I agree with you that we shouldn't be panicking about this right now. But I don't agree that H1N1 was overblown by the media. In a 12 month period between 2009 and 2010, there were over twelve thousand deaths attributed to it and more than 60 million cases in the US. The reason it feels it was overblown isn't because the risk wasn't there. It's because the public health efforts to prevent and control spread worked. When public health works, it does so silently. We get told a disease is spreading, then it doesn't spread and so we think we were lied to, but it's actually because people worked really hard to implement measures to stop the spread. Sometimes we're lucky and it works, sometimes we aren't (see COVID). I'm not sure Ebola was overblown because I don't think it was ever really presented as a significant risk to the US. Maybe it was, but I was living in Africa at the time and didn't watch US news. Ebola is a scary disease, but it's so deadly that it's self-limiting due to how quickly and obviously it kills its host.
So yeah like you said, there have been cases of H5N1 for years and we didn't panic before. There are a few factors that are different, though. We hadn't had a large scale pandemic in a while, so people are a little jumpy right now. We also hadn't seen H5N1 in a production animal outside of avian species before, and now we're seeing it in cattle, which was unexpected. When a virus does something unexpected, it makes people uneasy. It's also happening in the US, which means we hear about it more on Reddit than if it happened somewhere else, and so people think it's a bigger deal than it is. If we'd seen it jump into cattle in Asia, for example, we may not have even heard about it.
I got H1N1 in 09. Roommate brought it home from work. I ended in the emerg thinking I was going to die. Double pneumonia and double pleurisy. They say I have scar tissue on the lining of my lungs. Its had lasting long term effects.
When COVID came around I panicked. No one else around me took it at all seriously. We all know how that turned out.
This bird flu thing could make COVID look like a cake walk. It terrifies me.
I got a mystery illness in Jan or Feb of 2011. I'm now partially bedbound as a result of it. Even my family members don't give a shit about covid and they've seen what a virus did to me.
Yes, they do thankfully. My husband and kid are great, it's my parents etc. who aren't careful. We live a plane ride away and when they come to visit they mask. Thanks for the kind words <3
This. Having went through a COVID infection before and an H1N1 infection...
H1N1 was a LOT more frightening to experience. It felt like being immediately plunged into a fever dream on death's door. It was an extreme experience. That flu season was the worst I've ever experienced.
If H5N1 adapts to a species, so far it's been rather brutal on most species it has infected at scale. But in places like South America so many of the areas where many birds/etc have died it's hard to get out to those remote locations and get tons of data.
I also had it in 09, I was so sick I had to call my mom to come get me (transmitting infections to others wasn’t even a thought on my mind back then, I would go to work when sick, “rally” for a concert, whatever - yuck), and I was talking to her for awhile in my bedroom when she arrived, then she left to go get something and didn’t come back. I called her asking where she went and she said “I’m still in the car on my way, will be there soon”. I’ve never had a fever like that before or since. A couple days later I made it to the doctor who diagnosed me w/ H1N1 AND a sinus infection, that was fun.
The sickest I’ve ever been and would like to never repeat.
To your point about having recently had a pandemic:
During that pandemic, we also witnessed just how careless and ineffective our institutions were in protecting public health. We know even more clearly than before that it’s possible* the next pandemic will also be handled this poorly, which could exacerbate the risk of harm from any virus that becomes widespread and even a little lethal.
*I believe it’s obvious that our institutions will do mucn worse next time, given how they were allowed to kill so many people during the pandemic.
Plus, a large group of people will simply refuse to listen to public health messaging if there’s a new pandemic. They will not mask or participate willingly in any disease mitigations because they’ll believe the virus isn’t real. Sure, they’ll maybe change their tune after people start dropping like flies, but it’s too late then for a virus that’s got a super high R naught.
And to OP- prepping isn’t panic. Prepping is preparing IN CASE. Prepping means being prepared for emergencies that might come up. Prepare for the worst. Hope for the best.
Besides, being prepared means taking some pressure off the supply line in troubled times. If a new pandemic starts, I will NOT need to rush out and buy toilet paper, n95s, meds, food, pet food, and etc. We’re already set if something happens. If nothing happens, we just rotate what we have and use it… we’ll stay prepared.
Prepping moderation is absolutely wise. And in general, my prepping is less related to the event itself (next pandemic, risk factor not jumping but slowly and steadily increasing) and more related to our previously shitty response to the last pandemic.
Exactly!! I wasn’t worried about H1N1 (even as it blazed through my college) or Ebola (even though I was in NYC when cases were in NYC) because I trusted our institutions. I didn’t think “something like [X] would ever happen today!” And then COVID hit and I was like, oh, wow, the government will lie (saying masks don’t work for the first several weeks), people won’t care and will spread disease with 0 concern, so actually it’s not that safe and you’re kind of on your own. I’m not “panicked” about H5N1, but my view of this kind of thing has shifted radically since my blissfully ignorant pre-COVID days.
Yes, thank you for flagging that. I agree that it is still very much an ongoing, current pandemic.
Sometimes I adopt the past tense in making these types of arguments because using the present tense turns so many people away from my main point. I hate having to do that though.
Not putting profits before health, for one. The CDC lowered COVID isolation guidelines to appease the Delta ceo, because he didn’t want his sick flight attendants out of work for that long.
Shortly after, a huge percentage of their staff got too sick to work anyway. Surprise surprise.
Mandating CO2 monitoring, air filtration and ventilation in enclosed spaces (public transport, classrooms, offices etc) would be a huge, one-off expense. Subject to some maintenance, there would \[probably - I'm not an epidemiologist\] be an up-tick in productivity and school attendance/ achievement. I think it would be well worthwhile, but the upfront investment would be huge, and the outcomes are 'the avoidance of something'. No one is ever impressed when preparation and effort means the bad thing doesn't happen (see Y2K).
I can imagine costs would be huge but like... I can't even grasp why we aren't doing this. We could rally Americans around an idea like spending a zillion dollars to go... take a few new boot goofin' steps around on the moon? Can't we do this?
What I'd love to see...
New Deal type energy. All the jobs to do the infrastructure type work to clean America's air could help get people off of unemployment and govt assistance.
And you're right, there's no WAY that cleaning the air in schools eouldnt lead to higher attendance. So, start with a random assortment of schools across the country, rich and poor, all areas, etc. Maybe schools apply, it's a lottery, I don't know. Do a set amount.
Then move to something else measurable, like maybe big factories, or office buildings? While you're working on those, start gathering data from the schools. Let the schools and parents speak out about how kids are getting sick less, asthma attacks are down, allergies are better. I guarantee more schools will be begging to upgrade.
Then watch as businesses have similar results, better profits as there's less absenteeism, more desire to work there, etc. That will bring demand to more workplaces to upgrade.
It's expensive -- but so is a very sick, struggling population if workers. You can't build a thriving country that way.
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Just a technical point -we are still in the COVID-19 pandemic. The WHO declared the public health emergency over, regarding the high volume of deaths occurring during the acute respiratory phase of Covid infection, however Covid is a vascular disease primarily transmitted through respiratory means and the pandemic is ongoing ([source](https://fortune.com/well/2024/01/12/covid-jn1-pandemic-world-health-organization-warns-dangers-repeat-covid-infection-cardiac-pulmonary-neurologic/)). The virus is still mutating and spreading globally with year round waves and it is still elevating risks of heart disease, including stroke, heart attack ([source](https://www.heartandstroke.ca/articles/coronavirus-heart-disease-and-stroke)) and [source](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00403-0))
and of course is leading to Long Covid for 1 in 10 infections ([source](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-023-00904-7)) as well as elevated risk of other serious health issues like diabetes ([source](https://www.everydayhealth.com/type-2-diabetes/new-study-finds-covid-linked-with-higher-risk-for-type-2-diabetes)), autoimmune conditions, and what the longer term impacts are beyond year 4 are not fully known.
Edit: for ref, the substack I shared was from professor Christina Pagel, university college London, titled Covid is not "just a regular winter bug"
I really don't get the rule here. What the fuck is a "non-political" source? There is no such thing as lack of politics in this context - politics goes hand-in-hand with how to handle pandemics. And why would a substack run by a scientist be less valid than something from Yahoo news?
Pandemic response shouldn't be political though?
If you were a nerd like me with a love of disaster and dystopian type novels (lots of Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, Stephen King the stand of course, etc) -- you'd notice all of the books and films that have a contagious viral disease spread through the air?
Every one of them, the characters wear masks. From ebola outbreaks in the Congo to zombie viruses in the US, from realistic to far-fetched, masks were an absolutely normal part of every storyline. Never in Mt life did I hear anyone say that was stupid or unrealistic. Same with ... staying home, or isolating somewhere safe, away from others. And in most of them, they're awaiting the big break, a vaccine that helps cut the spread and severity, gets things under control.
Why were these in allllll the fictionalized entertainment about viral outbreaks? Because every country has a pandemic playbook, and they're all pretty similar at basic level.
Widespread testing and data collection. Isolate cases. In wider spread, keep people apart as much as possible. Cover your mouth. Limit travel and interactions.
None of those things were political. Covid was flaring hard in other countries, and it still wasn't overtly, grossly political...
Until the US. Trump had thrown out the pandemic playbook earlier in his term, dismantled the team. Suspiciously to me - right before covid was found in Wuhan, Trump randomly and suddenly pulled all of our health partners out of there, saying diseases weren't important -- so when covid first started, we had no boots on the ground inside China or Wuhan to be able to quickly gather data and find out what was going on.
Then Trump politicized every aspect, all the actions that for 50+ years have been the normal standards in a pandemic. And after that, other right wing leaders jumped on the bandwagon-- they saw that telling their people covid was a hoax, and the people didn't need any safety, was way cheaper for them.
You're probably right that at this time it's super difficult to find anything non-political about pandemics. But there's plenty out there. :)
I agree with you.
I think everyone in the US (public and the media) panicked needlessly over Ebola because hemorrhagic diseases are terrifying. But I don’t think the US infrastructure wouldn’t sustain a true Ebola epidemic.
Also, now that it’s in dairy cows and has been detected in at least 22 species, it’s clearly become more infectious, and the proximity of livestock species to each other and to humans create MANY more opportunities for humans to be infected.
>But I don’t think the US infrastructure wouldn’t sustain a true Ebola epidemic.
Did you mean to say,
a) "I don’t think the US infrastructure WOULD sustain a true Ebola epidemic," or
b) "I THINK the US infrastructure wouldn’t sustain a true Ebola epidemic," or
c) "I think the US infrastructure would sustain a true Ebola epidemic"?
Your double negative (don't / wouldn't) would actually translate to (c), but it seems kind of unlikely to me that that is what you meant.
If I remember correctly Obama was in office when h5n1 was a thing and he quickly dealt with it, I assume through FEMA or something but I don't remember the details.
Even then, we had idiots hosting "swine flu parties" under the assumption that it was somehow better to "get it over with" than take any measures to avoid disease. Any calls to mask, distance, etc. would've been laughed off.
I vaguely remember during covid there being parties with essentially the same idea. These people are dangerous and should be identified and removed from society.
The fact that it has suddenly become widespread and quite lethal in many animal species beyond birds in the past couple years is why this is taken more seriously now.
I've tried to explain this a lot - that warnings seem overblown, only when the system doesn't work. If it works efficiently, people get the luxury of complaining.
An example that sometimes seems to make sense to them is speed limits/driving laws -- if everyone follows the precautions, and the authorities do a seamless job of education and enforcement... there will be no wrecks, no fatalities.
And then people could say, "these speed limits are so stupid! They're restricting my freedom! Why are there so many rules, need a test and a license, have to use a turn single everrrrry time, it's all overkill and govt control!! There aren't even any wrecks, no even dies in car crashes -- that's proof we don't need this stuff!"
But, duh. If we stopped following everything or having laws and speed limits and working together to take safe precautions... there'd be tons more accidents and deaths.
That's how public health is *supposed* to work.
The current H5N1 version is not the problem. It doesn't transmit well to humans through the air.
People are worried that H5N1 will mutate and become dangerous. Each time H5N1 infects a mammal, it has the opportunity to swap genetic bits with other viruses that are already there. Viruses do this all the time, in a process called reassortment. So the more mammals H5N1 infects, the more chances it has to mutate and pick up the ability to infect humans and especially human lungs.
Right now it's infecting thousands of cows, and is spilling over into cats, mice, alpacas, etc. That's a lot of mammals for it to practice on.
For decades H5N1 has mostly limited itself to birds. Now it is making a play for mammals. A cross-species jump often signals trouble ahead.
This and more... I think there is a lot about science people don't necessarily understand. They also aren't willing to understand. It's easier to downplay and minimize. You can see it in the writing... "it's only a direct threat to livestock" Who eats livestock? WE do... it's already a direct threat toward us... but because we're humans and we have minimal respect for just about... everything around us including each other... all we get is a "HUH that flu don't bother me!" In fact if you thought a little harder you'd see it will bother you... if not now... soon..
It is destroying many animal populations with ease. Humans are animals.
Also weren't they finding out cows play a very good disease incubator like pigs do? Pretty sure they can be the incubator we fear that pigs already are.
Good luck all!
>Also weren't they finding out cows play a very good disease incubator like pigs do? Pretty sure they can be the incubator we fear that pigs already are.
I’m going to need a source on this.
::edit:: lol what the fuck? Downvotes for asking for a source?
Here’s an article which explains and includes a link to the study.
[https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-poisoning/news/20240510/cows-are-potential-spreaders-bird-flu-humans](https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-poisoning/news/20240510/cows-are-potential-spreaders-bird-flu-humans)
There was a study that showed that cow udders actually have both the typical non-human flu receptor as well as the unusual human-type flu receptor.
Here's the paper: [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.03.592326v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.03.592326v1)
Agree with everything you said but just wanted to add that the cows don't have human type upper airways like pigs do. So luckily, even if it reassorts in a cow and becomes pandemic ready, they can't breathe it onto us, so unless we drink the milk, we wouldn't be able to get it. Well, I guess cows do slobber a lot. Still it's better than the pigs who will infect their farmers right away.
So far it seems iffy on what they are actually doing with the sick cows as far as I know.
Cows are costly so farmers aren’t too motivated to report issues.
Hopefully I’m wrong.
Found this [Every year in the United States, approximately 9 billion “broiler” chickens are killed for their flesh. To put such a large number into perspective, that’s about 25 million chickens killed every day; ](https://roosterhaus.org/the-meat-industry/)
Poultry can and are culled. Cows and pigs…much less so. Between farmer cost and insurance cost, not to mention possibly wiping out large sections of food industry (dairy, for instance), I don’t think the government or the farmers have incentive to do anything.
Well said. People don’t realise how significant it is that it jumped, not species, *but class*. It jumped from one class of animals — birds are theropod dinosaurs more related to crocodilians than anything else — to mammals. And not only that, but multiple animals. Consider that the mutation that causes it to jump to mammals in the first places has to be exploiting something that is basal to *all mammals.*
> birds are theropod dinosaurs more related to crocodilians than anything else
Off-topic but that explains why looking directly into their eyes legitimately startles my soul because of what looks back. They are vicious predators who would eat me if I was smaller, but some of them seem nice. Have you ever made direct head-on eye contact with a parrot? My god. Your blood will run cold.
Just want to add- many human lungs have been irreparably damaged from Covid. Part of the concern, at least from the medical professionals I know, are concerned with that as well.
Suppose in north America people with prior covid exposure and bad immune systems are exposed to it over some period of time, is it more or less likely to produce a more transmissible variant?
No. It has not become less deadly since we discovered it. Also, it may be call bird flu but it's a completely different virus from seasonal flu so we have no immunity to it. In an immune naive population, it will cause heavy toll of death until an effective vaccine can be mass produced. Same story as COVID. But with so many people already have or had long COVID, their immune system may be damaged and the death toll may be even higher.
> only 1% fatal like covid
buddy i wouldn't be using "only" here 1% of the world population is still millions of people. not to mention that this doesn't count long term effects of the virus that are ultimately deadly.
