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From: RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Dairy cattle mortality in California
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2024 18:26:37 -0500
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On 10/14/2024 4:41 PM, RonO wrote:
> On 10/14/2024 4:10 PM, RonO wrote:
>> On 10/13/2024 9:49 AM, RonO wrote:
>>> Second attempt to post:
>>>
>>> https://www.newsweek.com/disturbing-footage-reveals-bird-flu- 
>>> infected- cattle-dumped-roadside-1967813
>>>
>>> As noted in previous posts the California strain of the dairy 
>>> influenza virus has a higher mortality rate among cattle than the 
>>> initial virus. Apparently dead cattle are piling up and not being 
>>> disposed of in a biosecure manner.
>>>
>>> The esimate is that there are over 1,100 dairy herds in California 
>>> and 100 have already been confirmed to be infected with more herds 
>>> detected by California health officials and already submitted for 
>>> verification.
>>>
>>> 20% of the dairy herd in the US is in California (over a million 
>>> cattle).  The mortality rate was initially 2%, but around 15% of the 
>>> infected cattle are dying in California.  Initially around 10% of the 
>>> herd was infected at any one time, but now 50% of the herd is found 
>>> to be infected in some cases.
>>>
>>> Ron Okimoto
>>>
>>
>> https://evrimagaci.org/tpg/california-confronts-bird-flu-cases-among- 
>> dairy-workers-45706
>>
>> This article claims that California has been contact tracing since the 
>> start in late August.  After the first couple weeks the first claims 
>> were that they thought that they had isolated the infected herds to 
>> around half a dozen because they shared workers between the farms, but 
>> the contacts obviously exploded out of those first half dozen and now 
>> they likely have over a 100 infected dairy herds identified some of 
>> them before the cattle showed symptoms.
>>
>> The claim is that there is still no evidence for human to human 
>> transmission, but that hasn't been true since late July.  A Texas 
>> study released their data before peer review.
>>
>> https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/previously- 
>> undetected-h5n1-avian-flu-cases-farmworkers-revealed-new-report
>>
>> They released this data in late July, but the CDC has never 
>> incorporated the data into the known human infections.  What they 
>> found was they tested 14 dairy workers from two farms and two of the 
>> dairy workers from one of the farms had antibodies to H5 indicating 
>> that they had been infected by the dairy virus.  One of those workers 
>> only had contact with other dairy workers, and did not have contact 
>> with cattle (cafeteria worker).  Their submitted publication indicated 
>> that this was evidence for human to human transmission (worker 
>> infected by dairy cattle, and one worker infected that did not have 
>> contact with cattle).
>>
>> The initial Texas data indicated that around 10% of a herd was 
>> infected (showed symptoms), but when these researchers tested 39 milk 
>> samples from the two farms they found 64% of the samples had H5N1 
>> virus.  This is closer to the 50% infection rate that California is 
>> experiencing, but the mortality in Texas was only 2% while it is 10 to 
>> 15% of infected animals in California.  So going by symptoms under 
>> estimated the rate of infection in Texas herds.  They should have 
>> implemented testing like they have in California, and they would have 
>> had a better estimate of the actual infection rate.
>>
>> One of the authors of this paper is quoted in the news article.
>>
>> QUOTE:
>> "I am very confident there are more people being infected than we know 
>> about," senior author Gregory Gray, MD, MPH, a UTMB infectious disease 
>> researcher, told NPR. "Largely, that's because our surveillance has 
>> been so poor."
>> END QUOTE:
>>
>> It should be noted that the CDC never changed their minds, and 
>> surveillance continues to be poor (except in California where they 
>> implemented contact tracing) for the rest of the nation.
>>
>> Ron Okimoto
>>
> 
> https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/california- 
> reports-4-more-probable-h5-cases-dairy-workers
> 
> California is reporting 4 more cases of human infections.  This makes 
> the total 11 for California.  It means that the other states have been 
> severely under reporting cases, mainly because they are not testing and 
> contact tracing.
> 
> The cases need to be confirmed by the CDC, but the previous ones were 
> verified, and California is likely using the CDC PCR test.  It should 
> have been fixed by now, and initially had issues with false negative 
> results when the CDC first put it out, but they have had more than half 
> a year to fix that test, and false negative results are not an issue for 
> positive test results.
> 
> 11 cases involving 9 farms.  2 cases were at the same farm, but it was a 
> huge dairy farm (something like 5,000 cows) and the two workers worked 
> at different parts of the farm, and did not have contact with each 
> other.  So it looks like all of them were infected by cattle.  In a 
> previous article California health officials claimed that they were 
> tracing close contacts of the infected dairy workers, and would be 
> testing those contacts if they exhibit symptoms.  It won't be any 
> surprise if they find close contacts infected because in both Michigan 
> and Texas where they asked the question they found that twice as many 
> close contacts of dairy workers worked at poultry farms or other dairy 
> farms as the dairy workers themselves, and both Texas and Michigan had 
> infected poultry flocks with the dairy virus.  So they already have 
> known for months that close contacts may have been spreading the dairy 
> virus.  The CDC just never implemented testing and contact tracing.
> 
> Ron Okimoto

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/hpai-confirmed-cases-livestock

The USDA just updated their herd infection data adding 5 California 
herds since the last update last week.  The number of herds infected in 
California went from 99 to 104, but the 5 additions were supposedly 
confirmed Oct 10 (last Thursday), and more herds have been submitted 
since then.  The USDA dosen't seem to be keeping up with what California 
is sending them.  The USDA is still refusing to start contact tracing 
and increase testing in other states.  My guess is that they will have 
another batch confirmed tomorrow, but may not report them until next week.

The California health department is claiming that California has over 
1,100 dairy herds consisting of over 1.7 million cattle.  The initial 
hope was that because most dairies are very large and have full time 
staff that there would be a more limited number of dairy workers with 
jobs at multiple dairies as is the case in other states with mostly 
smaller herds and part time workers.  Contact tracing of workers from 
infected farms has allowed California to detect infections in around 9% 
of the California dairy herds.  This likely means that herd infections 
have been severely under reported in other states, but the USDA and CDC 
refuse to start contact tracing and testing in other states when they 
know that it is the only way that they are going to get the epidemic 
under control and reduce worker exposure to infection.  The CDC is still 
only recommending protective gear for workers working with infected 
animals, but they refuse to identify the infected herds so that workers 
would know that they should wear protective gear.  California has 
identified 11 dairy workers infected with the dairy influenza.

As sad as it may be the CDC is still claiming that only around 250 
people associated with infected animals have been tested.  The number is 
currently +250.  California may push them closer to 300.  The number of 
human cases claimed is 25, but one is the Missouri case that did not 
have exposure to infected animals.

The California data is not surprising because the sequence is supposedly 
closest to Colorado where 10 people were infected with the dairy virus, 
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