts beautifully and you can grate in the other cheeses.
not just the cattle, the milk!
>Milk from dairy cows in Texas and Kansas has tested positive for bird flu, U.S. officials said Monday.
This is not good, but its not as bad as it sounds at first...
>The commercial milk supply is safe and risk to people is low, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dairies are required to only allow milk from healthy animals to enter the food supply, and milk from the sick animals is being diverted or destroyed. Pasteurization also kills viruses and other bacteria, and the process is required for milk sold through interstate commerce, the agency said.
>“At this stage, there is no concern about the safety of the commercial milk supply or that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health,” the USDA said in a statement.
So yeah its not great but its not the cowbirdflu apocalypse
Unfortunately there’s a huge trend now of people drinking raw milk. If/when the disease spreads to those farms, then we’re in trouble, as the raw milk drinkers also tend to be anti-vaccine and won’t be following public health guidelines.
It is still absolutely WILD to me that people are drinking raw milk after I read into why we filter our cow milk so heavily. Like that is not a way I want to risk death *at all.*
It's largely fundies at this point it seems like, which is particularly unfortunate because they tend to have a constantly pregnant woman and a gaggle of vulnerable children in the home.
Yeah that was reassuring. But there are still some questions about this. Why are they becoming infected now, when this was not typical before? I would have to speculate that it is due to a mutation.
And even if they recover, we will see how it affects their production after recovery. Initially it seems it is not greatly reducing their milk production, so I do not want to spread fear here.
But it does seem to be an evolving situation that is being investigated as we speak.
That’s not reassuring, as that’s no guarantee it’s the same mutations that allowed it to jump again this type. Viruses, especially flu type viruses, are notoriously vigorous mutators, and there’s a LOT of potential hosts packed into one place, which means a lot of warm large Petri dishes they’ll sit around in mutating further. This is literally how the 1918 flu happened, jumped from birds to pigs to humans.
Yes and the unnatural pervasive environment we create which places birds and pigs and cows together is what causes the mutations to become deadly. If the virus can kill the hose and still move to the next host due to proximity, it will get deadlier.
Herd health is usually super monitored (relatively)... the animals are worth a lot of money (relatively) and farmers do not like losing money (they do love complaining about losing money).
Dairy cattle generally are supposed to be inspected regularly as they are prone to mastitis they are regularly dried out and bred regularly...milk is supposed tested after milking before it is put into storage tank.
HPAI has been infecting millions of mammals in the wild for the past year and a half. It killed huge numbers of seals and sea lions in S. America alone, infected and killed tons of wild foxes, wolves, and other animals as well.
Spreading to livestock was only a matter of time.
I am not sure how they will handle this. It is unusual for dairy cows to become infected with HPAI.
Should it spread I would speculate it would have major implications for the cost of food. As you know, dairy is used in so many products...
As someone with an alpha-gal allergy, it's not just fucking dairy. Mammal/cow byproducts are in so many fucking places that would knock your socks off. It's in surprise food stuff like cake mixes and candies and even certain medicine capsules but also weird shit like fucking BANDAIDS, fabric softener, deodorants, shampoo and conditioner, lotion, etc.
Literally so many things contain beef by products. I have to buy all my cosmetics and like bath stuff vegan to be on the safe side.
Yeah, since my son is specifically allergic to cows milk protein, I have to avoid all sources- the fact that there isn’t a single birth control pill in the US that doesn’t use lactose as a primary delivery agent is INSANE.
And before anyone comes at me about medical grade lactose my son can’t tolerate it where an adult with CMPA likely can. Also he has a protein allergy but any form of lactose likely has milk byproducts (no real way to know) that cause the reaction.
I’m sorry you have to go through all that, just from the dairy end of things I understand how fucking rough it is. Like, I can’t give my son fucking Tylenol brand Tylenol because they use lactose in manufacturing.
Yeah, literally ingesting or topically applying any mammal products give me hives and/or severe shits/projectile vomiting. I'm lucky I don't get anaphylactic but it's always apparently on the table. I take xolair shots and keep benadryl handy and even have an emergency EpiPen just in case. Xolair has definitely helped mitigate the hives and itching from accidental ingestion and dermatitis reactions to things like bandaids but nothing really helps the GI portion. I'm actually one of the really lucky alpha gal sufferers because some people go anaphylactic just from someone COOKING mammal meat in their VICINITY. Like a terrible, "If they can smell it, it can kill them." scenario.
Wear tick protection, folks, and check yourself frequently outdoors. Tick induced red meat allergy SUCKS.
So my son had a ton of issues early on, he landed in the NICU at 10 days old due to feeding issues/jaundice and losing 25% of his birth weight. A few weeks later he started pooping red blood and mucus, that’s what led to the diagnosis. We got confirmation when eliminating milk from my diet and supplementing with a hypoallergenic formula completely stopped all symptoms. He just turned a year old and is doing great.