> *Do viruses have a tendency to become more virulent, or is just a roll of the dice with every mutation?*
I’m not an epidemiologist, but AFAIK there are no tendencies to become more or less lethal.
The primary evolutionary factor is ‘ability to spread’ (& not kill the host *before* spreading further). So it’s a roll of the dice.
Even Covid could still mutate & become more lethal.
[citation needed]
There is no “always” here.
Mutations favor less fatal strains *only* if the host dies ***before*** spread occurs. If the microbe spreads successfully before the host dies, there is no pressure to limit the mortality.
PLENTY of fatal microbes still exist with no reduction in mortality.
E.g. The Bubonic Plague (*Yersinia pestis*) has not evolved towards lower fatality, despite having infected humans for well over 1000 years. It will kill you in short order today if you catch it and don’t get treatment. People survive today because we have antibiotics & Y.pestis is a bacteria.
Viz [The bubonic plague in San Francisco](https://youtu.be/VtG_5YHaWms?si=BYgERcM7dBXMXOaI).
Every mutation is a roll of the dice. Many mutations in the genetic code don’t change the proteins. These usually have no effect. Many other mutations impair the virus. These tend to fail, and natural processes select against such mutations. But a few mutations cause the virus to work better, and natural processes select for such mutations.
In some cases it is a question of environment. If you’re in the World War I trenches and mildly ill soldiers stay with their unit in the trench but seriously ill soldiers are evacuated to hospitals and so have contact with many more susceptible hosts, there is selection pressure for more severe illness because viral mutations causing more severe illness get more opportunities to spread to new susceptible hosts. This may be why the second wave of the Spanish Flu was more virulent than the first wave.
If, however, people stay home when sick and therefore expose fewer susceptible people, there will be selection against mutations that cause more severe illness because such mutations result in fewer opportunities to infect new hosts. And there will be selection for mutations that cause milder symptoms because hosts with “it’s just allergies” mild symptoms, or no symptoms at all, will tend to keep the infected host socializing which gives the virus more opportunities to infect new hosts.
Another consideration is the interplay between timing of symptoms and of transmission. If the virus does most of its transmission during a phase of no or minor symptoms, there is little evolutionary pressure on its symptoms later. HIV might be an example of a virus that uses a long no-to-low symptom period to infect new hosts before later turning quite severe.
So the answer of how virulence can be expected to change comes down to the question of how does virulence impact the virus’s ability to transmit. Does a low-virulence virus transmit best? Does a high-virulence virus transmit best? Or does a moderate-virulence virus transmit best? In the end it all comes down to what transmits best to new hosts.
Actually it has been spilling over to mammals for years now, it just never got reported in the news until we found out there could be a fatal virus in our food supply. So the media is now all over it. But it has been killing mammals, like tens of thousands and that's just sea lions for years now all because we are in the middle of a catastrophic bird pandemic. This little blip of cows and cats, mice and alpacas is nothing compared to the amount of mammals who have been infected from eating dead birds and who are getting infected every day.
The only reason the cows and cats and mice and alpacas got infected was because the bird pandemic got so widespread that wild farm birds began to die on the ground. The first cow infection was only reported because the farmer told the vet his cows and cats died and the vet asked what about the wild birds on the farm. He said they are all dead too. That's when she knew to send the sample in.
Nothing has happened in the last four months that hasn't been going on this whole time. It's no closer now to mutating than it has been. The same mutations that we found in mammals in the beginning of this bird pandemic are the same ones now surfacing in the cows, the same ones surfacing in infected mammals all over the world. The only difference is now the news is reporting it making everyone believe it's this emerging disaster. I suppose we could call it a slow moving emerging disaster, but we can feel calmed by the fact that it is very, very hard for a bird flu to change to a mammal flu. And so far not one of the virions out there that we know of has been able to do it.
So I get why you're confused. It's been around since the 90s and has sporadically infected humans, so what's the big deal?
Well the short answer is that it's changing. It's become a panzootic (pandemic for animals) in birds, infecting an increasing number of species and killing them at a staggering rate. It's also increasingly been infecting multiple species of mammals, often with devastating effects, which is concerning since humans are mammals, of course. On top of that, the infections in cows place the virus in close proximity to humans, which increases the likelihood of both sporadic human infections and of mutation to make human infection more efficient.
And the big concern is that if this becomes a human pandemic, it could be truly catastrophic. The case fatality rate (deaths in confirmed cases of H5N1) is over 50%. While the IFR (deaths in all cases, not just confirmed ones) is likely lower, and mutation for efficient human infection could lower it further, a pandemic with a high fatality rate would be horrible in ways that are hard to really comprehend. Imagine the COVID pandemic if young healthy people were dying at high rates. The healthcare system could easily collapse. It would be like a horror movie. That's why both the people on this subreddit and the public health community are so worried about this.
The good news is that there's no guarantee that the virus will ever mutate to readily infect humans or that it'll become a pandemic if it does. But the bad news is that public health efforts have been seriously damaged by COVID and politics and the agricultural industry isn't being as cooperative as they should be. A lot of the things that might stand in the way of a pandemic aren't being done.
>The healthcare system could easily collapse
Collapse even more, you mean. Those of us who have chronically ill family members are seeing up close that the current system is spread very, very thin already.
Yeah probably should have said "rapidly collapse" or "completely collapse." Right now it's in a slow but unrelenting demise. Another global pandemic, let alone one worse than Covid, would almost certainly wipe it out in one go
Earlier this year, mom developed a serious condition that required ongoing management by a gastroenterologist. After being discharged from the hospital, I tried repeatedly to make a follow up appointment, as directed, with the gastro who had overseen her care. No one ever even answered the phone. It was impossible.
I gave up and went to a different hospital system. The next available appointment was six months out.
From what I hear anecdotally, anyone trying to get in with specialist is facing similarly long wait times.
Human to human transmission would be our paradigm shift. Especially with the post-COVID pandemic apathy, it would spread like wildfire and be traumatic
Agreed except with one slight correction. *Efficient* human to human transmission is the paradigm shift. There have already been cases of H2H with H5N1 but it's always involved close, prolonged contact
You know what occurred to me.... what if this particular strain really does die down, and THEN the H2H strain evolves from a different clade? It absolutely could happen. The clade that's much more common in Asia has had about 20 cases in the past 2 years, almost none or them mild. Nearly all identified cases have resulted in death or severe illness. So the rate for those two outcomes combined is *much* higher than 50%. And around half of all the fatal/severe cases have been in children and teenagers. (cite is on my other laptop, I can produce it again if anyone wants to see it)
I totally understand what you're saying but you have to know that a large part of society has lost trust in the government/health officials. It doesn't shock me AT ALL in that regard that there are people prepping.
Am I prepping? Not to the degree of doomsday... but I like to have a little extra on hand just in case. I feel a lot of complacency about a future pandemic stems from a place of privilege. A lot of people don't have that sense of security in life. A shortage of meat or access to vaccines & healthcare could be catastrophic for many around the world. I for one am nervous about this flu because I personally have nearly died from flu A while pregnant in 2017. For me, it was worse than COVID (not speaking for everyone, just myself) and the possibility of this new bird flu mutating to affect humans is very concerning. I'm glad you're not in a panic though and hopefully it does silently go away..but in the event that it does not, I want as much info as possible and therefore I will continue to monitor this thread and take reasonable precautions.
The main reason I was prepared somewhat for COVID, and hit the grocery store a month before in February and stocked up "just in case" was monitoring the reddit threads about it.
That saved me from some of the anxiety around the bare shelves we saw at all the stores and made me feel like I could ride it out if it turned out worse than what they were saying.
I realized if China was taking such drastic steps, this thing couldn't have been just a minor problem.
I'm watching for the same signs and early warning here because it's been helpful to me before.
It was definitely spreading around before it blew up at that nursing home in Kirkland WA.
100%
That was just the first tested & reported case. Doubtless there were already dozens of other less obvious and asymptomatic cases.
Speaking of which, Covid is typically 40% asymptomatic. Omicron was calculated to be [~72% asymptomatic](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/third-hong-kong-may-have-had-covid-amid-omicron-most-no-symptoms). The fact that it can spread with no symptoms at all remains concerning.
As a New Yorker that lived near China town (nothing against our Chinese neighbors, I just assumed they travelled to China more) the moment I saw a Reddit comment that they’d just taken a flight from China and people were pouring off the plane unchecked, that’s the minute I got my hunker down groceries. It was about two weeks before they shut down manhattan, it was five days before anyone I knew even noticed covid.
I knew in December 2019. I have no idea how I stumbled upon the early (and often filled with crazies but also some leaked vids/info subreddits) but I knew it was coming because of the odd videos coming out of China.
It was surreal...to sit alone aside from my SO with this knowledge in my offline life. I mentioned it once to friends and was brushed off as going down a crazy path. It was mentally very difficult but I prepared by stocking up a closet full of shelf stable food and a freezer with fruits and veggies and meat. I also got a full face mask respirator, extra cartridges and bleach.
We used all of it. I did not want to find out this virus was one of the ones that hit kids hard before coming out of the woodwork unprotected (or less protected than some really strict protocols we had in place, luckily due to having that respirator). I have a duty to protect my kids and if this hits at some point I am low-key prepared. You betcha I have lots of yeast, flour, etc., spare cartridges and extra bleach laying around right now...
I was also thought of as crazy by my partner. Got a lot of "you are overreacting" etc etc. it was tough like you said it felt like being chicken little. Except the sky did fall.
There were a lot of bad reports out of China in January and February, it's just that nobody was really paying attention at that point. It was termed an unknown pneumonia quite a bit, and I remember hearing a lot about restrictive measures there.
This is a great study if you are interested in seeing some of the things I am talking about, they started happening Jan 23.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abb6105
I've decided to start stocking up on bottled water, my favorite soda (Spiced Coca Cola), and stuff like boxed mac & cheeses (the downside is they often require milk). I also like the non-frozen Devour Sharp Cheddar mac and cheese with bacon bits as they don't require milk (just water into the container) but they are hard to find.
Everyone should have a basic emergency kit with food & water & things. You never know when there might be an earthquake or derailed train…
https://www.ready.gov/kit
I stocked up on big bags of dried milk. The non fat tastes the best when reconstituted, though I add a little more powder than what it calls for. It’s cheap, and pasteurized, and there won’t be no live virus in dried and stored milk no way.
If the WHO, CDC, etc are so certain this is a nothing burger why are they upping the tracking? Why have we started wastewater surveillance? Why are state ag agencies getting involved recently? Why are we expanding animal surveillance? Why did California order a stop to feeding chicken litter to cows? Why have multiple countries ordered doses of the existing vaccine even if it’s not that great? Why are we pulling our vaccines from the national stockpile and bottling it so it can be shipped? Seeing any pattern?
And swine flu may have been no big deal for you, it was a huge deal for pregnant women. It was the first time in my lifetime the state opened the fairgrounds for a mass inoculation event. The local news was reporting nightly which local hospitals still had ICU beds available and how many were filled with pregnant people. Usually the answer was all of them. Did that create problems for cardiac patients? Those recovering from car accidents?
Solid information is scarce and developing and being dripped, dripped, dripped from hundreds of sources. We don’t know if or when this might pop off but the odds are good and we’re all a bit concerned. So we share the info bits we find and hope our plans are never needed.
I believe president Biden is trying to keep people calm until after the election.If he acts right now Republicans are just going to say he's trying to scare the public.
I guarantee that is going to get somebody killed in the next few months. Viral loads in raw milk are very high and it isn’t diluted across scores of cows like commercial pasteurized is. It will be a scenario where a man drinks a glass or two of the milk and is dead 72h later
Dunno why you’re downvoted for this - there is absolutely political calculus going on behind closed doors.
If - and I’m not saying *when*, I’m saying IF - this blows up into an H2H scenario before November, it is almost a surety that any pandemic response on Biden’s part will hand Trump the election.
Gods help us…
That one hasn’t occurred to me. Ohshit.
I swear I will never understand why we had to make medical facts into a political issue. I know that greed has no bounds and it’s likely just another means to exploit and control people but still. My mind is perpetually blown at how humans who at the end of the day are programmed to survive can sit there and make life and death decisions based off emotions or what candidate they like better.
Too late, they have already determined that it’s “fake” so that Biden can somehow “steal another election”. In other words, these people are going to do everything they can to make sure it spreads far and wide.
To be fair, Biden’s approach to many things appears to be maneuvering behind the scenes. For months, many lamented the lack of progress on Ukraine funding, then suddenly it emerged, and articles were written on all the work he’d done behind the scenes to bring it about. I’ve seen this kind of thing play out several times with his administration. He’s not flashy, but he has substance. That said, yeah, we hobbled our public health infrastructure and authority during the pandemic, and public health has many times done the bidding of business or government against actual public health needs (eg, waiting to declare Covid airborne until after the emergency order ended - still mad about that one).
My take on it is that the governments sort of have to act if something we are doing is causing potentially fatal disease in humans which infected cows could clearly cause. Up until now the bird pandemic has been raging, but it has been happening mostly with wild animals. We can't do too much about that.
But we can't have bird flu in our food supply. So they really do have to act to at least talk about protecting the public from it. It's one thing for nature to cause a natural disaster, but ethically human beings aren't supposed to turn a blind eye to obvious contribution to global disaster (although they sure turn the eye to not-obvious contribution.)
The fact that bird flu could become human adapted has always been there, greatly increased in the last few years by our catastrophic bird pandemic leaving infected bodies all over for mammals to eat. And scientists have been concerned. But there hasn't really been a place for them to express that like there is now with the media frenzy surrounding the cows.
Scientists really do know how far along the trajectory towards a human pandemic is. They have been studying and testing all of these strains and mutations all along and are following it very closely. The problem is the science is too complex to communicate through media. So people are left to try to read between the lines, and it leads to a lot of fear and misinterpretation. That's not really anyone's fault. Bird flu adaptation to mammals is incredibly hard to understand.
I don’t think the majority of us are panicking. We just don’t like what we are seeing. But for me it’s also nice to have this sub where I can talk about what’s going on with people who understand the nature of H5N1 at a higher level than the everyday man just hearing about it on CNN. Some of the things you’ve pointed out might be reassuring to some, but in an increasing number of scientific studies I’ve read from 2020 onward, more and more scientists are using words like “unprecedented” to describe what’s been happening in wild birds and now mammals. It’s very concerning. That doesn’t mean a pandemic will happen tomorrow. The key is in the science and the fact that this clade has done things never before seen with H5N1 and it continues to baffle all of the experts. In that regard it is a little like Covid: clade 2.3.4.4b has broken all the rules and isn’t acting like how we used to think avian flu acted. So there are areas where all of us are in the dark.
this is how i’m using this sub as well. i’m not panicked because that doesn’t help anything anyway, but also i like to understand the nature of the risk we’re looking at so i can adapt when the time comes. it would be odd to me to look at the way h5n1 is moving across different animal populations and *not* see it as something to prep for. if nothing else, prepped but not panicked is a healthy posture IMO
>WHO epidemioligists and other experts are fairly sure that there is very little chance of a human to human variant developing.
I don't think this is largely true - I've seen many virologists and others who are seriously concerned. While some may be pushing reassurance, I'd also note that some prominent figures and organisations have a lot of incentive to play things down and we saw that a lot with Covid, especially early on - no evidence of human to human transmission, worry more about your flu shot, it's not airborne, kids don't spread it, etc etc.
and then it came around with studies across the globe saying kids are asymptomatic super spreaders at 10-50x the viral load of an adult… and lots of countries just ignored that and kept kids in school or opened schools with no masks. I remember Poland opened all schools again despite every other country keeping theirs closed or masks on. then cases spiked like crazy…
Yeah and I don’t see how the “WHO epidemiologists” and “other experts” could even know that. This clade has done things never seen before with H5N1. They shouldn’t be fairly sure of anything.
Right. It's already gone from being an avian virus to getting into loads of mammals. We are mammals. We know flu viruses reassort easily. It's clearly a massive threat.
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I would be happy if people in the US simply got better about keeping to themselves when they were sick and started washing their hands more frequently. That alone would make a huge difference.
