Article <vioe6e$fo0f$1@dont-email.me>

Deutsch English Français Italiano
<vioe6e$fo0f$1@dont-email.me>

View for Bookmarking (what is this?)
Look up another Usenet article
Path: ...!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!feeds.news.ox.ac.uk!news.ox.ac.uk!nntp-feed.chiark.greenend.org.uk!ewrotcd!news.eyrie.org!beagle.ediacara.org!.POSTED.beagle.ediacara.org!not-for-mail
From: RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Two more California Dairy workers confirmed to be H5N1 infected
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2024 20:18:55 -0600
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 118
Sender: to%beagle.ediacara.org
Approved: moderator@beagle.ediacara.org
Message-ID: <vioe6e$fo0f$1@dont-email.me>
References: <vil2g2$3h52l$1@dont-email.me> <viljop$3lfc1$1@dont-email.me>
 <vin596$482c$1@dont-email.me> <vio3ge$d5kc$2@dont-email.me>
 <JsadncNY66xgANL6nZ2dnZfqnPqdnZ2d@giganews.com>
Reply-To: rokimoto557@gmail.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Info: beagle.ediacara.org; posting-host="beagle.ediacara.org:3.132.105.89";
	logging-data="75924"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@beagle.ediacara.org"
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
To: talk-origins@moderators.isc.org
Cancel-Lock: sha1:+XlUQH00FjqSdHDQuMDMXOuxGs8=
In-Reply-To: <JsadncNY66xgANL6nZ2dnZfqnPqdnZ2d@giganews.com>
Content-Language: en-US
Bytes: 9220

On 12/3/2024 6:10 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 12/3/2024 8:40 AM, RonO wrote:
>>> On 12/2/2024 6:35 PM, RonO wrote:
>>>> On 12/2/2024 1:40 PM, RonO wrote:
>>>>> https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html
>>>>> https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/mammals.html
>>>>>
>>>>> I can't find any announcement, but the CDC has increased the
>>>>> California numbers by 2 today (Dec. 2).  The USDA has increased the
>>>>> number of herds infected to 689, but I do not know what states are
>>>>> affected because they haven't updated their data sheet.  It still has
>>>>> the old Nov 27 confirmed data that they put up last Friday.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ron Okimoto
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-29/raw-farm-sales-
>>>> suspended
>>>>
>>>> Another batch of raw milk products came up positive from the same
>>>> dairy that tested positive.  Initial bulk milk tank testing was
>>>> negative, but the farm has identify several asymptomatic positive
>>>> cows.  So the farm was infected and didn't know it.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/california-
>>>> reports- h5n1-more-retail-raw-milk-virus-infects-2-more-dairy
>>>>
>>>> CIDRAP notes that two more California dairy workers have been
>>>> confirmed.   California isn't announcing positives until they are
>>>> confirmed and it takes the CDC quite a while to confirm cases.  They
>>>> may still be working on the original batch of samples submitted by
>>>> California around a month ago.  I recall a news article that claimed
>>>> that 39 samples had been submitted, and the CDC has only released 30
>>>> positives and 1 that could not be confirmed.  That would mean that the
>>>> CDC is still working on 8 samples.  It could be that the article got
>>>> the numbers wrong, or I misinterpreted number of workers tested and
>>>> submitted.  California stopped announcing how many workers that they
>>>> had tested.
>>>>
>>>> CIDRAP also claims more poultry flocks have gone down in 3 states, but
>>>> doesn't name the states or the size of the poultry flocks.  Washington
>>>> should have identified their positive dairy herds by now, and it is
>>>> pretty sad that they haven't bothered to test their dairies.
>>>>
>>>> Ron Okimoto
>>>>
>>> It was actually 6 states that had poultry flocks go down.  All 6 should
>>> be looking for their infected dairy herds to try to stop the spread.
>>> Utah was stupid and stopped testing after they found 8 infected herds in
>>> the same county as the infected poultry farm.  They knew that they
>>> should have implemented contact tracing or bulk milk tank testing like
>>> California to find all the other infected herds, but like all the other
>>> states they went into denial.  Now another poultry farm in another Utah
>>> county has gone down with the dairy virus.  More poultry workers are
>>> being exposed to the virus, and it could have been prevented.  The price
>>> of eggs is going up because of the stupid way in which the USDA and CDC
>>> have handled this fiasco.
>>>
>>> The stupidest thing is that the USDA and CDC are letting the states get
>>> away with this stupid behavior because they keep calling the dairy
>>> epidemic "avian influenza" when they know that it has been primarily a
>>> dairy infection since March.
>>>
>>> Dairies are spreading the virus because dairy cattle shed huge amounts
>>> of virus, and dairy workers get infected and go to other farms
>>> (including poultry farms) and infect the new farms.  Transport of cattle
>>> has been limited to tested and negative animals since April, but the
>>> virus still spreads to states that did not get cattle and poultry farms
>>> that obviously did not get cattle.  It isn't rocket science, but the CDC
>>> and USDA have refused to face reality since the beginning when the first
>>> dairy worker was confirmed to be infected and was shedding live
>>> culturable virus.
>>>
>>> Ron Okimoto
>>>
>>   USDA had posted 6 more dairies (total 488), but the sample numbers go
>> to 508, so there are more in the que.
>>
>> It has likely been over 2 weeks since the USDA was supposed to start
>> bulk milk tank testing, and those results should be coming in.  27% of
>> the California dairies are already known to be positive.  The raw milk
>> issue indicates that bulk milk tank testing can miss positive herds.  I
>> do not know how they are going to get around this, but they claim that
>> the herds should be tested on a routine basis, hopefully around once a
>> week, so even if they miss a herd it will likely test positive in a
>> couple of testings if there are infected cattle on the farm.
>>
> Can the cattle flu variants evolve away from the test resulting in false
> negatives?
> 

It can, but the current test involves 2 PCR tests.  One test has primers 
specific for the H5 gene.  If there are changes in the primer annealing 
sequences the test could fail, but the second test has a primer set 
specific for a different part of the H5 gene.  It is unlikely that 
mutations will occur in both primer set sequences.  I recall that they 
had two H5 specific tests instead of having one for H5 and the other for 
N1, so they have to do additional testing to determine if it is H5N1. 
They determine if it is the dairy recombinant virus by genome sequencing.

Any sequence changes in the primer sequences might alter the H 
designations of the virus, and it might become a new lineage, but my 
guess is that they would just redesign the primer sets so that they 
could still identify the current H5 designation.  The Missouri case had 
two amino acid substitutions in the H5 gene that decreased antibody 
binding using antibodies to the cultured H5 virus 100 fold, and they had 
to make a synthetic H5 gene with those amino acid substitutions in it to 
make antigen to detect the antibodies in the patient's blood.  They 
still called it H5 even though the old H5 probably would not work as a 
vaccine for the virus.  The original dairy virus was neutralized by the 
H5 vaccine strain that was available and they stockpiled a million doses 
of it, but the virus has mutated since then.

They need to track how the virus is changing and prepare to make a 
vaccine from whatever makes the jump to humans.

Ron Okimoto