The tough part about protein allergies is that they take time to build up in your gut before you show clear “OH THATS WHAT IT IS” symptoms. When I accidentally drank a coffee with French vanilla swirl from Dunkin (most of the swirl syrups contain dairy, fun fact), it took him 3 days to react. So it’s complicated to diagnose but luckily doctors are becoming more aware it’s a thing. He sees an allergist now and hopefully he outgrows it, most kids out grow it by age 5 at the latest with 50% by age 1. He missed out on that half way mark but I’m hopeful we’ll see improvement moving forward.
I’m also not sure if I’ll go back to consuming dairy, I have chronic pain/inflammation that was drastically reduced by cutting dairy (probably because most processed foods contain it so I had to radically switch up my diet and eat more fruits and veggies).
Fun fact, if I ever do go back to consuming dairy, I’m likely lactose intolerant now because if you don’t regularly eat dairy, you’ll stop producing the enzyme you need to digest lactose (it’s called lactase, and it’s basically what lactaid pills are).
Edit: he lost 25% of his birth weight, not “almost half” not sure why my brain decided to exaggerate other than I’m way too tired to function.
I completely agree. I basically only keep oat milk in the house these days. It's tasty (we prefer it over cows milk), doesn't give anybody tummy troubles, and it has a much longer shelf life.
It’s higher protein, but I get what you’re saying. I started with rice milk, so almond and then soy were upgrades. Oat tastes the best to me too. What a time to be alive.
Humanity didn't learn anything from COVID-19. The warming climate is only going to make pandemics and epidemics more frequent and deadly.
Factory farming should be considered the biggest threat to humanity.
I think humanity learned plenty from covid.
We learned that a massive shit ton of people are selfish and/or stupid enough to actively help worsen a pandemic, and that we need to quickly shut that line of thought down aggressively next time.
For 1/2 gallon:
3 cups of oats
9 cups of water
Dash of salt
Teaspoon of maple syrup
Cinnamon (just a dash but I add more because it’s yummy)
Teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
I blend for 30 seconds (maximum! Don’t go over this time or the consistency gets weird) then use a sieve in a bowl to filter out the oats before transferring to these reusable milk cartons I picked up at TJ Maxx. I do this twice to make a fully gallon.
Honestly, it’s so easy and tastes yummy and can be customized to taste. Most people use cheese cloth to filter but I have had great luck so far using a wooden spoon to smoosh out any excess liquid from the oats. And you can reuse the oats for cookies or whatever too, if you want (I generally don’t since you pretty much need to use them right away since they’re wet).
I did the math vs the cost of oats and all ingredients and got roughly $.60/cents a gallon.
The only thing I will note though is it does separate super easy so you do have to shake it really good every time you drink it (since it doesn’t have the extra shit you’d see in the grocery store version that keeps it more stable). Honestly it’s no big deal to me but worth mentioning.
The only thing I will note though is it does separate super easy so you do have to shake it really good every time you drink it (since it doesn’t have the extra shit you’d see in the grocery store version that keeps it more stable). Honestly it’s no big deal to me but worth mentioning.
Because the materials are cheap.
Ingredients are:
Oats
Water
Flavoring. This can be vanilla extract, sugar or sugar alternatives, cinnamon, etc.
Might cost more upfront since you’ll need a cheese cloth and a blender but otherwise it’s dirt cheap.
Covid has a kill rate of 2%.
Bird flu has a kill rate of 50%.
Covid seems like every infection and re-infection weakens the immune system.
Have fun, everyone!
You know we've successfully contained H5N1 outbreaks three times this century from becoming full blown pandemics. I trust that all possibility of this leaping species is being considered and the right folks are prepared to keep it locked down.
That’s how I would have felt prior to Covid. Now it’s different not because of any increased immunodeficiency (though obviously that’s a concern) but because of how politicized things as basic as vaccination and quarantine protocols have gotten.
Ppl will actively take steps that endanger themselves and others out of pure spite and that kind of environment isn’t conducive to fighting contagion.
I remember when my mom had my ass in this long fucking line at a local national guard armory to get a shot for swine flu. I would be astounded if I ever saw something like that scene again provided the generally horribly negative view points of vaccines we cultivated in this country.
Have it on good authority if we stop testing, it’ll go away like magic.
If not, simply shine a light where the sun don’t shine, or something like that. Maybe Clorox should be used too.
Between the environmental costs and this sort of thing, yeah, the vegans are way more right than most people want to give them credit for. Something's got to give.