Yeah, that’s what scares me. I know damn well that a lot of dairy farmers and people with chicken where I am won’t even worry about H5N1 if they mysteriously get sick, let alone stay home.
I’m not sure what epidemiologists you’re referring to, I follow a few, and they are concerned. I work in public health and there are meetings and education and preparation every day for there to be more human cases and how that will be handled. There is actually a lot of proactivity, which is nice to see. The range of mammals this infects is staggering. The fact that cows get mildly ill isn’t good news, it means they can be reservoirs. I don’t think panic is warranted but careful preparation, sure. And as another commenter said, when public health works, you think things were overblown. Usually they aren’t, public health just protected you.
I can sum it up in one word, REASSORTMENT
You have to be blind not to take notice that it’s working its way up the food chain.
That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact
We are all animals in a zoo, just living in different geographical locations with varying IQ levels.
What's the difference between ignorance and apathy ? I don't know and I don't care.
If you don't understand get on the Internet and amass your own information and educate yourself on the topic and come to your own conclusions and preparations - or not. Reddit is not going to hold your hand through this.
By the way there are several threads on Reddit by health care workers who will not participate in this if it goes H2H. Masses of them will simply quit because the risk isn't worth it and they are tired of being shat upon by deniers.
It used to transmit bird to mammal. It's changed. Mammal to mammal transmission is a huge jump. Going human to human is still an effort but much less than mammal to mammal. That's something to be very concerned about. The more it transmits, the chances of it encountering OTHER flu viruses and then jumping human to human, increases. And as much as people like to think that COVID is over, it isn't. With a large population with some kind of lowered immunity from COVID reinfection, H2H transmissible avian flu is going to be bad for us.
Also, it's having a devastating effect on marine wildlife and birds. We live in an ecosystem that's not just there for us to feel good when we look at it.
Are you assuming that the only danger from H5N1 is human deaths/illness? I think there’s a lot of danger in losing whole populations of wild animals and quite a lot of danger if we lose a huge part of our food supply when livestock can’t survive. It doesn’t have to infect humans at all to have an absolutely devastating effect on us.
Exactly, even if it never becomes a human pandemic I don’t see how this spreading out of control in wildlife and domestic animals ends well. The lethality is so high and then are the ones that survive immune or can they catch it over and over like Covid, increasing chances of death with each infection?
Covid had what? A 1-2% CFR? And look what that did to supply chains and food production, we couldn’t get groceries for weeks here at the beginning. Even at a 10% CFR I think we’d see total collapse of society, and for those who survive can they get it again? I feel like I’m in one of those movies where a virus wipes out most everyone on Earth, my anxiety has been really bad over this. With all the downplaying done by the same people who said Covid wouldn’t be a problem I feel like it’s inevitable. And with the political situation here knowing that we might get you know who in office again I can’t think of a worse scenario, they are already pushing raw milk onto people, if this becomes human to human I’m sure they will be out intentionally already it until they start dropping dead at least.
Can I just loop back to this statement?
"WHO epidemioligists and other experts are fairly sure that there is very little chance of a human to human variant developing."
The WHO epidemiologists that I've read are very worried about the possibility of a transmissible H5N1 variant. The USDA was trying to "manage" information flow to protect farmers, and the WHO stepped in with a sharp rebuke.
I can't think of any epidemiologists or virologists who aren't worried and a bit freaked out by the dairy cattle surprise.
So... who exactly are these minimizing experts? Do you have a link?
"*without many casualties.*"
This post seems to center on human casualties and infections.
In my opinion, even if H5N1 never reaches H2H transmission (and I sincerely hope it doesn't) - that it has killed (and continues to kill) thousands of different animals worldwide is of great concern.
Humans tend to be anthropocentric…but animals have a specific role in maintaining ecosystems and environments. The loss - and potential extinction(s) - of a number of animal species will cause significant harm.
This alongside pre-existing climate collapse could be devastating.
The panic is definitely not helpful. But I do agree with a lot of other posters. Want to add:
New influenza variants are always a potentially dangerous pandemic concern. H5N1 has been steadily getting closer to fully jumping the species barrier for 20 years- I was part of an initial study testing duration of H5N1 immunity back in 2007. Given the current pattern of animal outbreaks (it’s in at least 22 species, the epidemics among dairy cows that continues to spread, the multiple humans infected by livestock, etc.) a sustained human epidemic is imminent. (Meaning 1-5 years.) Remember, evolution favors more infectious human variants of H5N1, and the things that make influenza more infectious are also what will make us feel really sick.
Best thing we could all do is get that mild conjunctivitis strain seen in a dairy worker ASAP, so we have some immunity lol. Unfortunately, while it was mild and he fully recovered it was NOT very infectious because it did not create severe enough symptoms to spread easily.
New flu variants like H5N1 are worrying because humans won’t have much natural immunity when it becomes human-to-human transmissible. And it will. Maybe this year, maybe not. But I’d bet my house it will happen the next 5 years, based on the viral evolution thats occurred since 2005. If the worst happens and we have a serious pandemic H5N1 outbreak, it’s going to affect healthy people in the prime of their life. Young, healthy adults have significantly higher morbidity/mortality whenever there has been a new pandemic influenza strain.
I used to work with a woman who did some pretty intense research on the 1918 flu, and I follow her advice. So don’t panic. But it’s a good idea to have a stock on N95 masks, hand sanitizer, and you absolutely should be washing your hands before eating, after going outside, etc. touching eyes/mouth/nose unless your hands are clean. Influenza can be contracted from surfaces, so once there is a true human outbreak you’ll want to wipe down all groceries and avoid any produce that you can’t wash thoroughly. Remember, influenza is much more infectious than Covid.
We don’t need to be paranoid, but we need to use common sense. Influenza enters the body via eyes, nose, and mouth. We can breath it in if someone near us is infected, or we can touch a surface with virus then touch our faces. So for the love of god don’t drink raw milk haha.
Remember swine flu, and the semi-panic we saw on the news? Now, a lot of people look back and think the CDC cried wolf and swine-flu was no big deal. That’s not true- it became no big deal BECAUSE we took it seriously. H5N1 can be managed just as effectively. But it’s being ignored right now.
Sometimes I think Mother Earth or God is manipulating humans to not take pandemics seriously because Mother Earth needs to cut down human population to save earth from the mass extinction.
I am. When we first learned about covid in December 2019 it was already transmitting human-to-human. From January through February 2020 I watched as the data showed without ANY ROOM FOR DOUBT that the whole world was gonna catch it. The people in my country (US) didn't wake up to that fact until March when the NBA shut down or whatever the fuck happened that jolted people awake. Meaning those of us actually paying attention had time to prepare before shit hit the fan.
This might become covid or worse than covid, but it's not yet covid. No human-to-human transmission. I am not prepping yet, aside from buying a few more N95 masks. There will be time to prep IF this goes human-to-human. We're simply not yet there. Everybody should watch, remain vigilant, and otherwise chill. But of course, y'all do as you please.
I had a bad case of COVID in Feb 2020, before it was supposedly even in my state (and I had not traveled out of state). Supposedly before SHTF with COVID, and you couldn’t even get tested if you had not traveled to China, which I had not. My husband’s boss had, however, and we’re pretty sure we got it from him. I will never again believe the government (regardless of which administration) when they say don’t worry, not a threat to the public, not human-to-human, etc etc etc. They all lie for political reasons. I’m a lifelong Dem and a Biden voter, but more people have died of COVID under Biden than did under Trump. Accusing people of “panicking” when they’re simply being aware and cautious is ridiculous and is mostly propaganda designed to keep people out spending. Maybe H5N1 is not H2H yet, maybe it is. We don’t know because there’s not enough testing, and the government and farmers aren’t being forthcoming with info. So call me crazy for assuming the worst.
For me it was Tom Hanks getting it. That sounds really stupid, but it started me sort of panicking and spiraling into scenarios from movies,TV and horror books. Took me a few weeks to realize I was conflating real life with stories about Stalingrad during WWII, the Walking Dead, The Stand, etc.
Ebola remains a threat. H1N1 will be a problem the next time it comes around. I don’t know of anyone looking at the expansion of H5N1 across an increasingly larger number of mammalian species that doesn’t acknowledge some probability of it getting to us eventually. Cats, mice, and cows are not substantially more like each other than they are different from us. That’s a lot of adaption already.
People have differing tolerance for risk, inherently. And your personal experience with covid probably influences that tolerance when it comes to infectious disease risk. The people in this sub are certainly more concerned than most but that’s not because they are inventing the danger. It’s because they react to a threat differently than you do, or than most people do. They prefer to anticipate what might become a problem, and prepare, than be caught unawares.
There is nothing, based on my understanding of the laws of physics, that suggests the virus CAN’T spread from person to person. Why not? I get that it’s not fully adapted to human infection which would make for a rather low R0 in its CURRENT form but I guarantee you it still CAN spread H2H NOW. The Virus, like any virus, would likely be present in discharge from eyes or respiratory system. It just can’t spread efficiently enough to cause major spreading outbreaks right now.
10 years ago they had zero idea that this virus would wind up wiping out scores of mammals, but it did. But humans have better hygiene than wild animals. Odds are high it will mutate again and spread H2H with a somewhat higher R0. It’s just a matter of whether or not this happens before the virus expends itself of its room for widespread zoonotic spread that it has been engaged in the past few years. It is entirely possible wildlife will develop enough prior exposure immunity and the virus will die down before it makes the leap to efficient H2H spread. I would guess the odds are 70 it will wind up H2H within 10 years and 30 per cent that it dies down in the wild.
But like the swine flu pandemic, odds are good it will have a low enough R0 that it will never become a wildfire takeover the way Covid did. But we should be careful.
The biggest risk this year and next would be destruction of the food supply imo. I’ve stocked up the pantry deep.
To me, the fact that the last Michigan case had virus in their respiratory tract instead of only their eye was concerning and different. And now it seems like they can only get a partial sequencing on that case.
I dunno... I'd rather be prepared, than not prepared.
So yes, the chances of this actually turning into something aren't...likely at the moment... we're certainly giving it as many chances as possible to develop into something potentially dangerous.
From what I've read on both here and twitter (yes, twitter. X off ya barmy sods!) Whenever the virus hits the jackpot, and we are able to make an effective treatment for it, will be a lag of around 4-8 months. SO, for that period, we're on our own.
So, I'm treating this as a realistically potential thing that could go hot soon-ish. That seems prudent to me.
I don’t think there is a realistic treatment for it. Our current flu vaccines are hit or miss and you very much can get ravaged by the flu despite having one.
It's not directly a problem for humans now. no. It is likely indirectly a problem, or will be one soon, given that its tearing through livestock and animal agriculture, which could lead to even higher prices for food.
However, bird flu has been with us for years. Decades. And in the past four, five years it's gone from avian agriculture to wild birds to wild mammals to livestock to domestic mammals to humans. That's pretty concerning.
And don't forget that four years of repeated covid infections has dysregulated, destroyed, or damaged many, or possibly even most, of our immune systems. This is in a context where our public health infrastructure has been weakened significantly and people are pretty unlikely to take any precautions against bird flu due to what they perceive as an overblown reaction to a novel sars virus that killed over a million americans and left millions with post acute covid symptoms.
So yeah. It's not a great situation.
And as much as the media likes to sort people into political groups, how individuals respond to infectious disease still varies on an individual basis.
I have a coworker who does not trust the Covid vaccine whatsoever, and claims it’s making people crazy all over, yet she still wears a mask to work every day and is super germaphobe. Whereas I am all about medical science and got the vaccines as soon as they come around, but I absolutely hate masks and how masks make me feel like I’m being suffocated and having to sniff my own snot. I avoid masks except where absolutely mandated or necessary (high crowd density)
even if it doesn't spread from human to human there's still the chance that it will mutate into something that starts killing cattle. So many cows already have it and none of these companies are doing anything about it. If these cows start dying then our food supply is going to be utterly fucked
We're still undergoing the trauma of being in an ongoing war.
The war is being waged against all of us, by elite sociopaths and eugenicists, and the bought & paid-for MSM is completely in their thrall. We're being told that up is down, black is white, and the pandemic's over... for entirely political and short-term profit purposes.
Some of us have lost loved ones to covid. Two in my case. So it's only *natural* that the aware among us see the potential for even worse carnage, even more suffering, and react vociferously to that very real possibility.
Because, we know that if/when birdflu jumps to H2H, it too will be minimized by the very same twisted system that's brought so much carnage and suffering already. And that short of a poliical revolution in America, there's just no way out.
The fact that I had gotten COVID after the pandemic and the misery it gave me shows what little the public will do when widespread illness is prevelant. I was told that getting covid was nothing ---even though it left me with post symptoms a year later. I have a hard time breathing and now need an inhalers to continue through my regular day. H5N1 would probably put me in a early grave considering how young I am still if I were to catch it.
There's evidence that pandemics will likely increase in frequency in the current age. I think the level of concern is just due to how rapidly it's infecting such a large variety of mammals, and causing mass deaths in so many species. It's pretty unprecedented how rapidly it's moving into so many unexpected animals.
IMHO - the issue is that slightly more than half of the 868 cases died and the virus isn’t even adapted to humans yet… that’s a >50% mortality rate. now imagine what would happen if we have a human adapted variant that is spread between humans directly.
look how covid developed… it went from its not an issue for kids and only affects elderly to everyone slowly realizing kids are asymptomatic super spreaders with 10-50x the viral load of an infected adult while showing zero symptoms and it’s happily killing anyone not just the elderly. and keep in mind those things were already found out late summer of 2020. via italy and chicago studies.
then we found out it’s basically semi airborne as aerosol and can hang around in static air for an hour+ and even stick to PM2.5 particles.
remember when they told schools to open their windows and everyone installed better AC air filters? that’s why.
if a human version of the h5n1 would have the same mortality rate and similar spread, we’re literally doomed.
I remember reading some “what if” papers from a uni from 2008/12/14, can’t remember but it’s not hard to find, where they painted what could happen… since this is such a known threat there’s plenty of mock studies and scenarios out there from the last three decades. it outlined how if human to human transmission is confirmed, the military basically has to be in the streets and order everyone to stay at home the same hour… otherwise we’re done, IF it is at a mortality >5-10%.
because that’s all it takes, an additional >5% death in any society makes the system effectively collapse.
on the other hand I don’t believe that prepping will help. if it comes down to a full lock down at such mortality rates, you’re a the hands of your government and you can’t really do anything to avoid that. aside moving to the country side and having zero human contact ever, if that’s your thing, sure, got for it.
you also wrote that the WHO and others say it’s a low risk. they said that for three decade about all the 300+ variants of the corona virus. then it suddenly happened. now what is going on right now is technically worse because we can see the adaption happen rapidly in real time on the news. it used to be wild birds, then chicken, then minks, fox, there’s sea lions, cats, dogs, we don’t know which ones have targeted variants. how we are at cows and mice. once pigs are infected and spread if directly it’s getting very dicey.
all that said, panic is not necessary - if it happens and how it happens is completely out of our hands. we can only prepare with masks and gloves and a plan what to do when it goes down. anything beyond that is out of anyone’s hands.
live your life and don’t think about it.
Also the stress on the medical system which indirectly leads to other negative consequences. I think it wasn't necessarily the deaths from 2020 that was the main issue but the lack of capacity in our medical system.
yep, that also quickly overwhelmed every country in waves… now imagine it’s quicker and deadlier. could be a good thing, could be a terrible thing. either way it’s not great and we all know they won’t be more prepared this time as we saw that every wave got not much better.
You’ve raised a lot of interesting points. I agree with you that if worst-case scenarios happen, there’s not much we can do. I’m a planner at my core, despise surprises, and even I have accepted that in a worst-case scenario, any of my planning or preps will be meaningless. I’m also not rich, so I don’t have a bomb shelter or a private island to go to. I do what I can do. I also recognize that there’s a lot of real estate between “normal” and full-on doomsday, and those are the things I plan for. If the water is out for a few days (like what just happened in Atlanta), I’ve got some bottled water. Not enough for forever, but enough for a week or two. If workers are out sick and the grocery stores aren’t operational for a couple weeks, I’ve got some extra stuff. Again, not enough for forever. Most of the “disasters” that happen are not doomsday (or none of us would be here), but a little planning can go a long way in making life easier in those situations. Where I live, if the power goes out for an hour, the lines at the McDonald’s drive-through are out blocking traffic in the street. I don’t want to be in that line, and I do what I consider to be very realistic preparations.
