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From: RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Two more California Dairy workers confirmed to be H5N1 infected
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2024 12:50:43 -0600
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On 12/4/2024 4:36 PM, RonO wrote:
> On 12/3/2024 8:18 PM, RonO wrote:
>> 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
>>
> https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/avian-flu-infects- 
> another-california-dairy-worker-more-raw-milk-positives
> 
> Another California dairy worker has been confirmed to be infected (32 
> total).  The CDC is still refusing to acknowledge the antibody positive 
> dairy workers from Texas, Michigan, and Colorado, and close contact of 
> the Missouri patient as having been infected.  Their total is 58, but 
> should be 70.
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