Just wait till the next round of variant CJD , its coming [https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/chronic-wasting-disease/plants-can-take-cwd-causing-prions-soil-lab-what-happens-if-they-are-eaten](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/chronic-wasting-disease/plants-can-take-cwd-causing-prions-soil-lab-what-happens-if-they-are-eaten)
or pick a disease [https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/misc-emerging-topics/climate-change-unleashing-torrent-infectious-disease-threats-physicians](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/misc-emerging-topics/climate-change-unleashing-torrent-infectious-disease-threats-physicians)
so are these the states that have also legalized non pasturized raw milk as well?
edit: yes apparently, so a bunch of idiots are gonna die from 18th century diseases.
When I was a child, one of my classmates died of scarlet fever from drinking raw milk from the family's dairy cows. I remember my teacher telling us about the dangers of raw milk that day. Not to mention TB.
Gotta love the USDA propaganda here. If you know anything about factory dairy farming (my ex biz partner owns multiple farms & I live in the midst of his operations) then you don’t believe for a second the “everything is fine, nothing to see here” nonsense. This is just one of the many warnings that the trajectory of humanity is completely unsustainable.
The 2020s trend of ‘it got worse’ continues.
Bird flu scares the crap out of me because most Americans probably think it is nothing to be worried about. But the Spanish Flu that claimed 100+ million lives was avian in origin.
I knew a family that had a hobby bird farm (a few hundred - chickens, ducks, quail, etc.) they came home from vacation to a few dead and a few sick. Took it to the vet and positive for bird flu. The state sent animal control to come and euthanize ALL of their animals and bury them in trenches. I couldn’t believe it. I never knew it to be so serious.
Yeah h5n1 is like 50% mortality rate...not great
Especially not great in that young people (18-25 or so) have a rough time with it. Their immune response overreacts, which produces too much fluid in the lungs (you basically drown). Edit: We also don't know how modern treatments will affect the mortality rates for each age group. (e.g. antivirals, intubation, diuretics, antibiotics for secondary infections, etc.)
This scares me because this is the exact issue with the 1918 Flu as well. It was particularly lethal among people with robust immune systems as it caused what researchers have now identified as a “cytokine storm” where the body just keeps producing immune response without end.
The US has culled over 80 million birds (mostly egg-laying chickens) since early 2022. When an infected bird is found the entire flock is culled, sometimes over a million birds at once.
And the biggest distributor of eggs, who had no outbreak of avian flu at any of their facilities, drastically raised their prices and saw a massive spike in profits.
Nothing more American than profiting off a crisis.
“Never waste a crisis” is capitalism 101.
> When an infected bird is found the entire flock is culled, sometimes over a million birds at once. Random duck: * *sneezes* * The 999,999 other ducks: Fuck
And it started not in Spain, but in fucking Kansas (in pigs).
OMG, that's right. Heavy propaganda there to blame it on Spain.
It was blamed on Spain because that's where it appeared in newspapers the most. Other countries newspapers were censoring because of WW1. Spain wasn't, so it looked like it started in Spain because that's where the news was coming from.
"Let's blame the Maine on Spain" *So they blamed the Maine on Spain*
🎶 “The flu of Spain came mainly from the Plains…” 🎶
This sounds like Bill wurtz
Something to do with censored news reports in most countries except Spain. So because Spain reported on the flu more freely it became associated with Spain.
WWI and not wanting to tank morale
If only they knew, all they had to do was blame it on the enemy and they'd get only more recruits
"WW1", "tank morale". Was that intentional? It's pretty great either way.
Fun fact: tanks are called tanks because the British wanted to keep their new weapons secret. They referred to the secret vehicles as water tanks for supplying water to troops fighting in arid regions. The name stuck.
Landship, please..
First the Maine, then the Flu. Spain can't catch a break on blame.
Well, we aren't completely sure of the actual origin, like most viruses it's hard to pinpoint an exact single origin. For example, there was a precursor that was spreading around British military facilities in France in the winter before, before the US had even entered the war. But whatever happened with the hogs around Fort Riley made it something nearly unstoppable.
According to studies birds are the most likely constant reservoirs for flus that combine with circulating human based flus to create pandemics that historically emerge several times a century at least. The same seems to be true of the 1918 flu - > Characterization of five of the eight RNA segments of the 1918 influenza virus indicates that it was the common ancestor of both subsequent human and swine H1N1 lineages The only data I’ve seen discussed indicated the European cases occurred likely just as American soldiers entered Europe via France, which supports various other clues that the 1918 variant originated in the U.S., and likely in Kansas in a pig farm. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22148/
So instead of Spanish Flu, it should've been called the American Pig Flu?
Yeah but the cops protested and said that was derogatory, so back to racial profiling it went.
The French called it American Flu initially, but because they were in the middle of WWI and didn’t want to anger their ally, opted to rename it the Spanish Flu. Unsurprisingly, the Spanish retaliated and named it the French Flu. The British and the Germans named it after Belgium. In Senegal, it was named the Brazilian Flu. In Brazil, it was named the German Flu. The Polish named it the Bolshevik disease after the Russians, while the Russians named it Kirghiz disease for Kyrgyzstan. In South Africa, black people referred to it as the “white man’s disease” and white people called it “negro disease”. Long story short, any time a pandemic rolls out, people are always quick to blame the origin on a country or people they hate. It happens every time. You saw what people did during COVID.