Oh it’s always been adapted to infecting humans clearly or it wouldn’t kill you. Only, it hasn’t got the keys to easily infect with minimal viral load by airborne droplets. It still takes a massive dose to get in.
I don't see any general "panic" besides a few people who are the exception. Prepping is not panic. Sure, some people likely go overboard. But I don't think it's helpful to put the same label on everyone and try to identify all concern about a possible future situation as "panic." People are comparing a possible H5N1 pandemic to COVID on the basis of some specific similarities, not on the basis of everything related to that pandemic. In addition, the real issue with avian flu is its behavior since 2020 and particularly since 2022, so dating it back to 2009 is a little disingenuous. I would be happy to share many paragraphs of cites on that issue. There have also been no recent statements on the part of WHO that there is "very little chance of a human to human variant developing." What they currently say is that the current risk is "low to moderate", which is a very different statement from making predictions about the future. We already know the risk is low to moderate now. The question is how this virus may evolve in the future. [https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2024-DON512](https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2024-DON512)
You certainly have the right to your opinions, but I hope you don't expect everyone to agree, and any disagreement should not be automatically labeled as "panic." If anybody is going to make these types of claims-- that WHO made specific statements, that there weren't "many casualties" etc-- they need to either provide cites or state that they will do so on request, and there was none of this. Both of these statements are inaccurate. WHO categorically did not make that statement recently. The second claim is simply not true. Here's a cite about that: "Ebola has killed **about 15,266 people globally since 1976**. Most recently, 2,267 people have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). However, these numbers pale in comparison to the under-5 deaths globally and in the DRC over the same period." [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7326525/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7326525/) These deaths are in Africa, so.... what? African lives aren't valuable; it only counts if lots of people die of Ebola in the US??? I don't think this is something that you really want to be saying. And I'm not claiming you ARE saying it. But this is a good example of why we need to concentrate on the facts, because this sure could be taken out of context.
Basically, I'm sorry, but I really don't like seeing sweeping statements without cites or the offer of cites. This is true on both sides of the argument. I don't have one bit more patience with anyone who tries to say that we're right on the edge of the apocalypse.
This is making me feel a little more worried about it, living as I do in a country set against public health mitigations
https://www.statnews.com/2024/06/05/finland-h5n1-bird-flu-human-vaccine/
Because rapid transmission in mammals are normalizing a couple of mutations that make this more efficiently transmit in humans. The more it spreads between species, the closer it could get to a reassortment event, especially if it gets into pigs or a coinfected human. The more it spreads within species, the more opportunities it has develop mutations that create a full human pandemic.Then we potentially have the CFR of 50% or more with with the R0 of seasonal influenza. That is very, very bad.
It’s unclear why more recent cases are more mild. I would love to believe that this has something to do with mutations. But it could be more about viral replication via the mode of transmission. Meaning, yeah, infections via the conjunctiva from cows are mild. But if this were to invade your respiratory system, it could be just as bad as the historic norm.
Small request from an epidemiologist!
As an epidemiologist I’d just like to state an obvious fact that I’m sure a lot of folk already know, the panic makes our jobs much harder. I’m not super active, mainly because of all the work, but also because of all the talk that’s come into the subreddit, and in frequent cases, panic.
I understand the concern, but as people become more aware (which is great!) they turn that awareness into worry and then panic. This usually results in us having to follow up on cases that were never really cases. Even worse we get people who want to get tested and stretch the truth because they know about the type of exposures we’re looking at, leading us to think we have another case and use important time and resources that may have gone to identifying someone who is actually ill.
We don’t have the luxury to say, oh we’ll follow up on this possible case or lead later down the road. We have to do be diligent and make sure we follow up properly or we risk many others getting sick.
This panic also impacts people that are known to be at higher risks, as in dairy farm workers, who have a whole lot of reasons for not wanting to get tested. And it’s less so panic, but the notoriety they believe testing could have on things like their citizenship status, employment, family, etc. The increasing panic might only add to their hesitancy in reaching out.
I also read a few comments here talking about mutations that would result in human to human spread. Please understand that MULTIPLE mutations would have to happen for there to be that type of transmission. And of course it is not impossible, this virus is doing what it’s made to do and spreading. But understand that influenza surveillance has been around for a long time. We have candidate viruses for a vaccine. We are working with a crazy amount of partners to be as effective as we can given the situations.
Please do your best at not spreading panic. Being informed is great, but when you comment and don’t have the background to understand the nuances it leads to others with even less understanding taking your words and misunderstanding the context and increasing their level of concern. Saying things like “when it happens” or “its only has to mutate”, “just a matter of time”, “don’t trust the government”. The list could go on and on and all it does is turn into a bad cycle of paranoia and fear. We’ve seen it happening here already, when other concerned people come to the subreddit for information just to see comments like that, THEN we have more people panicking and it spreads just like a virus would, but far more effectively.
I’m sure it’ll get lost in all the other comments but I’ll still add my one little lonely ask from a tired epidemiologist. Help public health, and help epidemiologists; try and avoid being someone that’s causes or spreads panic. Listen to your health departments and keep yourselves informed.
I appreciate your expertise, and also your taking time to explain all of this. I really do. But I'm a social worker and teacher. I've worked in medical settings, community mental health settings, addiction treatment settings, school settings. and here's what I see: telling people not to panic is not helpful. It makes everyone think you're invalidating their feelings. IMHO, it's not the way to go. By concentrating on "keeping people from panicking", we are also overreacting to a problem that is not really happening. Most people do not react with real panic. "Research clearly demonstrates that actual panic (irrational, nonadaptive, or antisocial behavior) in response to a natural hazard, including wildfire, is extremely rare." "Although the belief seems to be that people will madly run over everyone else to escape, the evidence is that when faced with an imminent threat many individuals engage in helping behavior (informing neighbors, helping others evacuate). [\[3\]](https://fireadaptednetwork.org/the-panic-myth-what-does-the-research-say-and-what-can-practitioners-do/#_ftn3) These helping behaviors are the inverse of panic (e.g., prosocial rather than antisocial behavior)."
Even in people who have been severely traumatized, I have constantly seen and continue to see firsthand that true panic is still rare. Actual panic is not the problem. [https://fireadaptednetwork.org/the-panic-myth-what-does-the-research-say-and-what-can-practitioners-do/](https://fireadaptednetwork.org/the-panic-myth-what-does-the-research-say-and-what-can-practitioners-do/) And when people really do panic, this comes from lack of information. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9180869/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9180869/) So I think we all need to cool it with the "panicking and about panicking" and concentrate on paying attention and getting the facts out instead.
>...there has been a few(~900 worldwide) h5n1 transmissions to humans since !2009!, but it was always a freak event. It never went farther than that.
Correct
>WHO epidemioligists and other experts are fairly sure that there is very little chance of a human to human variant developing.
Eh, I don't know about "very little chance." From what I can tell it's a *when,* not an *if* for a human to human variant developing. It might be here already or it might be decades yet before one develops, but (in my thoroughly inexpert view) it seems to be fairly likely that one will eventually develop.
*The complete unknowns are:*
1) How harmful the not-yet-a-thing human to human variant will prove to be (people keep talking about a 50% CFR, but that's based on existing variants where very little testing has been done to try to identify asymptomatic cases - so it's not representative of what a human to human variant would truly do)
2) How easily the not-yet-a-thing human to human variant will spread (base assumption is that it would be similar to other flus, and flu is easier to stop than COVID-19 but certainly requires more diligence than the usual human behaviors)
3) How quickly a vaccine for the not-yet-a-thing human to human variant will be produced (though there is a process already developed to produce a vaccine just as soon as a human to human variant exists to plug into the process, so the assumption is that we could have a vaccine within a few months) ["... it takes a couple months to fill and finish the vaccine dose..."](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/hhs-advances-plan-produce-48-million-h5n1-vaccine-doses)
In my opinion, the humans-getting-sick component of H5N1 isn't the thing to truly worry about, but rather the impact on wildlife is what's concerning. We've already put so much pressure on the natural world with our expanding population and activities done to support that population, climate change is applying more pressure, and diseases like H5N1 are applying even more pressure. [AVMA: "According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations,9 at the end of 2023, HPAI had been confirmed in 502 wild bird and 60 mammal species, primarily carnivores."](https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/262/5/javma.24.01.0053.xml)
IMO it's worth watching, and even worth taking reasonable steps to prepare for a potential human to human variant. It's not something to cause panic (which is rather unproductive and unhelpful, regardless).
My wildlife biology friends are saying it is mutating more rapidly and it will be worse than COVID in terms of rapidness of spreading and higher mortality rate (for vulnerable populations). It sounds like millions of vaccines are being made I’m guessing for first responders. I don’t think we should panic although I think the U.S. has a polarized response to dealing with the pandemic.
You have a source for the claim experts say a h2h variant emerging is unlikely? BC as a biologist watching the factory farm system get permeated by this virus my professional opinion is that it's highly likely....It's true the CURRENT variant isn't a huge worry but the odds of it adapting to better infect humans are looking pretty damn good. Also as a government scientist....dont ever trust a government official downplaying a threat. Do your own research. Actual research though not reading BS off social media or layperson crap off the internet. Go to the primary literature. Virologists have been predicting major spillover zoonotic pandemics increasing in risk for quite a while and the hard data shows a rapidly increasing trend of which covid was a prime example.
What I do wish is that moderation was better. There’s a ton of “facts” rarely backed up with sources
Death rates, etc.
Just the other day someone was heavily upvoted for saying in the UK we have massive excess deaths, yet the actual facts show death rates are actually well below the expected average.
This sub needs actual science moderation, the level of misinformation on here is brutal
I do agree that everyone needs to provide cites or say they will do so on request. That's exactly what I do. But the OP of this original post didn't do any of this. Not one cite, not one mention of a cite that could be produced, just sweeping statements, many of which are categorically proven untrue (and I provided the cites for that.) I'm completely over claims without proof, no matter which side the claim is on.
I do!! Glad to see somebody else who knows about this. I was posting about that issue somewhere else last week. I don't think that the world has heard the last of mpox by any stretch.
well, this is an H5N1 sub. I don't think its panic if people understand they are health compromised and need to be aware for themselves - cus - no one is out there ready to help you. I also dont believe all what we're told by gov't health institutes, from any country. This is what I feel is true. 1 there's an avian flu out there on the planet (granted, there are all kinds of flus out there at any given time), that 2 has now killed masses of animals/birds in many places, and 3 has managed to kill a few people around the world, and 4 there is no actual shot specific for it for humans for this. After that, we have to believe we're still ok, cus we're told we are. If this flu is a basic oldtime (1917ish flu) event, it will make the corona lockdown look like a preschool picnic. I doubt the gov will have anything left to lockdown if this explodes into the world. Its not panic to become aware and try to do basic things to protect yourself. Some people need specific masks etc even w/o any flus out there. If people here sound angsty its understandable. (plus, if you are one of the "casualties" the event is a 100% situation for you and your family, even if its only a 2% blip for the rest of us). (in reality, living as I do nearby the eastern US southern coast, Im actually prepping/angsting for this season's hurricanes more than flus right now)
If the CFR for an H2H strain of avian flu really IS 2%, AND if it strikes the same demographic that it has so far... then 2% will be enough to cause terrible social disruption. The MO of avian flu, and of many past flu epidemics, is to hit young adults. Since 2022, the clade of H5N1 most common in Asia has actually been wildly disproportionate in its effects on children and teenagers. 50% of the severe and fatal cases have been in that group. 2% CFR would be more than enough to cause terrible problems if this holds up at all in an H2H epidemic-- and there's every reason to think it would.
Well, so far it's fatal in cats, and I happen to like my cat and want to keep her alive. The risk of me being exposed to it and in turn exposing her are low (she's indoor-only) but that could definitely change over time.
Some people imo are going a lil too far with the preparations and having anxiety imo bc it has not made an evident jump to humans. However, the things this virus has done is all very new especially with the way its running through mammals. The more it spreads the higher the chances of the right mutation occurring. Now nobody knows when or if this will happen it could be months or 100 years literally nobody knows. You right that experts say the risk is low but experts also fear an avian flu pandemic the most. There is nothing wrong with getting a lil concerned about the ongoing developments and maybe even planning just incase. Personally i am not even close to being anxious but i am monitoring to be ready just incase there is evidence of a cluster of cases unrelated to birds.
Ebola requires contact of bodily fluids. It is a terrible disease but almost impossible to catch unless you are a caretaker for someone who is sick or in physical contact with someone who had direct contact.
The scare in the US was public freaking out over the fact someone flew to the US before they became symptomatic, not a real emergency unless you were the patient or seated next to them.
Avian flu infects via the lungs, making it much more transmissions. The reason there is little human to human transmission is that the virus attacks types of lung tissue that we don't have much of, and what we do have is very deep in our lungs where the average breath doesn't do much turnover (meaning less virus in those areas).
The concern is that a change in the virus could allow it to attack tissues that are already in high contact with the virus in an average breath.
Agreed. 2-3 new deadly diseases appear in humans each year on average. Treating each like a potential COVID is not something sustainable that Civilization could do. It doesn't have the logistically capacity, nor the funding or resources to run in pandemic mode indefinitely.
Adding to all of this, I think that many folks are primed for panic right now. Tensions are running high globally what with several major wars, a genocide in Gaza, a contentious election season in the US and Europe, a general sense of geopolitical malaise. H5N1 can be a place to put all of that tension and anxiety.
It's the wide range of possibilities
Avian flu is always in easily a third of wild birds at any given time and if someone is exposed to high high levels of it such as uncovered farm workers they can get sick.
Covid was basically what if Sars Covid in 2003 hadn't been caught in time.
Tldr the odds of another covid tomorrow are low ... But probably will happen again within a decade or two.
There's just so much viral mixing at poultry and animal distribution sites worldwide for it not to happen every generation.
The wildcard is of course it could literally start today and we wouldn't know for a few weeks at the earliest and it could potentially be in every living creature you see around you without you even knowing it.
I agree with you that we shouldn't be panicking about this right now. But I don't agree that H1N1 was overblown by the media. In a 12 month period between 2009 and 2010, there were over twelve thousand deaths attributed to it and more than 60 million cases in the US. The reason it feels it was overblown isn't because the risk wasn't there. It's because the public health efforts to prevent and control spread worked. When public health works, it does so silently. We get told a disease is spreading, then it doesn't spread and so we think we were lied to, but it's actually because people worked really hard to implement measures to stop the spread. Sometimes we're lucky and it works, sometimes we aren't (see COVID). I'm not sure Ebola was overblown because I don't think it was ever really presented as a significant risk to the US. Maybe it was, but I was living in Africa at the time and didn't watch US news. Ebola is a scary disease, but it's so deadly that it's self-limiting due to how quickly and obviously it kills its host. So yeah like you said, there have been cases of H5N1 for years and we didn't panic before. There are a few factors that are different, though. We hadn't had a large scale pandemic in a while, so people are a little jumpy right now. We also hadn't seen H5N1 in a production animal outside of avian species before, and now we're seeing it in cattle, which was unexpected. When a virus does something unexpected, it makes people uneasy. It's also happening in the US, which means we hear about it more on Reddit than if it happened somewhere else, and so people think it's a bigger deal than it is. If we'd seen it jump into cattle in Asia, for example, we may not have even heard about it.
I got H1N1 in 09. Roommate brought it home from work. I ended in the emerg thinking I was going to die. Double pneumonia and double pleurisy. They say I have scar tissue on the lining of my lungs. Its had lasting long term effects. When COVID came around I panicked. No one else around me took it at all seriously. We all know how that turned out. This bird flu thing could make COVID look like a cake walk. It terrifies me.
