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From: RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Should they start calling H5N1 genotype B3.13 "dairy influenza"
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2024 12:08:49 -0500
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On 10/30/2024 10:22 AM, RonO wrote:
> California, Washington and Oregon are still calling the dairy virus 
> "avian influenza" but the infection hasn't been spread from birds to 
> cattle since it was first detected.  The poultry flocks that have been 
> infected by the virus had all been infected by nearby dairies in all 
> cases where that determination could be made.  The poultry flocks are 
> quickly depopulated, so the back infection to dairies hasn't been noted. 
>   Dairies are not depopulated, and continue to infect other farms.
> 
> Influenza A in swine and Humans is avian influenza, but we call it swine 
> flu or just the flu in humans.
> 
> The use of "avian influenza" for the dairy virus is allowing Washington 
> and Oregon to ignore the fact that they likely have infected dairies in 
> their states, and they refuse to identify those infected herds.  Poultry 
> flocks have always been infected by nearby dairies, so when a poultry 
> flock goes down with the dairy virus there are infected dairies in the 
> area.  It was found in Michigan and Texas (both states started getting 
> infected poultry flocks after the diary virus was detected) that around 
> 7% of the workers on infected dairies also worked on poultry farms. More 
> worked at other dairies because most dairies do not maintain full time 
> staff.  Contact tracing was never implemented to identify all the 
> infected herds.  California implemented contact tracing and have 
> identified around half the total known infected herds in just the last 
> month.
> 
> https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/more-human-avian- 
> flu-cases-washington-state-california
> 
> This article claims that the number of confirmed infected herds in 
> California is now up to 186 (388 total herds).  Sample submission 
> numbers indicate that over 200 samples have already been sent in for 
> verification by the end of last week.  Once a herd has tested positive a 
> sample is sent in for verification.  California understands that their 
> commercial poultry flocks have been infected by the dairies.
> 
> Continuing to call H5N1 genotype B3.13 avian influenza is just allowing 
> states like Washington and Oregon to deny having infected dairy herds, 
> so they do not have to do anything to identify the infected herds, and 
> reduce human infections.  It is just contributing to the CDC current 
> plan to allow the virus to evolve into the next pandemic before trying 
> to contain it.  The stupid existing plan is to wait until the virus 
> starts to be observed spreading in the human population before stepping 
> in and trying to contain the infection.  California has high population 
> density and two busy international airports.
> 
> We no longer call swine flu nor human influenza virus "avian influeza" 
> so why keep calling the dairy influenza "avian influenza"?  It now has 
> 10 to 15% mortality among infected cattle in California.
> 
> They are only testing workers with symptoms, but they know that a lot of 
> asymptomatic dairy cattle were shedding virus.  They just have never 
> implemented testing asymptomatic dairy workers. Nasal swabs could be 
> negative, but the milk samples could have high levels of virus.  They 
> know for human infections that nasal swabs were negative but eye swabs 
> were positive.
> 
> CIDRAP has been one of the most up to date news source on the dairy 
> infection, but Minnesota never implemented contact tracing when their 
> dairy herds were found to be infected, and they have not reported new 
> dairy infections for quite some time (the first infections were 
> confirmed in early June in Minnesota) even though multiple commercial 
> poultry flocks continued to go down with the dairy virus.  They may be 
> keeping track of what others are doing, but they are not doing much to 
> clear the infection from their state.  Minnesota seems to be pretending 
> that they do not have the issue.
> 
> Ron Okimoto

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/bird-flu-california-cows/

This article claims that worker advocates are claiming more should be 
done to protect dairy workers from infection, but the article also 
claims that the dairy workers are actively avoiding being tested.  They 
do not want to be tested.  As in Texas there is likely the issue where 
some of the dairy workers are illegal immigrants or "undocumented 
aliens" and they did not want to be tested.  When California implemented 
contact tracing they did not implement testing the workers they just 
assumed that they could be involved in transmitting the virus.  They did 
start testing some workers that showed symptoms.

This article claims that only 39 people have been tested and that 16 of 
them have been confirmed to be infected at this time.  The CDC has not 
yet confirmed all the samples submitted for confirmation.  The article 
does not give the number of positive samples California has submitted 
for verification.

The article indicates that they are currently having trouble testing the 
individuals that show symptoms because they avoid testing.  The United 
Farm Workers union wants the workers to be better protected, but they 
admit that the workers do not want to be tested. This may have been the 
case in all the states affected, and migrant farm workers may be 
responsible for taking the virus to dairies in states that did not get 
infected cattle.

They still do not know how Kansas and South Dakota got infected by virus 
that was most closely related to certain dairies in Texas.  If they had 
implemented contact tracing they would have likely figured out how those 
states were infected by now.

Dairy jobs are the type of jobs that undocumented aliens are taking, and 
they do need to be protected from the dairy virus.  The actual infection 
rate needs to be determined, and all the infected dairy herds need to be 
identified, and they obviously need to do that by contact tracing and 
testing.  They need to test the dairy workers and restrict the movements 
of infected individuals without compromising their livelihood.  The 
infected workers cannot be allowed to spread the virus to other farms so 
some type of quarantine has to be implemented.

The virus has already evolved so that the current H5 antibodies have 10 
to 100 fold less neutralizing ability in the Missouri case, and the H5 
gene in California has 2 and 3 amino acid substitutions in it among the 
dairy worker isolates so far.  As the virus keeps mutating it will 
eventually evolve to the point that it can start reinfecting the herds 
that had previously been infected. So all the dairy workers that have 
been exposed so far will be exposed again to a more evolved form that 
has increased mortality in cattle, but still mild symptoms in humans at 
this time.

We have been lucky so far.  The CDC plans rely on the virus evolving to 
better infect humans in a way that they can detect the infection and 
contain it before it can disperse in the human population.  It is a 
stupid strategy and they have stockpiled H5N1 vaccine, but as the virus 
changes the efficacy of that vaccine is in doubt.  The CDC admitted that 
it had to make a synthetic H5 gene with the Missouri mutations in it to 
obtain antibodies that would react with the Missouri H5 protein product. 
  The existing H5 antibodies were not effective enough.  Even with the 
specific sequence changes only one antibody test out of 3 was positive 
for the Missouri patient.

This article has some interesting misinformation.  The article correctly 
claims that poultry flocks were decimated by H5N1 in 2022.  The claim is 
that the virus jumped to dairy cows, but the 2022 virus was not the 
dairy virus.  Some poultry flocks did go down in Oct. 2023 in the 
central valley, but I was unable to obtain the sequence of the virus. 
Oct 2023 is when the H5N1 made the jump to cattle by sequence phylogeny 
estimates.  All the Texas isolates were derived from this earlier 
infection, but they did not know where it had occurred.  The closest 
related sequence to the Texas dairy virus was a Peregrine falcon sample 
collected in California.  I tried to get the sequence of the Oct. and 
Nov. 2023 California commercial poultry infections by trying to get in 
contact with the USDA people involved in identifying the samples as 
H5N1, but I was told that the USDA did not give out that information. 
The sequences in the database are worthless because they only give the 
location of collection as USA, and the date of sequence submission. 
Someone needs to get with the researchers that submitted the sequences 
to sort the mess out.  It is possible that the dairy virus first 
infected dairy cattle in California Oct 2023, but went undetected except 
for the commercial poultry flocks that started to go down.

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