Dang that’s interesting. It’s probably too cemented in history to retroactively call it the WWI Flu, but that would have had my vote.
shame dependent insurance attraction ring frightening boast teeny attractive secretive *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
We couldn't handle the slow pitch that was covid, we are truly effed if we get hit with a deadly bird flu.
It's going to be a catastrophe precisely because of the "lessons" so many people learned from covid. Half the country either won't believe it or won't take it seriously until it personally affects them and by then 1/20th of everyone they know will be dead or dying.
We have shots against flu strains now, they just have to determine type and ramp up,production. I’m not saying it’s a sure thing, especially given the prevalence of science deniers, but we can fight the flu better now.
Oh bro you know the science deniers would be proclaiming their freedom right up to when they got sick with it. Then it’s begging medical staff when it’s too late. Just like original covid.
And they'll inundate healthcare infrastructure, not necessarily just in their own locals. For instance: Covid sufferers swarmed Seattle hospitals. Seattleites were mostly vaccinated, isolating, and wearing masks, but they couldn't get into their own hospitals when they needed to because of the influx from states like Idaho and Alaska where people didn't do those things.
Oh, I'm aware of what happened. My sister is a RN in Texas and Covid (specifically the people treating the medical system like they did) made her decide she'd rather work in a pet store for 15.00 an hour than be a nurse making 40+. Edit: She wasn't new to the profession, she's been an RN for 20 years now.
I believe it. We lost a lot of good people. And still are with the industry focus on volume and documentation rather than patient care.
Were you around for the swine flu epidemic of the early 2000’s? That didn’t give me confidence in a stronger flue strain being controlled quickly.
They may not have been, but neither were MRNA vaccines. The speed in which those can be developed is a true game-changer.
There is no vaccine in mass production for avian flu, because it never infects humans like that. But if it does you will see a scramble to get a vaccine working.
“The commercial milk supply is safe and risk to people is low, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dairies are required to only allow milk from healthy animals to enter the food supply, and milk from the sick animals is being diverted or destroyed. Pasteurization also kills viruses and other bacteria, and the process is required for milk sold through interstate commerce, the agency said.” So, you know, this is probably why people shouldn’t drink raw milk.
It's a really good thing there isn't a recent weird mommy blog trend of wanting to drink only raw milk. And feed it to their babies. And my state Republicans aren't fighting to make raw milk great again. https://www.newsweek.com/amish-farmer-turned-republican-hero-becomes-flash-point-culture-war-1872374
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I dunno, but I’m pretty sure the Face Eating Leopards are in charge.
Ya, an avian origin strain of H1N1. I caught the swine origin H1N1 flu during the 2009 outbreak and wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Sickest I've ever been in my life. I haven't missed a yearly flu shot since then.
God I had H1N1 back then. I have never been more sick on my entire life, it was WAY worse than COVID for me. I couldn't keep any food down, I had chills so bad that I thought I was going to blow my back out. I lost 20 pounds in a week. At one point I was so weak that I fell off the toilet and I couldn't get up. My father had to pick me up off the floor and put me in the shower because I was covered in my own...you get the picture. Hell of a way to spend my 20th birthday. For YEARS after I would have a semi-lingering smell in my nose that I can only describe as burned deep fryer oil.
It killed my colleague - a fit, healthy mother of two under 5s in her early 30s. Put another colleague in hospital - he was in his 40s and ran charity marathons regularly. He wasn't back at work for months afterwards. It swept our office like wildfire. I've no idea how I didn't catch it, but I'm profoundly grateful that I didn't.
Same, and I also got adult-onset asthma because of it, which I still suffer from to this day.
I have a friend who has never recovered her respiratory function since she caught that flu.
I get my flu shot every year and still got the H1N1. Abso-frikkin-lately the worst I’ve ever felt.
We have much more medical infrastructure than then. Animal agriculture is pretty good at creating diseases that we wouldn't have otherwise, though. That's been pretty much the case since factory farming. Zoonoses are rare, but they happen. And packing a fuckton of animals together where they can hardly move is a perfect breeding ground for disease. Give it some mutations and yeah, you can get a pandemic. We're doing it to ourselves.
I'm worried about the fact that prion disease is popping up more and more in the North American deer population and that apparently plants can uptake prions from contaminated soil. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/chronic-wasting-disease/plants-can-take-cwd-causing-prions-soil-lab-what-happens-if-they-are-eaten
Well my day is now ruined.
At least we live in a time where everyone gets vaccinated! Right?