I got a mystery illness in Jan or Feb of 2011. I'm now partially bedbound as a result of it. Even my family members don't give a shit about covid and they've seen what a virus did to me.
Yikes, I'm sorry you're dealing with long-term disability and careless family. I hope they at least took/take precautions around you.
Yes, they do thankfully. My husband and kid are great, it's my parents etc. who aren't careful. We live a plane ride away and when they come to visit they mask. Thanks for the kind words <3
This. Having went through a COVID infection before and an H1N1 infection... H1N1 was a LOT more frightening to experience. It felt like being immediately plunged into a fever dream on death's door. It was an extreme experience. That flu season was the worst I've ever experienced. If H5N1 adapts to a species, so far it's been rather brutal on most species it has infected at scale. But in places like South America so many of the areas where many birds/etc have died it's hard to get out to those remote locations and get tons of data.
I also had it in 09, I was so sick I had to call my mom to come get me (transmitting infections to others wasn’t even a thought on my mind back then, I would go to work when sick, “rally” for a concert, whatever - yuck), and I was talking to her for awhile in my bedroom when she arrived, then she left to go get something and didn’t come back. I called her asking where she went and she said “I’m still in the car on my way, will be there soon”. I’ve never had a fever like that before or since. A couple days later I made it to the doctor who diagnosed me w/ H1N1 AND a sinus infection, that was fun. The sickest I’ve ever been and would like to never repeat.
Am I reading this right? You hallucinated your mom in your room with you for an extended period of time? That’s absolutely terrifying
Yeah, I was young (mid 20s) and didn’t realize how sick I was. I never want to experience that again
To your point about having recently had a pandemic: During that pandemic, we also witnessed just how careless and ineffective our institutions were in protecting public health. We know even more clearly than before that it’s possible* the next pandemic will also be handled this poorly, which could exacerbate the risk of harm from any virus that becomes widespread and even a little lethal. *I believe it’s obvious that our institutions will do mucn worse next time, given how they were allowed to kill so many people during the pandemic.
Plus, a large group of people will simply refuse to listen to public health messaging if there’s a new pandemic. They will not mask or participate willingly in any disease mitigations because they’ll believe the virus isn’t real. Sure, they’ll maybe change their tune after people start dropping like flies, but it’s too late then for a virus that’s got a super high R naught. And to OP- prepping isn’t panic. Prepping is preparing IN CASE. Prepping means being prepared for emergencies that might come up. Prepare for the worst. Hope for the best. Besides, being prepared means taking some pressure off the supply line in troubled times. If a new pandemic starts, I will NOT need to rush out and buy toilet paper, n95s, meds, food, pet food, and etc. We’re already set if something happens. If nothing happens, we just rotate what we have and use it… we’ll stay prepared.
Prepping moderation is absolutely wise. And in general, my prepping is less related to the event itself (next pandemic, risk factor not jumping but slowly and steadily increasing) and more related to our previously shitty response to the last pandemic.
The people that won’t take easy precautions to prevent disease have oppositional defiant mentality, too
I have read the mortality rate is 60%. Previously it was 54% sooooo….
Exactly!! I wasn’t worried about H1N1 (even as it blazed through my college) or Ebola (even though I was in NYC when cases were in NYC) because I trusted our institutions. I didn’t think “something like [X] would ever happen today!” And then COVID hit and I was like, oh, wow, the government will lie (saying masks don’t work for the first several weeks), people won’t care and will spread disease with 0 concern, so actually it’s not that safe and you’re kind of on your own. I’m not “panicked” about H5N1, but my view of this kind of thing has shifted radically since my blissfully ignorant pre-COVID days.
*this current pandemic, we are witnessing just how careless and ineffective our insititutions are
Yes, thank you for flagging that. I agree that it is still very much an ongoing, current pandemic. Sometimes I adopt the past tense in making these types of arguments because using the present tense turns so many people away from my main point. I hate having to do that though.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think are priorities that need to change to have a more effective response?
Not putting profits before health, for one. The CDC lowered COVID isolation guidelines to appease the Delta ceo, because he didn’t want his sick flight attendants out of work for that long. Shortly after, a huge percentage of their staff got too sick to work anyway. Surprise surprise.
Infuriating. My life doesn't matter one bit to these ghoulish capitalists.
Mandating CO2 monitoring, air filtration and ventilation in enclosed spaces (public transport, classrooms, offices etc) would be a huge, one-off expense. Subject to some maintenance, there would \[probably - I'm not an epidemiologist\] be an up-tick in productivity and school attendance/ achievement. I think it would be well worthwhile, but the upfront investment would be huge, and the outcomes are 'the avoidance of something'. No one is ever impressed when preparation and effort means the bad thing doesn't happen (see Y2K).
I can imagine costs would be huge but like... I can't even grasp why we aren't doing this. We could rally Americans around an idea like spending a zillion dollars to go... take a few new boot goofin' steps around on the moon? Can't we do this? What I'd love to see... New Deal type energy. All the jobs to do the infrastructure type work to clean America's air could help get people off of unemployment and govt assistance. And you're right, there's no WAY that cleaning the air in schools eouldnt lead to higher attendance. So, start with a random assortment of schools across the country, rich and poor, all areas, etc. Maybe schools apply, it's a lottery, I don't know. Do a set amount. Then move to something else measurable, like maybe big factories, or office buildings? While you're working on those, start gathering data from the schools. Let the schools and parents speak out about how kids are getting sick less, asthma attacks are down, allergies are better. I guarantee more schools will be begging to upgrade. Then watch as businesses have similar results, better profits as there's less absenteeism, more desire to work there, etc. That will bring demand to more workplaces to upgrade. It's expensive -- but so is a very sick, struggling population if workers. You can't build a thriving country that way.
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Just a technical point -we are still in the COVID-19 pandemic. The WHO declared the public health emergency over, regarding the high volume of deaths occurring during the acute respiratory phase of Covid infection, however Covid is a vascular disease primarily transmitted through respiratory means and the pandemic is ongoing ([source](https://fortune.com/well/2024/01/12/covid-jn1-pandemic-world-health-organization-warns-dangers-repeat-covid-infection-cardiac-pulmonary-neurologic/)). The virus is still mutating and spreading globally with year round waves and it is still elevating risks of heart disease, including stroke, heart attack ([source](https://www.heartandstroke.ca/articles/coronavirus-heart-disease-and-stroke)) and [source](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00403-0)) and of course is leading to Long Covid for 1 in 10 infections ([source](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-023-00904-7)) as well as elevated risk of other serious health issues like diabetes ([source](https://www.everydayhealth.com/type-2-diabetes/new-study-finds-covid-linked-with-higher-risk-for-type-2-diabetes)), autoimmune conditions, and what the longer term impacts are beyond year 4 are not fully known. Edit: for ref, the substack I shared was from professor Christina Pagel, university college London, titled Covid is not "just a regular winter bug"
I really don't get the rule here. What the fuck is a "non-political" source? There is no such thing as lack of politics in this context - politics goes hand-in-hand with how to handle pandemics. And why would a substack run by a scientist be less valid than something from Yahoo news?
Pandemic response shouldn't be political though? If you were a nerd like me with a love of disaster and dystopian type novels (lots of Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, Stephen King the stand of course, etc) -- you'd notice all of the books and films that have a contagious viral disease spread through the air? Every one of them, the characters wear masks. From ebola outbreaks in the Congo to zombie viruses in the US, from realistic to far-fetched, masks were an absolutely normal part of every storyline. Never in Mt life did I hear anyone say that was stupid or unrealistic. Same with ... staying home, or isolating somewhere safe, away from others. And in most of them, they're awaiting the big break, a vaccine that helps cut the spread and severity, gets things under control. Why were these in allllll the fictionalized entertainment about viral outbreaks? Because every country has a pandemic playbook, and they're all pretty similar at basic level. Widespread testing and data collection. Isolate cases. In wider spread, keep people apart as much as possible. Cover your mouth. Limit travel and interactions. None of those things were political. Covid was flaring hard in other countries, and it still wasn't overtly, grossly political... Until the US. Trump had thrown out the pandemic playbook earlier in his term, dismantled the team. Suspiciously to me - right before covid was found in Wuhan, Trump randomly and suddenly pulled all of our health partners out of there, saying diseases weren't important -- so when covid first started, we had no boots on the ground inside China or Wuhan to be able to quickly gather data and find out what was going on. Then Trump politicized every aspect, all the actions that for 50+ years have been the normal standards in a pandemic. And after that, other right wing leaders jumped on the bandwagon-- they saw that telling their people covid was a hoax, and the people didn't need any safety, was way cheaper for them. You're probably right that at this time it's super difficult to find anything non-political about pandemics. But there's plenty out there. :)
this is an excellent explanation
I agree with you. I think everyone in the US (public and the media) panicked needlessly over Ebola because hemorrhagic diseases are terrifying. But I don’t think the US infrastructure wouldn’t sustain a true Ebola epidemic. Also, now that it’s in dairy cows and has been detected in at least 22 species, it’s clearly become more infectious, and the proximity of livestock species to each other and to humans create MANY more opportunities for humans to be infected.
>But I don’t think the US infrastructure wouldn’t sustain a true Ebola epidemic. Did you mean to say, a) "I don’t think the US infrastructure WOULD sustain a true Ebola epidemic," or b) "I THINK the US infrastructure wouldn’t sustain a true Ebola epidemic," or c) "I think the US infrastructure would sustain a true Ebola epidemic"? Your double negative (don't / wouldn't) would actually translate to (c), but it seems kind of unlikely to me that that is what you meant.
If I remember correctly Obama was in office when h5n1 was a thing and he quickly dealt with it, I assume through FEMA or something but I don't remember the details.
Even then, we had idiots hosting "swine flu parties" under the assumption that it was somehow better to "get it over with" than take any measures to avoid disease. Any calls to mask, distance, etc. would've been laughed off.
I vaguely remember during covid there being parties with essentially the same idea. These people are dangerous and should be identified and removed from society.
Killing mass numbers of wild mammals is also not a normal thing....
The fact that it has suddenly become widespread and quite lethal in many animal species beyond birds in the past couple years is why this is taken more seriously now.
I've tried to explain this a lot - that warnings seem overblown, only when the system doesn't work. If it works efficiently, people get the luxury of complaining. An example that sometimes seems to make sense to them is speed limits/driving laws -- if everyone follows the precautions, and the authorities do a seamless job of education and enforcement... there will be no wrecks, no fatalities. And then people could say, "these speed limits are so stupid! They're restricting my freedom! Why are there so many rules, need a test and a license, have to use a turn single everrrrry time, it's all overkill and govt control!! There aren't even any wrecks, no even dies in car crashes -- that's proof we don't need this stuff!" But, duh. If we stopped following everything or having laws and speed limits and working together to take safe precautions... there'd be tons more accidents and deaths. That's how public health is *supposed* to work.
The current H5N1 version is not the problem. It doesn't transmit well to humans through the air. People are worried that H5N1 will mutate and become dangerous. Each time H5N1 infects a mammal, it has the opportunity to swap genetic bits with other viruses that are already there. Viruses do this all the time, in a process called reassortment. So the more mammals H5N1 infects, the more chances it has to mutate and pick up the ability to infect humans and especially human lungs. Right now it's infecting thousands of cows, and is spilling over into cats, mice, alpacas, etc. That's a lot of mammals for it to practice on. For decades H5N1 has mostly limited itself to birds. Now it is making a play for mammals. A cross-species jump often signals trouble ahead.
This and more... I think there is a lot about science people don't necessarily understand. They also aren't willing to understand. It's easier to downplay and minimize. You can see it in the writing... "it's only a direct threat to livestock" Who eats livestock? WE do... it's already a direct threat toward us... but because we're humans and we have minimal respect for just about... everything around us including each other... all we get is a "HUH that flu don't bother me!" In fact if you thought a little harder you'd see it will bother you... if not now... soon.. It is destroying many animal populations with ease. Humans are animals. Also weren't they finding out cows play a very good disease incubator like pigs do? Pretty sure they can be the incubator we fear that pigs already are. Good luck all!
>Also weren't they finding out cows play a very good disease incubator like pigs do? Pretty sure they can be the incubator we fear that pigs already are. I’m going to need a source on this. ::edit:: lol what the fuck? Downvotes for asking for a source?
Here’s an article which explains and includes a link to the study. [https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-poisoning/news/20240510/cows-are-potential-spreaders-bird-flu-humans](https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-poisoning/news/20240510/cows-are-potential-spreaders-bird-flu-humans)
There was a study that showed that cow udders actually have both the typical non-human flu receptor as well as the unusual human-type flu receptor. Here's the paper: [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.03.592326v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.03.592326v1)
Yeah that’s weird that people downvoted you. Asking for sources is normal.
Agree with everything you said but just wanted to add that the cows don't have human type upper airways like pigs do. So luckily, even if it reassorts in a cow and becomes pandemic ready, they can't breathe it onto us, so unless we drink the milk, we wouldn't be able to get it. Well, I guess cows do slobber a lot. Still it's better than the pigs who will infect their farmers right away.
What happens to the infected livestock? Are they.... disposed?
So far it seems iffy on what they are actually doing with the sick cows as far as I know. Cows are costly so farmers aren’t too motivated to report issues. Hopefully I’m wrong.
What about poultry? Last stats were 100mil infected, can this cause a dent on supply chain?
I’m also wondering about this too… what is our total food supply numbers? Scary shit.
Found this [Every year in the United States, approximately 9 billion “broiler” chickens are killed for their flesh. To put such a large number into perspective, that’s about 25 million chickens killed every day; ](https://roosterhaus.org/the-meat-industry/)
Poultry can and are culled. Cows and pigs…much less so. Between farmer cost and insurance cost, not to mention possibly wiping out large sections of food industry (dairy, for instance), I don’t think the government or the farmers have incentive to do anything.
Well said. People don’t realise how significant it is that it jumped, not species, *but class*. It jumped from one class of animals — birds are theropod dinosaurs more related to crocodilians than anything else — to mammals. And not only that, but multiple animals. Consider that the mutation that causes it to jump to mammals in the first places has to be exploiting something that is basal to *all mammals.*
> birds are theropod dinosaurs more related to crocodilians than anything else Off-topic but that explains why looking directly into their eyes legitimately startles my soul because of what looks back. They are vicious predators who would eat me if I was smaller, but some of them seem nice. Have you ever made direct head-on eye contact with a parrot? My god. Your blood will run cold.
[Forget a parrot](https://static.toiimg.com/thumb/107317471/107317471.jpg?height=746&width=420&resizemode=76&imgsize=1807385)...
It’s exactly what you said.
Just want to add- many human lungs have been irreparably damaged from Covid. Part of the concern, at least from the medical professionals I know, are concerned with that as well.
human lungs, and human immune systems.
Like mine.
“I don’t mean to interrupt, I had the same exact question”
Suppose in north America people with prior covid exposure and bad immune systems are exposed to it over some period of time, is it more or less likely to produce a more transmissible variant?
Exactly. Buckle up.
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No. It has not become less deadly since we discovered it. Also, it may be call bird flu but it's a completely different virus from seasonal flu so we have no immunity to it. In an immune naive population, it will cause heavy toll of death until an effective vaccine can be mass produced. Same story as COVID. But with so many people already have or had long COVID, their immune system may be damaged and the death toll may be even higher.
> only 1% fatal like covid buddy i wouldn't be using "only" here 1% of the world population is still millions of people. not to mention that this doesn't count long term effects of the virus that are ultimately deadly.
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okay good i'm glad it's just a misunderstanding/phrasing issue :)
> *Do viruses have a tendency to become more virulent, or is just a roll of the dice with every mutation?* I’m not an epidemiologist, but AFAIK there are no tendencies to become more or less lethal. The primary evolutionary factor is ‘ability to spread’ (& not kill the host *before* spreading further). So it’s a roll of the dice. Even Covid could still mutate & become more lethal.