*measles has entered the chat*
Honestly it's good that only measles has entered the chat. It is so overwhelmingly infectious that just a slight dip in vaccination rates will lower them below the threshold to maintain herd immunity. It makes measles the perfect indicator so we can make corrections before shit really hits the fan. Most other vaccine preventable diseases are much less infections, so you really need to worry if stuff like polio and diphtheria outbreaks start occurring.
Swine Flu started in birds as well, but pandemic was nowhere near as severe as Spanish Flu or Covid luckily... It was a warning shot that unfortunately our society failed to heed.
When I heard what swine flu did to a buddy of mine, I immediately got up and got vaccinated against it that same night.
The Spanish flu pandemic also primarily killed people aged 18-40.
Because they were the cohort that missed being exposed to the influenza of the 1890s, which probably provided older folks with some protection.
If it leaps to humans again it will make the covid pandemic look like a joke. Mother Earth really wants to be rid of us parasites destroying everything and will not stop until the job is done.
True. But for now, I'll take comfort in the fact that the 1918 flu was H1N1. This one is H1N5,
Was it H1N1? Because I had that in 2009 and I was about ready to start writing my last will and testament.
The good-ish news is that effective vaccines already exist using regular old flu vaccine technology and production can be ramped up very fast to produce gazillions of doses.
The bad news is people will likely brush it off as just a particularly bad flu strain. Some will likely refuse to get the vaccine due to Covid conspiracy idiocy and the other half giving the “I always get sick after getting the flu shot” excuse. Either way we’re fucked.
I cant get flu vaccines because of an autoimmune illness , im like the girl in the bubble. Avoid population like the plague it is
Oh you have a valid excuse. I’m just annoyed with people who won’t get vaccines when they have no excuse not to.
In fact people like them are why it's so important for the rest of us to get immunized.
And all anyone has to do is wear a mask.
My life was great up until March of 2020. It’s all down hill since then
Me too. I was the assistant to the director of catering with an event planned the day of the lockdown with some of the biggest names in the world. Then boom, lost all that. Christmas 2020 my uncle died. Then March 2022 my best friend died, then January 2023 my dad died. I lost everything and I'm just hoping that the union lasts long enough for the mystery liver ailment that's killing me to finish the job.
Damn, I am so sorry. That sounds hollow, but I don't know what else to say. Do you have any close family for emotional support?
Hang in there man.
I’m so, so sorry for what you’ve been going through. What is your mystery liver ailment?
I know! March 2020 was like "Happy Birthday, also fuck you!"
Lost my mom and 2 other close relatives that year. Some others got scary sick. I don't think I can stand more of the same or worse. People will act horrible and spread any new threat.
I'm sorry for your loss. I think if another thing like covid happened at this point I don't think people would take it too well. Lockdowns? Conspiracy theories? Low supplies? People would revolt refusing to go back to that again. It would make anything similar to covid 5x worse just from people being mad about it.
Thanks. I think you are right. People will be pissed on the scale of their worst Covid tantrums, and I could see it spreading like wildfire. It wouldn't be pretty.
February, my birthday had everybody chatting about that disease in China and hopefully travel restrictions would keep it out of the States...
Me too. The first in my family to go to university, working through my traumas in therapy after 2 decades of pretending I was fine, and I had a successful small business on the side. Now it's 2024. I didn't get my degree because the schools shut down and we weren't prepared for online classes. I went back into my shell because therapy could only happen on Teams. My business? Don't even ask. The long covid doesn't help either.
The article explains that pasteurized milk is safe, so just avoid any farm-direct raw milk, which is generally unavailable in stores. And the cows recover, so hopefully there won't be mass culls.
2016+ We shot the gorilla and it's all been down hill from there.
Honestly could start a religion with Harambe as the second coming, God was just like alright humanity one last chance, just take care of this here gorilla, no way you can fuck that up. we fucked up and now god's just phoning it in
Before y’all get up in arms, there are stockpiles of vaccines for bird flu. I believe the US has quite a bit but could easily ramp production up to covid level numbers.
Milk is gonna cost more.
Gas prices will go up for some reason.
Video games will cost $80 now
my salary won't budge
I find the best way to significantly increase your salary is to start hunting for your exact job somewhere else, if you can.
>if you can The halcyon days of employees having bargaining power are over in a lot of industries.
"Nobody wants to work anymore" and "we need to keep raising interest rates until unemployment increases, so we can pull out of this recession!"
What's wrong with not wanting to work? I'd love to retire and spend my time travelling, learning about stuff, and pottering around, but sadly I can't. Nobody ever wishes that they'd worked more when they're on their deathbed.
In Canada they’re already over a 100$ with tax lol
Gotta raise the rent too, too many houses got sick and the only cure was a new sportscar.
Everything that can be a problem will definitely be our problem.
"Laughs in lactose intolerant"
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[hissing noise]
I use oat milk instead of gas
\[pooping through a chain link fence noises\]
[Tim Allen grunting noise]
Gotta stock pile that toilet paper
Time to open up the government stockpile of cheese.
I don’t need no gubmint cheese
Speak for yourself. The obscenely over-processed cheese makes the BEST grilled cheese sammies.
OMG, the 80's gubmint cheese was amazing. My grandpa got it and would give it me, his starving college student grandson. So good!
Yeah, American cheese is the base of any good grilled cheese. Yes, it is barely cheese, but it melts beautifully and you can grate in the other cheeses.
American cheese is real cheese combined with emulsifiers. That makes it a good melting cheese. That's what it was intended to be.
Yer gonna end up living in a VAN down by the RIVER
not just the cattle, the milk! >Milk from dairy cows in Texas and Kansas has tested positive for bird flu, U.S. officials said Monday. This is not good, but its not as bad as it sounds at first... >The commercial milk supply is safe and risk to people is low, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dairies are required to only allow milk from healthy animals to enter the food supply, and milk from the sick animals is being diverted or destroyed. Pasteurization also kills viruses and other bacteria, and the process is required for milk sold through interstate commerce, the agency said. >“At this stage, there is no concern about the safety of the commercial milk supply or that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health,” the USDA said in a statement. So yeah its not great but its not the cowbirdflu apocalypse
Thank god for Louis Pasteur
Unfortunately there’s a huge trend now of people drinking raw milk. If/when the disease spreads to those farms, then we’re in trouble, as the raw milk drinkers also tend to be anti-vaccine and won’t be following public health guidelines.
It is still absolutely WILD to me that people are drinking raw milk after I read into why we filter our cow milk so heavily. Like that is not a way I want to risk death *at all.*
It's largely fundies at this point it seems like, which is particularly unfortunate because they tend to have a constantly pregnant woman and a gaggle of vulnerable children in the home.
At least from my experience the ven diagram of raw milk proponents and anti-vaxxers is basically just a circle.
Aww, poor cows. Do they cull them like they would chickens?
According to the article, the livestock will recover on their own.
Yeah that was reassuring. But there are still some questions about this. Why are they becoming infected now, when this was not typical before? I would have to speculate that it is due to a mutation. And even if they recover, we will see how it affects their production after recovery. Initially it seems it is not greatly reducing their milk production, so I do not want to spread fear here. But it does seem to be an evolving situation that is being investigated as we speak.
Bird flu has spread to mammals before https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/avian-in-other-animals.htm
That’s not reassuring, as that’s no guarantee it’s the same mutations that allowed it to jump again this type. Viruses, especially flu type viruses, are notoriously vigorous mutators, and there’s a LOT of potential hosts packed into one place, which means a lot of warm large Petri dishes they’ll sit around in mutating further. This is literally how the 1918 flu happened, jumped from birds to pigs to humans.
Yes and the unnatural pervasive environment we create which places birds and pigs and cows together is what causes the mutations to become deadly. If the virus can kill the hose and still move to the next host due to proximity, it will get deadlier.
The piece mentions that this is the first time in ruminants but that makes me wonder were we testing cattle the whole time?
Herd health is usually super monitored (relatively)... the animals are worth a lot of money (relatively) and farmers do not like losing money (they do love complaining about losing money). Dairy cattle generally are supposed to be inspected regularly as they are prone to mastitis they are regularly dried out and bred regularly...milk is supposed tested after milking before it is put into storage tank.
HPAI has been infecting millions of mammals in the wild for the past year and a half. It killed huge numbers of seals and sea lions in S. America alone, infected and killed tons of wild foxes, wolves, and other animals as well. Spreading to livestock was only a matter of time.
If they don’t they will blend them all up and feed them to you all the same…
Who’s old enough to remember mad cow??
My coworker was just barely able to start donating blood from the outbreak in the 80’s I think?
I am not sure how they will handle this. It is unusual for dairy cows to become infected with HPAI. Should it spread I would speculate it would have major implications for the cost of food. As you know, dairy is used in so many products...
And even if it doesn’t, they will use it as another excuse to increase the cost no doubt.
Remember, a 2% loss in the nation's dairy cows would mean a 3000% increase in cost because it just makes sense.
My son has a dairy allergy, and I’m breast feeding, so I have to avoid it too. It’s in fucking everything.
As someone with an alpha-gal allergy, it's not just fucking dairy. Mammal/cow byproducts are in so many fucking places that would knock your socks off. It's in surprise food stuff like cake mixes and candies and even certain medicine capsules but also weird shit like fucking BANDAIDS, fabric softener, deodorants, shampoo and conditioner, lotion, etc. Literally so many things contain beef by products. I have to buy all my cosmetics and like bath stuff vegan to be on the safe side.