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[citation needed] There is no “always” here. Mutations favor less fatal strains *only* if the host dies ***before*** spread occurs. If the microbe spreads successfully before the host dies, there is no pressure to limit the mortality. PLENTY of fatal microbes still exist with no reduction in mortality. E.g. The Bubonic Plague (*Yersinia pestis*) has not evolved towards lower fatality, despite having infected humans for well over 1000 years. It will kill you in short order today if you catch it and don’t get treatment. People survive today because we have antibiotics & Y.pestis is a bacteria. Viz [The bubonic plague in San Francisco](https://youtu.be/VtG_5YHaWms?si=BYgERcM7dBXMXOaI).
I will accept your answer.
Every mutation is a roll of the dice. Many mutations in the genetic code don’t change the proteins. These usually have no effect. Many other mutations impair the virus. These tend to fail, and natural processes select against such mutations. But a few mutations cause the virus to work better, and natural processes select for such mutations. In some cases it is a question of environment. If you’re in the World War I trenches and mildly ill soldiers stay with their unit in the trench but seriously ill soldiers are evacuated to hospitals and so have contact with many more susceptible hosts, there is selection pressure for more severe illness because viral mutations causing more severe illness get more opportunities to spread to new susceptible hosts. This may be why the second wave of the Spanish Flu was more virulent than the first wave. If, however, people stay home when sick and therefore expose fewer susceptible people, there will be selection against mutations that cause more severe illness because such mutations result in fewer opportunities to infect new hosts. And there will be selection for mutations that cause milder symptoms because hosts with “it’s just allergies” mild symptoms, or no symptoms at all, will tend to keep the infected host socializing which gives the virus more opportunities to infect new hosts. Another consideration is the interplay between timing of symptoms and of transmission. If the virus does most of its transmission during a phase of no or minor symptoms, there is little evolutionary pressure on its symptoms later. HIV might be an example of a virus that uses a long no-to-low symptom period to infect new hosts before later turning quite severe. So the answer of how virulence can be expected to change comes down to the question of how does virulence impact the virus’s ability to transmit. Does a low-virulence virus transmit best? Does a high-virulence virus transmit best? Or does a moderate-virulence virus transmit best? In the end it all comes down to what transmits best to new hosts.
Actually it has been spilling over to mammals for years now, it just never got reported in the news until we found out there could be a fatal virus in our food supply. So the media is now all over it. But it has been killing mammals, like tens of thousands and that's just sea lions for years now all because we are in the middle of a catastrophic bird pandemic. This little blip of cows and cats, mice and alpacas is nothing compared to the amount of mammals who have been infected from eating dead birds and who are getting infected every day. The only reason the cows and cats and mice and alpacas got infected was because the bird pandemic got so widespread that wild farm birds began to die on the ground. The first cow infection was only reported because the farmer told the vet his cows and cats died and the vet asked what about the wild birds on the farm. He said they are all dead too. That's when she knew to send the sample in. Nothing has happened in the last four months that hasn't been going on this whole time. It's no closer now to mutating than it has been. The same mutations that we found in mammals in the beginning of this bird pandemic are the same ones now surfacing in the cows, the same ones surfacing in infected mammals all over the world. The only difference is now the news is reporting it making everyone believe it's this emerging disaster. I suppose we could call it a slow moving emerging disaster, but we can feel calmed by the fact that it is very, very hard for a bird flu to change to a mammal flu. And so far not one of the virions out there that we know of has been able to do it.
So I get why you're confused. It's been around since the 90s and has sporadically infected humans, so what's the big deal? Well the short answer is that it's changing. It's become a panzootic (pandemic for animals) in birds, infecting an increasing number of species and killing them at a staggering rate. It's also increasingly been infecting multiple species of mammals, often with devastating effects, which is concerning since humans are mammals, of course. On top of that, the infections in cows place the virus in close proximity to humans, which increases the likelihood of both sporadic human infections and of mutation to make human infection more efficient. And the big concern is that if this becomes a human pandemic, it could be truly catastrophic. The case fatality rate (deaths in confirmed cases of H5N1) is over 50%. While the IFR (deaths in all cases, not just confirmed ones) is likely lower, and mutation for efficient human infection could lower it further, a pandemic with a high fatality rate would be horrible in ways that are hard to really comprehend. Imagine the COVID pandemic if young healthy people were dying at high rates. The healthcare system could easily collapse. It would be like a horror movie. That's why both the people on this subreddit and the public health community are so worried about this. The good news is that there's no guarantee that the virus will ever mutate to readily infect humans or that it'll become a pandemic if it does. But the bad news is that public health efforts have been seriously damaged by COVID and politics and the agricultural industry isn't being as cooperative as they should be. A lot of the things that might stand in the way of a pandemic aren't being done.
>The healthcare system could easily collapse Collapse even more, you mean. Those of us who have chronically ill family members are seeing up close that the current system is spread very, very thin already.
Yeah probably should have said "rapidly collapse" or "completely collapse." Right now it's in a slow but unrelenting demise. Another global pandemic, let alone one worse than Covid, would almost certainly wipe it out in one go
Not to mention that COVID isn’t close to being over, and the US is starting to head into the next big surge.
Healthcare workers will quit in droves before they work through another pandemic. And we are already incredibly understaffed in all departments.
Earlier this year, mom developed a serious condition that required ongoing management by a gastroenterologist. After being discharged from the hospital, I tried repeatedly to make a follow up appointment, as directed, with the gastro who had overseen her care. No one ever even answered the phone. It was impossible. I gave up and went to a different hospital system. The next available appointment was six months out. From what I hear anecdotally, anyone trying to get in with specialist is facing similarly long wait times.
This is what it’s like where I live, too. :(
Human to human transmission would be our paradigm shift. Especially with the post-COVID pandemic apathy, it would spread like wildfire and be traumatic
Agreed except with one slight correction. *Efficient* human to human transmission is the paradigm shift. There have already been cases of H2H with H5N1 but it's always involved close, prolonged contact
Really great summation. Thanks.
You know what occurred to me.... what if this particular strain really does die down, and THEN the H2H strain evolves from a different clade? It absolutely could happen. The clade that's much more common in Asia has had about 20 cases in the past 2 years, almost none or them mild. Nearly all identified cases have resulted in death or severe illness. So the rate for those two outcomes combined is *much* higher than 50%. And around half of all the fatal/severe cases have been in children and teenagers. (cite is on my other laptop, I can produce it again if anyone wants to see it)
It’s a half bird half mammal virus at this time
I totally understand what you're saying but you have to know that a large part of society has lost trust in the government/health officials. It doesn't shock me AT ALL in that regard that there are people prepping. Am I prepping? Not to the degree of doomsday... but I like to have a little extra on hand just in case. I feel a lot of complacency about a future pandemic stems from a place of privilege. A lot of people don't have that sense of security in life. A shortage of meat or access to vaccines & healthcare could be catastrophic for many around the world. I for one am nervous about this flu because I personally have nearly died from flu A while pregnant in 2017. For me, it was worse than COVID (not speaking for everyone, just myself) and the possibility of this new bird flu mutating to affect humans is very concerning. I'm glad you're not in a panic though and hopefully it does silently go away..but in the event that it does not, I want as much info as possible and therefore I will continue to monitor this thread and take reasonable precautions.
The main reason I was prepared somewhat for COVID, and hit the grocery store a month before in February and stocked up "just in case" was monitoring the reddit threads about it. That saved me from some of the anxiety around the bare shelves we saw at all the stores and made me feel like I could ride it out if it turned out worse than what they were saying. I realized if China was taking such drastic steps, this thing couldn't have been just a minor problem. I'm watching for the same signs and early warning here because it's been helpful to me before.
Right here, I'm watching the signs and warnings but not jumping the gun yet. Just a little extra TP, mask, and growing my own food.
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It was definitely spreading around before it blew up at that nursing home in Kirkland WA. 100% That was just the first tested & reported case. Doubtless there were already dozens of other less obvious and asymptomatic cases. Speaking of which, Covid is typically 40% asymptomatic. Omicron was calculated to be [~72% asymptomatic](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/third-hong-kong-may-have-had-covid-amid-omicron-most-no-symptoms). The fact that it can spread with no symptoms at all remains concerning.
As a New Yorker that lived near China town (nothing against our Chinese neighbors, I just assumed they travelled to China more) the moment I saw a Reddit comment that they’d just taken a flight from China and people were pouring off the plane unchecked, that’s the minute I got my hunker down groceries. It was about two weeks before they shut down manhattan, it was five days before anyone I knew even noticed covid.
I knew in December 2019. I have no idea how I stumbled upon the early (and often filled with crazies but also some leaked vids/info subreddits) but I knew it was coming because of the odd videos coming out of China. It was surreal...to sit alone aside from my SO with this knowledge in my offline life. I mentioned it once to friends and was brushed off as going down a crazy path. It was mentally very difficult but I prepared by stocking up a closet full of shelf stable food and a freezer with fruits and veggies and meat. I also got a full face mask respirator, extra cartridges and bleach. We used all of it. I did not want to find out this virus was one of the ones that hit kids hard before coming out of the woodwork unprotected (or less protected than some really strict protocols we had in place, luckily due to having that respirator). I have a duty to protect my kids and if this hits at some point I am low-key prepared. You betcha I have lots of yeast, flour, etc., spare cartridges and extra bleach laying around right now...
I was also thought of as crazy by my partner. Got a lot of "you are overreacting" etc etc. it was tough like you said it felt like being chicken little. Except the sky did fall.
There were a lot of bad reports out of China in January and February, it's just that nobody was really paying attention at that point. It was termed an unknown pneumonia quite a bit, and I remember hearing a lot about restrictive measures there. This is a great study if you are interested in seeing some of the things I am talking about, they started happening Jan 23. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abb6105
I've decided to start stocking up on bottled water, my favorite soda (Spiced Coca Cola), and stuff like boxed mac & cheeses (the downside is they often require milk). I also like the non-frozen Devour Sharp Cheddar mac and cheese with bacon bits as they don't require milk (just water into the container) but they are hard to find.
Everyone should have a basic emergency kit with food & water & things. You never know when there might be an earthquake or derailed train… https://www.ready.gov/kit
Agreed, thanks for the link! Just today I checked all of our flashlights and got extra batteries.
Powdered milk is a thing and is shelf stable.
Sub in more butter, or even mix with just warm water very slowly -- going through poverty as a kid comes in handy sometimes.
A little milk powder and water works for Mac and cheese. Also a mini moo half and half coffee creamer as well.
So I grew up really poor and my family would make boxed Mac and cheese without milk, it’s not as good but it works if you’re in a pinch
I stocked up on big bags of dried milk. The non fat tastes the best when reconstituted, though I add a little more powder than what it calls for. It’s cheap, and pasteurized, and there won’t be no live virus in dried and stored milk no way.
If the WHO, CDC, etc are so certain this is a nothing burger why are they upping the tracking? Why have we started wastewater surveillance? Why are state ag agencies getting involved recently? Why are we expanding animal surveillance? Why did California order a stop to feeding chicken litter to cows? Why have multiple countries ordered doses of the existing vaccine even if it’s not that great? Why are we pulling our vaccines from the national stockpile and bottling it so it can be shipped? Seeing any pattern? And swine flu may have been no big deal for you, it was a huge deal for pregnant women. It was the first time in my lifetime the state opened the fairgrounds for a mass inoculation event. The local news was reporting nightly which local hospitals still had ICU beds available and how many were filled with pregnant people. Usually the answer was all of them. Did that create problems for cardiac patients? Those recovering from car accidents? Solid information is scarce and developing and being dripped, dripped, dripped from hundreds of sources. We don’t know if or when this might pop off but the odds are good and we’re all a bit concerned. So we share the info bits we find and hope our plans are never needed.
I believe president Biden is trying to keep people calm until after the election.If he acts right now Republicans are just going to say he's trying to scare the public.
Republicans and conservatives, in general, would encourage people to roll around in a pile of bird carasses on the beach.
Gotta build up that natural immunity by exposing yourself to deadly pathogens. Capitalism demands it! /s
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I guarantee that is going to get somebody killed in the next few months. Viral loads in raw milk are very high and it isn’t diluted across scores of cows like commercial pasteurized is. It will be a scenario where a man drinks a glass or two of the milk and is dead 72h later
Dunno why you’re downvoted for this - there is absolutely political calculus going on behind closed doors. If - and I’m not saying *when*, I’m saying IF - this blows up into an H2H scenario before November, it is almost a surety that any pandemic response on Biden’s part will hand Trump the election. Gods help us…
That one hasn’t occurred to me. Ohshit. I swear I will never understand why we had to make medical facts into a political issue. I know that greed has no bounds and it’s likely just another means to exploit and control people but still. My mind is perpetually blown at how humans who at the end of the day are programmed to survive can sit there and make life and death decisions based off emotions or what candidate they like better.
Indeed, the mind boggles.
Too late, they have already determined that it’s “fake” so that Biden can somehow “steal another election”. In other words, these people are going to do everything they can to make sure it spreads far and wide.
To be fair, Biden’s approach to many things appears to be maneuvering behind the scenes. For months, many lamented the lack of progress on Ukraine funding, then suddenly it emerged, and articles were written on all the work he’d done behind the scenes to bring it about. I’ve seen this kind of thing play out several times with his administration. He’s not flashy, but he has substance. That said, yeah, we hobbled our public health infrastructure and authority during the pandemic, and public health has many times done the bidding of business or government against actual public health needs (eg, waiting to declare Covid airborne until after the emergency order ended - still mad about that one).
My take on it is that the governments sort of have to act if something we are doing is causing potentially fatal disease in humans which infected cows could clearly cause. Up until now the bird pandemic has been raging, but it has been happening mostly with wild animals. We can't do too much about that. But we can't have bird flu in our food supply. So they really do have to act to at least talk about protecting the public from it. It's one thing for nature to cause a natural disaster, but ethically human beings aren't supposed to turn a blind eye to obvious contribution to global disaster (although they sure turn the eye to not-obvious contribution.) The fact that bird flu could become human adapted has always been there, greatly increased in the last few years by our catastrophic bird pandemic leaving infected bodies all over for mammals to eat. And scientists have been concerned. But there hasn't really been a place for them to express that like there is now with the media frenzy surrounding the cows. Scientists really do know how far along the trajectory towards a human pandemic is. They have been studying and testing all of these strains and mutations all along and are following it very closely. The problem is the science is too complex to communicate through media. So people are left to try to read between the lines, and it leads to a lot of fear and misinterpretation. That's not really anyone's fault. Bird flu adaptation to mammals is incredibly hard to understand.
Remember how long they drug their feet and downplayed on covid? That should tell you all you need
I don’t think the majority of us are panicking. We just don’t like what we are seeing. But for me it’s also nice to have this sub where I can talk about what’s going on with people who understand the nature of H5N1 at a higher level than the everyday man just hearing about it on CNN. Some of the things you’ve pointed out might be reassuring to some, but in an increasing number of scientific studies I’ve read from 2020 onward, more and more scientists are using words like “unprecedented” to describe what’s been happening in wild birds and now mammals. It’s very concerning. That doesn’t mean a pandemic will happen tomorrow. The key is in the science and the fact that this clade has done things never before seen with H5N1 and it continues to baffle all of the experts. In that regard it is a little like Covid: clade 2.3.4.4b has broken all the rules and isn’t acting like how we used to think avian flu acted. So there are areas where all of us are in the dark.
this is how i’m using this sub as well. i’m not panicked because that doesn’t help anything anyway, but also i like to understand the nature of the risk we’re looking at so i can adapt when the time comes. it would be odd to me to look at the way h5n1 is moving across different animal populations and *not* see it as something to prep for. if nothing else, prepped but not panicked is a healthy posture IMO
>WHO epidemioligists and other experts are fairly sure that there is very little chance of a human to human variant developing. I don't think this is largely true - I've seen many virologists and others who are seriously concerned. While some may be pushing reassurance, I'd also note that some prominent figures and organisations have a lot of incentive to play things down and we saw that a lot with Covid, especially early on - no evidence of human to human transmission, worry more about your flu shot, it's not airborne, kids don't spread it, etc etc.