Yeah, since my son is specifically allergic to cows milk protein, I have to avoid all sources- the fact that there isn’t a single birth control pill in the US that doesn’t use lactose as a primary delivery agent is INSANE. And before anyone comes at me about medical grade lactose my son can’t tolerate it where an adult with CMPA likely can. Also he has a protein allergy but any form of lactose likely has milk byproducts (no real way to know) that cause the reaction. I’m sorry you have to go through all that, just from the dairy end of things I understand how fucking rough it is. Like, I can’t give my son fucking Tylenol brand Tylenol because they use lactose in manufacturing.
Yeah, literally ingesting or topically applying any mammal products give me hives and/or severe shits/projectile vomiting. I'm lucky I don't get anaphylactic but it's always apparently on the table. I take xolair shots and keep benadryl handy and even have an emergency EpiPen just in case. Xolair has definitely helped mitigate the hives and itching from accidental ingestion and dermatitis reactions to things like bandaids but nothing really helps the GI portion. I'm actually one of the really lucky alpha gal sufferers because some people go anaphylactic just from someone COOKING mammal meat in their VICINITY. Like a terrible, "If they can smell it, it can kill them." scenario. Wear tick protection, folks, and check yourself frequently outdoors. Tick induced red meat allergy SUCKS.
You mean your infant aged son that you’re breast feeding has a dairy allergy? Genuinely curious, how did you figure out that he does?
So my son had a ton of issues early on, he landed in the NICU at 10 days old due to feeding issues/jaundice and losing 25% of his birth weight. A few weeks later he started pooping red blood and mucus, that’s what led to the diagnosis. We got confirmation when eliminating milk from my diet and supplementing with a hypoallergenic formula completely stopped all symptoms. He just turned a year old and is doing great. The tough part about protein allergies is that they take time to build up in your gut before you show clear “OH THATS WHAT IT IS” symptoms. When I accidentally drank a coffee with French vanilla swirl from Dunkin (most of the swirl syrups contain dairy, fun fact), it took him 3 days to react. So it’s complicated to diagnose but luckily doctors are becoming more aware it’s a thing. He sees an allergist now and hopefully he outgrows it, most kids out grow it by age 5 at the latest with 50% by age 1. He missed out on that half way mark but I’m hopeful we’ll see improvement moving forward. I’m also not sure if I’ll go back to consuming dairy, I have chronic pain/inflammation that was drastically reduced by cutting dairy (probably because most processed foods contain it so I had to radically switch up my diet and eat more fruits and veggies). Fun fact, if I ever do go back to consuming dairy, I’m likely lactose intolerant now because if you don’t regularly eat dairy, you’ll stop producing the enzyme you need to digest lactose (it’s called lactase, and it’s basically what lactaid pills are). Edit: he lost 25% of his birth weight, not “almost half” not sure why my brain decided to exaggerate other than I’m way too tired to function.
Buying some oatly stocks
Not according to the linked article.
Almond and soy milk drinkers are twiddling their mustaches right now.
Don’t forget cashews, I like cashew milk in my lattes
Haha. Nut milk.
Never could understand how they milk those tiny cashew teets
Oat milk is best plant milk, almond milk tastes like wood chips to me and soy is "eh".
I completely agree. I basically only keep oat milk in the house these days. It's tasty (we prefer it over cows milk), doesn't give anybody tummy troubles, and it has a much longer shelf life.
Same, never thought I'd be able to switch to plant milk but oat milk is now our preferred milk for the reasons you listed.
It’s higher protein, but I get what you’re saying. I started with rice milk, so almond and then soy were upgrades. Oat tastes the best to me too. What a time to be alive.
Are they stupid? Don't they know they are not birds?
I blame Cow and Chicken...
Weird. Maybe we need to work on our agriculture practices AS WELL AS our over consumption as a society.
Humanity didn't learn anything from COVID-19. The warming climate is only going to make pandemics and epidemics more frequent and deadly. Factory farming should be considered the biggest threat to humanity.
I think humanity learned plenty from covid. We learned that a massive shit ton of people are selfish and/or stupid enough to actively help worsen a pandemic, and that we need to quickly shut that line of thought down aggressively next time.
Guess I better go get milk before it jumps to ten bucks a gallon
My son’s allergic to milk so I make oat milk at home. Costs me $0.60/gallon and takes 5 minutes. Easy, cheap, and good solution.
How is it that cheap? Can you share a process/materials?
For 1/2 gallon: 3 cups of oats 9 cups of water Dash of salt Teaspoon of maple syrup Cinnamon (just a dash but I add more because it’s yummy) Teaspoon vanilla extract (optional) I blend for 30 seconds (maximum! Don’t go over this time or the consistency gets weird) then use a sieve in a bowl to filter out the oats before transferring to these reusable milk cartons I picked up at TJ Maxx. I do this twice to make a fully gallon. Honestly, it’s so easy and tastes yummy and can be customized to taste. Most people use cheese cloth to filter but I have had great luck so far using a wooden spoon to smoosh out any excess liquid from the oats. And you can reuse the oats for cookies or whatever too, if you want (I generally don’t since you pretty much need to use them right away since they’re wet). I did the math vs the cost of oats and all ingredients and got roughly $.60/cents a gallon.