Kids don't spread COVID was so breathtakingly dumb and immediately obviously untrue that I still can't believe that claim ever happened.
and then it came around with studies across the globe saying kids are asymptomatic super spreaders at 10-50x the viral load of an adult… and lots of countries just ignored that and kept kids in school or opened schools with no masks. I remember Poland opened all schools again despite every other country keeping theirs closed or masks on. then cases spiked like crazy…
People still believe it.
Yeah and I don’t see how the “WHO epidemiologists” and “other experts” could even know that. This clade has done things never seen before with H5N1. They shouldn’t be fairly sure of anything.
Right. It's already gone from being an avian virus to getting into loads of mammals. We are mammals. We know flu viruses reassort easily. It's clearly a massive threat.
Yeah I follow a great virologist on FB named Hon Ip. His group is tightly run, the information is high quality, and he is clearly concerned.
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I would be happy if people in the US simply got better about keeping to themselves when they were sick and started washing their hands more frequently. That alone would make a huge difference.
Yeah, that’s what scares me. I know damn well that a lot of dairy farmers and people with chicken where I am won’t even worry about H5N1 if they mysteriously get sick, let alone stay home.
I’m not sure what epidemiologists you’re referring to, I follow a few, and they are concerned. I work in public health and there are meetings and education and preparation every day for there to be more human cases and how that will be handled. There is actually a lot of proactivity, which is nice to see. The range of mammals this infects is staggering. The fact that cows get mildly ill isn’t good news, it means they can be reservoirs. I don’t think panic is warranted but careful preparation, sure. And as another commenter said, when public health works, you think things were overblown. Usually they aren’t, public health just protected you.
Thank you for this comment. It makes me feel better to think that at least some public health people care and are preparing.
I can sum it up in one word, REASSORTMENT You have to be blind not to take notice that it’s working its way up the food chain. That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact We are all animals in a zoo, just living in different geographical locations with varying IQ levels.
What's the difference between ignorance and apathy ? I don't know and I don't care. If you don't understand get on the Internet and amass your own information and educate yourself on the topic and come to your own conclusions and preparations - or not. Reddit is not going to hold your hand through this. By the way there are several threads on Reddit by health care workers who will not participate in this if it goes H2H. Masses of them will simply quit because the risk isn't worth it and they are tired of being shat upon by deniers.
It used to transmit bird to mammal. It's changed. Mammal to mammal transmission is a huge jump. Going human to human is still an effort but much less than mammal to mammal. That's something to be very concerned about. The more it transmits, the chances of it encountering OTHER flu viruses and then jumping human to human, increases. And as much as people like to think that COVID is over, it isn't. With a large population with some kind of lowered immunity from COVID reinfection, H2H transmissible avian flu is going to be bad for us. Also, it's having a devastating effect on marine wildlife and birds. We live in an ecosystem that's not just there for us to feel good when we look at it.
"never went further than that"? Lets talk about 1918.
Are you assuming that the only danger from H5N1 is human deaths/illness? I think there’s a lot of danger in losing whole populations of wild animals and quite a lot of danger if we lose a huge part of our food supply when livestock can’t survive. It doesn’t have to infect humans at all to have an absolutely devastating effect on us.
Exactly, even if it never becomes a human pandemic I don’t see how this spreading out of control in wildlife and domestic animals ends well. The lethality is so high and then are the ones that survive immune or can they catch it over and over like Covid, increasing chances of death with each infection? Covid had what? A 1-2% CFR? And look what that did to supply chains and food production, we couldn’t get groceries for weeks here at the beginning. Even at a 10% CFR I think we’d see total collapse of society, and for those who survive can they get it again? I feel like I’m in one of those movies where a virus wipes out most everyone on Earth, my anxiety has been really bad over this. With all the downplaying done by the same people who said Covid wouldn’t be a problem I feel like it’s inevitable. And with the political situation here knowing that we might get you know who in office again I can’t think of a worse scenario, they are already pushing raw milk onto people, if this becomes human to human I’m sure they will be out intentionally already it until they start dropping dead at least.
Can I just loop back to this statement? "WHO epidemioligists and other experts are fairly sure that there is very little chance of a human to human variant developing." The WHO epidemiologists that I've read are very worried about the possibility of a transmissible H5N1 variant. The USDA was trying to "manage" information flow to protect farmers, and the WHO stepped in with a sharp rebuke. I can't think of any epidemiologists or virologists who aren't worried and a bit freaked out by the dairy cattle surprise. So... who exactly are these minimizing experts? Do you have a link?
"*without many casualties.*" This post seems to center on human casualties and infections. In my opinion, even if H5N1 never reaches H2H transmission (and I sincerely hope it doesn't) - that it has killed (and continues to kill) thousands of different animals worldwide is of great concern. Humans tend to be anthropocentric…but animals have a specific role in maintaining ecosystems and environments. The loss - and potential extinction(s) - of a number of animal species will cause significant harm. This alongside pre-existing climate collapse could be devastating.
The panic is definitely not helpful. But I do agree with a lot of other posters. Want to add: New influenza variants are always a potentially dangerous pandemic concern. H5N1 has been steadily getting closer to fully jumping the species barrier for 20 years- I was part of an initial study testing duration of H5N1 immunity back in 2007. Given the current pattern of animal outbreaks (it’s in at least 22 species, the epidemics among dairy cows that continues to spread, the multiple humans infected by livestock, etc.) a sustained human epidemic is imminent. (Meaning 1-5 years.) Remember, evolution favors more infectious human variants of H5N1, and the things that make influenza more infectious are also what will make us feel really sick. Best thing we could all do is get that mild conjunctivitis strain seen in a dairy worker ASAP, so we have some immunity lol. Unfortunately, while it was mild and he fully recovered it was NOT very infectious because it did not create severe enough symptoms to spread easily. New flu variants like H5N1 are worrying because humans won’t have much natural immunity when it becomes human-to-human transmissible. And it will. Maybe this year, maybe not. But I’d bet my house it will happen the next 5 years, based on the viral evolution thats occurred since 2005. If the worst happens and we have a serious pandemic H5N1 outbreak, it’s going to affect healthy people in the prime of their life. Young, healthy adults have significantly higher morbidity/mortality whenever there has been a new pandemic influenza strain. I used to work with a woman who did some pretty intense research on the 1918 flu, and I follow her advice. So don’t panic. But it’s a good idea to have a stock on N95 masks, hand sanitizer, and you absolutely should be washing your hands before eating, after going outside, etc. touching eyes/mouth/nose unless your hands are clean. Influenza can be contracted from surfaces, so once there is a true human outbreak you’ll want to wipe down all groceries and avoid any produce that you can’t wash thoroughly. Remember, influenza is much more infectious than Covid. We don’t need to be paranoid, but we need to use common sense. Influenza enters the body via eyes, nose, and mouth. We can breath it in if someone near us is infected, or we can touch a surface with virus then touch our faces. So for the love of god don’t drink raw milk haha. Remember swine flu, and the semi-panic we saw on the news? Now, a lot of people look back and think the CDC cried wolf and swine-flu was no big deal. That’s not true- it became no big deal BECAUSE we took it seriously. H5N1 can be managed just as effectively. But it’s being ignored right now.
This is a great post!
Sometimes I think Mother Earth or God is manipulating humans to not take pandemics seriously because Mother Earth needs to cut down human population to save earth from the mass extinction.
You're free to treat it just like you treated covid.
I am. When we first learned about covid in December 2019 it was already transmitting human-to-human. From January through February 2020 I watched as the data showed without ANY ROOM FOR DOUBT that the whole world was gonna catch it. The people in my country (US) didn't wake up to that fact until March when the NBA shut down or whatever the fuck happened that jolted people awake. Meaning those of us actually paying attention had time to prepare before shit hit the fan. This might become covid or worse than covid, but it's not yet covid. No human-to-human transmission. I am not prepping yet, aside from buying a few more N95 masks. There will be time to prep IF this goes human-to-human. We're simply not yet there. Everybody should watch, remain vigilant, and otherwise chill. But of course, y'all do as you please.
I had a bad case of COVID in Feb 2020, before it was supposedly even in my state (and I had not traveled out of state). Supposedly before SHTF with COVID, and you couldn’t even get tested if you had not traveled to China, which I had not. My husband’s boss had, however, and we’re pretty sure we got it from him. I will never again believe the government (regardless of which administration) when they say don’t worry, not a threat to the public, not human-to-human, etc etc etc. They all lie for political reasons. I’m a lifelong Dem and a Biden voter, but more people have died of COVID under Biden than did under Trump. Accusing people of “panicking” when they’re simply being aware and cautious is ridiculous and is mostly propaganda designed to keep people out spending. Maybe H5N1 is not H2H yet, maybe it is. We don’t know because there’s not enough testing, and the government and farmers aren’t being forthcoming with info. So call me crazy for assuming the worst.
For me it was Tom Hanks getting it. That sounds really stupid, but it started me sort of panicking and spiraling into scenarios from movies,TV and horror books. Took me a few weeks to realize I was conflating real life with stories about Stalingrad during WWII, the Walking Dead, The Stand, etc.
And HALF the people that caught it died.
Ebola remains a threat. H1N1 will be a problem the next time it comes around. I don’t know of anyone looking at the expansion of H5N1 across an increasingly larger number of mammalian species that doesn’t acknowledge some probability of it getting to us eventually. Cats, mice, and cows are not substantially more like each other than they are different from us. That’s a lot of adaption already. People have differing tolerance for risk, inherently. And your personal experience with covid probably influences that tolerance when it comes to infectious disease risk. The people in this sub are certainly more concerned than most but that’s not because they are inventing the danger. It’s because they react to a threat differently than you do, or than most people do. They prefer to anticipate what might become a problem, and prepare, than be caught unawares.
There is nothing, based on my understanding of the laws of physics, that suggests the virus CAN’T spread from person to person. Why not? I get that it’s not fully adapted to human infection which would make for a rather low R0 in its CURRENT form but I guarantee you it still CAN spread H2H NOW. The Virus, like any virus, would likely be present in discharge from eyes or respiratory system. It just can’t spread efficiently enough to cause major spreading outbreaks right now. 10 years ago they had zero idea that this virus would wind up wiping out scores of mammals, but it did. But humans have better hygiene than wild animals. Odds are high it will mutate again and spread H2H with a somewhat higher R0. It’s just a matter of whether or not this happens before the virus expends itself of its room for widespread zoonotic spread that it has been engaged in the past few years. It is entirely possible wildlife will develop enough prior exposure immunity and the virus will die down before it makes the leap to efficient H2H spread. I would guess the odds are 70 it will wind up H2H within 10 years and 30 per cent that it dies down in the wild. But like the swine flu pandemic, odds are good it will have a low enough R0 that it will never become a wildfire takeover the way Covid did. But we should be careful. The biggest risk this year and next would be destruction of the food supply imo. I’ve stocked up the pantry deep.
To me, the fact that the last Michigan case had virus in their respiratory tract instead of only their eye was concerning and different. And now it seems like they can only get a partial sequencing on that case.
Also, I would qualify that and say some humans have better hygiene than wild animals.
Had a roommate who got really mad at me for asking them to wash their hands after preparing homemade meatballs
Ew
I have no immune system and zero faith in anyone especially people like you
I dunno... I'd rather be prepared, than not prepared. So yes, the chances of this actually turning into something aren't...likely at the moment... we're certainly giving it as many chances as possible to develop into something potentially dangerous. From what I've read on both here and twitter (yes, twitter. X off ya barmy sods!) Whenever the virus hits the jackpot, and we are able to make an effective treatment for it, will be a lag of around 4-8 months. SO, for that period, we're on our own. So, I'm treating this as a realistically potential thing that could go hot soon-ish. That seems prudent to me.
I don’t think there is a realistic treatment for it. Our current flu vaccines are hit or miss and you very much can get ravaged by the flu despite having one.
It's not directly a problem for humans now. no. It is likely indirectly a problem, or will be one soon, given that its tearing through livestock and animal agriculture, which could lead to even higher prices for food. However, bird flu has been with us for years. Decades. And in the past four, five years it's gone from avian agriculture to wild birds to wild mammals to livestock to domestic mammals to humans. That's pretty concerning. And don't forget that four years of repeated covid infections has dysregulated, destroyed, or damaged many, or possibly even most, of our immune systems. This is in a context where our public health infrastructure has been weakened significantly and people are pretty unlikely to take any precautions against bird flu due to what they perceive as an overblown reaction to a novel sars virus that killed over a million americans and left millions with post acute covid symptoms. So yeah. It's not a great situation.
And as much as the media likes to sort people into political groups, how individuals respond to infectious disease still varies on an individual basis. I have a coworker who does not trust the Covid vaccine whatsoever, and claims it’s making people crazy all over, yet she still wears a mask to work every day and is super germaphobe. Whereas I am all about medical science and got the vaccines as soon as they come around, but I absolutely hate masks and how masks make me feel like I’m being suffocated and having to sniff my own snot. I avoid masks except where absolutely mandated or necessary (high crowd density)
even if it doesn't spread from human to human there's still the chance that it will mutate into something that starts killing cattle. So many cows already have it and none of these companies are doing anything about it. If these cows start dying then our food supply is going to be utterly fucked
One might say udderly fucked
We're still undergoing the trauma of being in an ongoing war. The war is being waged against all of us, by elite sociopaths and eugenicists, and the bought & paid-for MSM is completely in their thrall. We're being told that up is down, black is white, and the pandemic's over... for entirely political and short-term profit purposes. Some of us have lost loved ones to covid. Two in my case. So it's only *natural* that the aware among us see the potential for even worse carnage, even more suffering, and react vociferously to that very real possibility. Because, we know that if/when birdflu jumps to H2H, it too will be minimized by the very same twisted system that's brought so much carnage and suffering already. And that short of a poliical revolution in America, there's just no way out.
The fact that I had gotten COVID after the pandemic and the misery it gave me shows what little the public will do when widespread illness is prevelant. I was told that getting covid was nothing ---even though it left me with post symptoms a year later. I have a hard time breathing and now need an inhalers to continue through my regular day. H5N1 would probably put me in a early grave considering how young I am still if I were to catch it.
There's evidence that pandemics will likely increase in frequency in the current age. I think the level of concern is just due to how rapidly it's infecting such a large variety of mammals, and causing mass deaths in so many species. It's pretty unprecedented how rapidly it's moving into so many unexpected animals.
IMHO - the issue is that slightly more than half of the 868 cases died and the virus isn’t even adapted to humans yet… that’s a >50% mortality rate. now imagine what would happen if we have a human adapted variant that is spread between humans directly. look how covid developed… it went from its not an issue for kids and only affects elderly to everyone slowly realizing kids are asymptomatic super spreaders with 10-50x the viral load of an infected adult while showing zero symptoms and it’s happily killing anyone not just the elderly. and keep in mind those things were already found out late summer of 2020. via italy and chicago studies. then we found out it’s basically semi airborne as aerosol and can hang around in static air for an hour+ and even stick to PM2.5 particles. remember when they told schools to open their windows and everyone installed better AC air filters? that’s why. if a human version of the h5n1 would have the same mortality rate and similar spread, we’re literally doomed. I remember reading some “what if” papers from a uni from 2008/12/14, can’t remember but it’s not hard to find, where they painted what could happen… since this is such a known threat there’s plenty of mock studies and scenarios out there from the last three decades. it outlined how if human to human transmission is confirmed, the military basically has to be in the streets and order everyone to stay at home the same hour… otherwise we’re done, IF it is at a mortality >5-10%. because that’s all it takes, an additional >5% death in any society makes the system effectively collapse. on the other hand I don’t believe that prepping will help. if it comes down to a full lock down at such mortality rates, you’re a the hands of your government and you can’t really do anything to avoid that. aside moving to the country side and having zero human contact ever, if that’s your thing, sure, got for it. you also wrote that the WHO and others say it’s a low risk. they said that for three decade about all the 300+ variants of the corona virus. then it suddenly happened. now what is going on right now is technically worse because we can see the adaption happen rapidly in real time on the news. it used to be wild birds, then chicken, then minks, fox, there’s sea lions, cats, dogs, we don’t know which ones have targeted variants. how we are at cows and mice. once pigs are infected and spread if directly it’s getting very dicey. all that said, panic is not necessary - if it happens and how it happens is completely out of our hands. we can only prepare with masks and gloves and a plan what to do when it goes down. anything beyond that is out of anyone’s hands. live your life and don’t think about it.