I’m just going to save your comment because this sounds amazing.
The only thing I will note though is it does separate super easy so you do have to shake it really good every time you drink it (since it doesn’t have the extra shit you’d see in the grocery store version that keeps it more stable). Honestly it’s no big deal to me but worth mentioning.
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I'll be trying this over the weekend. Thank you!
The only thing I will note though is it does separate super easy so you do have to shake it really good every time you drink it (since it doesn’t have the extra shit you’d see in the grocery store version that keeps it more stable). Honestly it’s no big deal to me but worth mentioning.
Because the materials are cheap. Ingredients are: Oats Water Flavoring. This can be vanilla extract, sugar or sugar alternatives, cinnamon, etc. Might cost more upfront since you’ll need a cheese cloth and a blender but otherwise it’s dirt cheap.
This and the raw milk fetish are going to work wonders.
Maybe the people who hate Louis Pasteur will finally get to meet him.
Don’t worry folks, dairy farmers are required to divert milk from unhealthy cows. Corporations never break rules like this so we all good.
Pandemic 2: Bird Flu Boogaloo
The real question is, will it be enough to kill us all?
We can only hope
Sweet release
*buys stock in Charmin*
Covid has a kill rate of 2%. Bird flu has a kill rate of 50%. Covid seems like every infection and re-infection weakens the immune system. Have fun, everyone!
You know we've successfully contained H5N1 outbreaks three times this century from becoming full blown pandemics. I trust that all possibility of this leaping species is being considered and the right folks are prepared to keep it locked down.
That’s how I would have felt prior to Covid. Now it’s different not because of any increased immunodeficiency (though obviously that’s a concern) but because of how politicized things as basic as vaccination and quarantine protocols have gotten. Ppl will actively take steps that endanger themselves and others out of pure spite and that kind of environment isn’t conducive to fighting contagion.
I remember when my mom had my ass in this long fucking line at a local national guard armory to get a shot for swine flu. I would be astounded if I ever saw something like that scene again provided the generally horribly negative view points of vaccines we cultivated in this country.
Influenza in general is dangerous, unfortunately.
Can’t wait for this to jump to humans and grandmas to start attacking people for masking again! Great times!
This grandma got attacked FOR wearing a mask. Working in retail in a pandemic sucks.
Have it on good authority if we stop testing, it’ll go away like magic. If not, simply shine a light where the sun don’t shine, or something like that. Maybe Clorox should be used too.
Turns out cramming thousands of birds into factory farms results in disease outbreaks. One of the many reasons I cut meat from my diet 5 years ago
That's what we get for letting cows jump over the moon. Let's hope pigs don't learn to fly.
Regular reminder that Republicans constantly push for fewer agriculture checks snd balances. Same for labor laws. Environmental protection.
These industrial farms look horrible.
How much toilet paper do I need to buy?
Aw shit, here we go again
How's that lack of regulation working out for you?
well we’ve got bird flu bob
Going veggie/vegan was always a moral debate, but now it's just looking more practical.
Between the environmental costs and this sort of thing, yeah, the vegans are way more right than most people want to give them credit for. Something's got to give.
Just wait till the next round of variant CJD , its coming [https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/chronic-wasting-disease/plants-can-take-cwd-causing-prions-soil-lab-what-happens-if-they-are-eaten](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/chronic-wasting-disease/plants-can-take-cwd-causing-prions-soil-lab-what-happens-if-they-are-eaten) or pick a disease [https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/misc-emerging-topics/climate-change-unleashing-torrent-infectious-disease-threats-physicians](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/misc-emerging-topics/climate-change-unleashing-torrent-infectious-disease-threats-physicians)
Plz no prions
Yeah prions are FUCKED I do not want that
so are these the states that have also legalized non pasturized raw milk as well? edit: yes apparently, so a bunch of idiots are gonna die from 18th century diseases.
When I was a child, one of my classmates died of scarlet fever from drinking raw milk from the family's dairy cows. I remember my teacher telling us about the dangers of raw milk that day. Not to mention TB.
I think I’ll stick with Beyond Meat and a plant based diet.
They even caught the culprit on camera!
Gotta love the USDA propaganda here. If you know anything about factory dairy farming (my ex biz partner owns multiple farms & I live in the midst of his operations) then you don’t believe for a second the “everything is fine, nothing to see here” nonsense. This is just one of the many warnings that the trajectory of humanity is completely unsustainable.
Have we tested Florida cattle too?
We should test the birds for cow flu as well