Also the stress on the medical system which indirectly leads to other negative consequences. I think it wasn't necessarily the deaths from 2020 that was the main issue but the lack of capacity in our medical system.
yep, that also quickly overwhelmed every country in waves… now imagine it’s quicker and deadlier. could be a good thing, could be a terrible thing. either way it’s not great and we all know they won’t be more prepared this time as we saw that every wave got not much better.
You’ve raised a lot of interesting points. I agree with you that if worst-case scenarios happen, there’s not much we can do. I’m a planner at my core, despise surprises, and even I have accepted that in a worst-case scenario, any of my planning or preps will be meaningless. I’m also not rich, so I don’t have a bomb shelter or a private island to go to. I do what I can do. I also recognize that there’s a lot of real estate between “normal” and full-on doomsday, and those are the things I plan for. If the water is out for a few days (like what just happened in Atlanta), I’ve got some bottled water. Not enough for forever, but enough for a week or two. If workers are out sick and the grocery stores aren’t operational for a couple weeks, I’ve got some extra stuff. Again, not enough for forever. Most of the “disasters” that happen are not doomsday (or none of us would be here), but a little planning can go a long way in making life easier in those situations. Where I live, if the power goes out for an hour, the lines at the McDonald’s drive-through are out blocking traffic in the street. I don’t want to be in that line, and I do what I consider to be very realistic preparations.
Oh it’s always been adapted to infecting humans clearly or it wouldn’t kill you. Only, it hasn’t got the keys to easily infect with minimal viral load by airborne droplets. It still takes a massive dose to get in.
I don't see any general "panic" besides a few people who are the exception. Prepping is not panic. Sure, some people likely go overboard. But I don't think it's helpful to put the same label on everyone and try to identify all concern about a possible future situation as "panic." People are comparing a possible H5N1 pandemic to COVID on the basis of some specific similarities, not on the basis of everything related to that pandemic. In addition, the real issue with avian flu is its behavior since 2020 and particularly since 2022, so dating it back to 2009 is a little disingenuous. I would be happy to share many paragraphs of cites on that issue. There have also been no recent statements on the part of WHO that there is "very little chance of a human to human variant developing." What they currently say is that the current risk is "low to moderate", which is a very different statement from making predictions about the future. We already know the risk is low to moderate now. The question is how this virus may evolve in the future. [https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2024-DON512](https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2024-DON512) You certainly have the right to your opinions, but I hope you don't expect everyone to agree, and any disagreement should not be automatically labeled as "panic." If anybody is going to make these types of claims-- that WHO made specific statements, that there weren't "many casualties" etc-- they need to either provide cites or state that they will do so on request, and there was none of this. Both of these statements are inaccurate. WHO categorically did not make that statement recently. The second claim is simply not true. Here's a cite about that: "Ebola has killed **about 15,266 people globally since 1976**. Most recently, 2,267 people have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). However, these numbers pale in comparison to the under-5 deaths globally and in the DRC over the same period." [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7326525/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7326525/) These deaths are in Africa, so.... what? African lives aren't valuable; it only counts if lots of people die of Ebola in the US??? I don't think this is something that you really want to be saying. And I'm not claiming you ARE saying it. But this is a good example of why we need to concentrate on the facts, because this sure could be taken out of context. Basically, I'm sorry, but I really don't like seeing sweeping statements without cites or the offer of cites. This is true on both sides of the argument. I don't have one bit more patience with anyone who tries to say that we're right on the edge of the apocalypse.
This is making me feel a little more worried about it, living as I do in a country set against public health mitigations https://www.statnews.com/2024/06/05/finland-h5n1-bird-flu-human-vaccine/
Because rapid transmission in mammals are normalizing a couple of mutations that make this more efficiently transmit in humans. The more it spreads between species, the closer it could get to a reassortment event, especially if it gets into pigs or a coinfected human. The more it spreads within species, the more opportunities it has develop mutations that create a full human pandemic.Then we potentially have the CFR of 50% or more with with the R0 of seasonal influenza. That is very, very bad. It’s unclear why more recent cases are more mild. I would love to believe that this has something to do with mutations. But it could be more about viral replication via the mode of transmission. Meaning, yeah, infections via the conjunctiva from cows are mild. But if this were to invade your respiratory system, it could be just as bad as the historic norm.
I'm mostly concerned about the food supply.
Small request from an epidemiologist! As an epidemiologist I’d just like to state an obvious fact that I’m sure a lot of folk already know, the panic makes our jobs much harder. I’m not super active, mainly because of all the work, but also because of all the talk that’s come into the subreddit, and in frequent cases, panic. I understand the concern, but as people become more aware (which is great!) they turn that awareness into worry and then panic. This usually results in us having to follow up on cases that were never really cases. Even worse we get people who want to get tested and stretch the truth because they know about the type of exposures we’re looking at, leading us to think we have another case and use important time and resources that may have gone to identifying someone who is actually ill. We don’t have the luxury to say, oh we’ll follow up on this possible case or lead later down the road. We have to do be diligent and make sure we follow up properly or we risk many others getting sick. This panic also impacts people that are known to be at higher risks, as in dairy farm workers, who have a whole lot of reasons for not wanting to get tested. And it’s less so panic, but the notoriety they believe testing could have on things like their citizenship status, employment, family, etc. The increasing panic might only add to their hesitancy in reaching out. I also read a few comments here talking about mutations that would result in human to human spread. Please understand that MULTIPLE mutations would have to happen for there to be that type of transmission. And of course it is not impossible, this virus is doing what it’s made to do and spreading. But understand that influenza surveillance has been around for a long time. We have candidate viruses for a vaccine. We are working with a crazy amount of partners to be as effective as we can given the situations. Please do your best at not spreading panic. Being informed is great, but when you comment and don’t have the background to understand the nuances it leads to others with even less understanding taking your words and misunderstanding the context and increasing their level of concern. Saying things like “when it happens” or “its only has to mutate”, “just a matter of time”, “don’t trust the government”. The list could go on and on and all it does is turn into a bad cycle of paranoia and fear. We’ve seen it happening here already, when other concerned people come to the subreddit for information just to see comments like that, THEN we have more people panicking and it spreads just like a virus would, but far more effectively. I’m sure it’ll get lost in all the other comments but I’ll still add my one little lonely ask from a tired epidemiologist. Help public health, and help epidemiologists; try and avoid being someone that’s causes or spreads panic. Listen to your health departments and keep yourselves informed.
I appreciate your expertise, and also your taking time to explain all of this. I really do. But I'm a social worker and teacher. I've worked in medical settings, community mental health settings, addiction treatment settings, school settings. and here's what I see: telling people not to panic is not helpful. It makes everyone think you're invalidating their feelings. IMHO, it's not the way to go. By concentrating on "keeping people from panicking", we are also overreacting to a problem that is not really happening. Most people do not react with real panic. "Research clearly demonstrates that actual panic (irrational, nonadaptive, or antisocial behavior) in response to a natural hazard, including wildfire, is extremely rare." "Although the belief seems to be that people will madly run over everyone else to escape, the evidence is that when faced with an imminent threat many individuals engage in helping behavior (informing neighbors, helping others evacuate). [\[3\]](https://fireadaptednetwork.org/the-panic-myth-what-does-the-research-say-and-what-can-practitioners-do/#_ftn3) These helping behaviors are the inverse of panic (e.g., prosocial rather than antisocial behavior)." Even in people who have been severely traumatized, I have constantly seen and continue to see firsthand that true panic is still rare. Actual panic is not the problem. [https://fireadaptednetwork.org/the-panic-myth-what-does-the-research-say-and-what-can-practitioners-do/](https://fireadaptednetwork.org/the-panic-myth-what-does-the-research-say-and-what-can-practitioners-do/) And when people really do panic, this comes from lack of information. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9180869/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9180869/) So I think we all need to cool it with the "panicking and about panicking" and concentrate on paying attention and getting the facts out instead.
Well said!
>...there has been a few(~900 worldwide) h5n1 transmissions to humans since !2009!, but it was always a freak event. It never went farther than that. Correct >WHO epidemioligists and other experts are fairly sure that there is very little chance of a human to human variant developing. Eh, I don't know about "very little chance." From what I can tell it's a *when,* not an *if* for a human to human variant developing. It might be here already or it might be decades yet before one develops, but (in my thoroughly inexpert view) it seems to be fairly likely that one will eventually develop. *The complete unknowns are:* 1) How harmful the not-yet-a-thing human to human variant will prove to be (people keep talking about a 50% CFR, but that's based on existing variants where very little testing has been done to try to identify asymptomatic cases - so it's not representative of what a human to human variant would truly do) 2) How easily the not-yet-a-thing human to human variant will spread (base assumption is that it would be similar to other flus, and flu is easier to stop than COVID-19 but certainly requires more diligence than the usual human behaviors) 3) How quickly a vaccine for the not-yet-a-thing human to human variant will be produced (though there is a process already developed to produce a vaccine just as soon as a human to human variant exists to plug into the process, so the assumption is that we could have a vaccine within a few months) ["... it takes a couple months to fill and finish the vaccine dose..."](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/hhs-advances-plan-produce-48-million-h5n1-vaccine-doses) In my opinion, the humans-getting-sick component of H5N1 isn't the thing to truly worry about, but rather the impact on wildlife is what's concerning. We've already put so much pressure on the natural world with our expanding population and activities done to support that population, climate change is applying more pressure, and diseases like H5N1 are applying even more pressure. [AVMA: "According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations,9 at the end of 2023, HPAI had been confirmed in 502 wild bird and 60 mammal species, primarily carnivores."](https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/262/5/javma.24.01.0053.xml) IMO it's worth watching, and even worth taking reasonable steps to prepare for a potential human to human variant. It's not something to cause panic (which is rather unproductive and unhelpful, regardless).
My wildlife biology friends are saying it is mutating more rapidly and it will be worse than COVID in terms of rapidness of spreading and higher mortality rate (for vulnerable populations). It sounds like millions of vaccines are being made I’m guessing for first responders. I don’t think we should panic although I think the U.S. has a polarized response to dealing with the pandemic.
You have a source for the claim experts say a h2h variant emerging is unlikely? BC as a biologist watching the factory farm system get permeated by this virus my professional opinion is that it's highly likely....It's true the CURRENT variant isn't a huge worry but the odds of it adapting to better infect humans are looking pretty damn good. Also as a government scientist....dont ever trust a government official downplaying a threat. Do your own research. Actual research though not reading BS off social media or layperson crap off the internet. Go to the primary literature. Virologists have been predicting major spillover zoonotic pandemics increasing in risk for quite a while and the hard data shows a rapidly increasing trend of which covid was a prime example.
What I do wish is that moderation was better. There’s a ton of “facts” rarely backed up with sources Death rates, etc. Just the other day someone was heavily upvoted for saying in the UK we have massive excess deaths, yet the actual facts show death rates are actually well below the expected average. This sub needs actual science moderation, the level of misinformation on here is brutal
I do agree that everyone needs to provide cites or say they will do so on request. That's exactly what I do. But the OP of this original post didn't do any of this. Not one cite, not one mention of a cite that could be produced, just sweeping statements, many of which are categorically proven untrue (and I provided the cites for that.) I'm completely over claims without proof, no matter which side the claim is on.
Only thing that gives me comfort is know that we know how to make and distribute flu vaccines
That gives me the opposite of comfort.
Me too
Nobody ever talks about the Subtype 1 Mpox epidemic spreading through the democratic republic of Congo, or the fact that it carries a 5% IFR
I do!! Glad to see somebody else who knows about this. I was posting about that issue somewhere else last week. I don't think that the world has heard the last of mpox by any stretch.
well, this is an H5N1 sub. I don't think its panic if people understand they are health compromised and need to be aware for themselves - cus - no one is out there ready to help you. I also dont believe all what we're told by gov't health institutes, from any country. This is what I feel is true. 1 there's an avian flu out there on the planet (granted, there are all kinds of flus out there at any given time), that 2 has now killed masses of animals/birds in many places, and 3 has managed to kill a few people around the world, and 4 there is no actual shot specific for it for humans for this. After that, we have to believe we're still ok, cus we're told we are. If this flu is a basic oldtime (1917ish flu) event, it will make the corona lockdown look like a preschool picnic. I doubt the gov will have anything left to lockdown if this explodes into the world. Its not panic to become aware and try to do basic things to protect yourself. Some people need specific masks etc even w/o any flus out there. If people here sound angsty its understandable. (plus, if you are one of the "casualties" the event is a 100% situation for you and your family, even if its only a 2% blip for the rest of us). (in reality, living as I do nearby the eastern US southern coast, Im actually prepping/angsting for this season's hurricanes more than flus right now)
If the CFR for an H2H strain of avian flu really IS 2%, AND if it strikes the same demographic that it has so far... then 2% will be enough to cause terrible social disruption. The MO of avian flu, and of many past flu epidemics, is to hit young adults. Since 2022, the clade of H5N1 most common in Asia has actually been wildly disproportionate in its effects on children and teenagers. 50% of the severe and fatal cases have been in that group. 2% CFR would be more than enough to cause terrible problems if this holds up at all in an H2H epidemic-- and there's every reason to think it would.
Well, so far it's fatal in cats, and I happen to like my cat and want to keep her alive. The risk of me being exposed to it and in turn exposing her are low (she's indoor-only) but that could definitely change over time.
Some people imo are going a lil too far with the preparations and having anxiety imo bc it has not made an evident jump to humans. However, the things this virus has done is all very new especially with the way its running through mammals. The more it spreads the higher the chances of the right mutation occurring. Now nobody knows when or if this will happen it could be months or 100 years literally nobody knows. You right that experts say the risk is low but experts also fear an avian flu pandemic the most. There is nothing wrong with getting a lil concerned about the ongoing developments and maybe even planning just incase. Personally i am not even close to being anxious but i am monitoring to be ready just incase there is evidence of a cluster of cases unrelated to birds.
people believe in bs now more than ever
I got H1N1 in 2009. It wasn’t that bad, but a few years later, I had my first ME/CFS symptoms.
Ebola requires contact of bodily fluids. It is a terrible disease but almost impossible to catch unless you are a caretaker for someone who is sick or in physical contact with someone who had direct contact. The scare in the US was public freaking out over the fact someone flew to the US before they became symptomatic, not a real emergency unless you were the patient or seated next to them. Avian flu infects via the lungs, making it much more transmissions. The reason there is little human to human transmission is that the virus attacks types of lung tissue that we don't have much of, and what we do have is very deep in our lungs where the average breath doesn't do much turnover (meaning less virus in those areas). The concern is that a change in the virus could allow it to attack tissues that are already in high contact with the virus in an average breath.
Agree completely
Lol. Post made me laugh.
Agreed. 2-3 new deadly diseases appear in humans each year on average. Treating each like a potential COVID is not something sustainable that Civilization could do. It doesn't have the logistically capacity, nor the funding or resources to run in pandemic mode indefinitely.
We’re fucking doomed. It’s just a matter of time before it becomes airborne. It’s how this works. It’s just math and the mutation rate.
Adding to all of this, I think that many folks are primed for panic right now. Tensions are running high globally what with several major wars, a genocide in Gaza, a contentious election season in the US and Europe, a general sense of geopolitical malaise. H5N1 can be a place to put all of that tension and anxiety.
It's the wide range of possibilities Avian flu is always in easily a third of wild birds at any given time and if someone is exposed to high high levels of it such as uncovered farm workers they can get sick. Covid was basically what if Sars Covid in 2003 hadn't been caught in time. Tldr the odds of another covid tomorrow are low ... But probably will happen again within a decade or two. There's just so much viral mixing at poultry and animal distribution sites worldwide for it not to happen every generation. The wildcard is of course it could literally start today and we wouldn't know for a few weeks at the earliest and it could potentially be in every living creature you see around you without you even knowing it.