What are your thoughts about H5N1 "bird flu"? Are you doing anything to prepare? Think it's overblown?

At the moment it has a pretty low (~0) person to person infection rate.
But, it does have a 56% mortality rate (Covid was between 3%-5%) so I don't think we should be fucking around with our response to it.
Viruses can mutate and that R value (person to person transmission rate) can shoot up after a mutation.
I would much rather us have an "overblown" response than an inadequate response like we did with Covid. .

My Facebook is hammered with articles about how it’s overblown and is being used by governments to silence you and bring on a new pandemic where they force you to wear masks and keep you locked inside your house. Something something 15 minute cities, the WEF, and a guy named Klaus.

Lots of people taking pictures holding chickens and other fowl to spite “the new plandemic” so chances are we’re gonna have another real one. Just based on the fact that people are purposefully trying to expose themselves to “get back at science”.

So, one thing to consider is that "how bad it gets" can be directly related to how well people and governments prepare. For example, if the CDC starts work on having vaccines made and stockpiled now, they may be able to react quickly and decisively to any outbreaks as they happen and prevent them from growing to a pandemic level. If infections are kept to low levels and the CDC ultimately has a lot of left over vaccines, did it "over react"? It's actually a hard question to answer, because it's entirely possibly that the end result was a direct result of that stockpiling and rapid reaction, leading to some level of wastage. However, had those precautionary steps not been taken, shit would have hit the fan.

We had something similar back with the Y2K Bug was being talked about. Companies lost their shit over it. But, when the date finally rolled over, it seemed to be a huge nothing-burger. Part of the reason it was such a nothing-burger was the fact that companies actually did a lot of work to validate and fix software before the date roll over. So, in retrospect, lots of people talk about the Y2K bug like it was all hype. But, had action not been taken ahead of time, it really would have caused a lot of problems.

This is the perennial problem with proactive fixes, if they are done right, people won't be sure you have done anything at all. So, it is often difficult to get people to prioritize future problems. Even when the cost to fix those problems now will be vastly less than waiting until the problem actually arrives.

So no, I don't think it's "overblown" per se. It something that governments and health organizations should be tracking and should be working to have plans and resources available for. On a personal level, not much is changing. It's not currently at a level that I feel I need to make major lifestyle changes to avoid. The CDC puts the risk as currently low, and has seen no cases of human to human transmission. If any of that changes, I'll re-evaluate.

It's pretty concerning, as health authorities in the USA don't seem to do enough to prevent the situation from getting worse. The dairy industry doesn't want its profits to be touched, and several politicians seem to be more concerned about the economic impacts. Various far-right groups basically created the framework for their anti-science actions with the COVID pandemic and various anti-vaxx groups that existed before it. Therefore they will double down in their efforts to resist any kinds of mitigation efforts because of "freedom" and "do not comply". Hell, many of them are buying raw milk in hopes of "gaining immunity" and of course "owning the libs"!

It could be said that I am already preparing. When at work, doing groceries, hitting the gym and so on, I am wearing an FFP2 mask (equivalent to N95). This is exceptional here in Finland, where many people have drunk the Kool-Aid of "COVID being over" fed by the THL, our equivalent to your CDC. The only people I have seen masking actively are people collecting bottles from streets and parks! The THL has done similar blunders about public health messaging and "studies".

I am not losing my night's sleep because of this, but who knows what happens in the coming months?

Has there been more than like 1 known case of someone contracting it from a person? When the answer to that is yes and we’re in the dozens of known cases plus there’s evidence of it in the local waste water, then I’ll be worrying on a personal level. But not that much because I never stopped masking and I don’t drink raw milk.

Unfortunately these flu outbreaks among livestock that make the jump to humans happen fairly regularly, we’re just more tuned in to it now that we live in a post-COVID world. Improving conditions for animals and farm workers would go a long way in preventing zoonotic diseases from making the leap into humans in the first place.

step 1: PASTURIZE YOUR FUCKING MILK.

jeezus christ on a cracker.

I never stopped my COVID routine so I'm not really doing anything different to prepare but I am at least a little prepared. Going to buy one of those emergency 5-gallon buckets of dehydrated food this time around though, like next time I'm at a bulk food not as shit hits the fan.

I haven't put much thought into if it is overblown because realistically I'd prefer to see a big fuss over nothing than to see people sit back with a beer while their neighbors die. So I'm not going to treat it like we're overreacting I'm going to be pretty serious about things.

I've gone back to wearing a mask in public.

I'm doing the basic precautions, but they should just be daily life now especially if you live in a dense urban area

Get sunlight everyday, if not vitamin d pills

When out in public, wear a face mask, not only is it polite, it helps with pollution.

If you have a runny nose, a cough, chest congestion, anything that feels less than 100%, you absolutely should be wearing a face mask in public. Even if you're the only one doing it, it's just part of the social contract

On the train, if somebody is coughing, I offer them a new face mask, they always take it and put it on after looking around sheepishly, cuz they know it's the right thing to do. So I just carry extra face masks

Wash your hands before touching your mouth, eyes etc. It takes a bit of getting used to to not touch your face in public, but that should just be basic hygiene now

Have a healthy level of cardiovascular exercise, it helps your immune system tremendously. 30 minutes at least every week, it could be walking, anything to get your heart moving

Ensure you're getting enough protein

A multivitamin doesn't hurt, though it can be just wasteful, but if you're not sure about your diet why not

I take zinc supplements, but they are also rumored to help with your immune system

Probably most importantly, like extremely importantly, make sure you don't have diabetes, or insulin resistance, those tremendously hurt your immune system. These are the broad metabolic issues that society is suffering under, and they really make use susceptible to communicable diseases.

Praying to God it kills the return to office movement

Time to buy more bread flour I guess.

Panic buy pasta and bog roll, just like last time.

Becoming increasingly clear that nothing good is ever going to happen again, so if it gets me it gets me. Long live our successor, the saiga antelope.

Nothing in particular that we didn't already do for covid. I have various PPE and we already only leave the house once every couple weeks on average. The only two things I think I could prepare better are: more canned/frozen veg in case we need to stay in longer, and more farm supplies for the same reason (this is my first year actually farming in land (not in my parking space/balcony), so there's a bit of a learning curve and I'm not good at it yet). We live in a very small town so health resources are scarce but, on the plus side, we live in a really small town and there aren't many people.

I'm not super worried, but I did buy a few extra groceries. We do not have the public trust in public health agencies to manage a pandemic. I still wear N95s at the store, I have more boosters than my entire social circle combined, and I don't trust a damned thing the CDC says at this point. I "followed the science" and trust scientists. But I don't trust the CDC and If I don't, why would anybody else?

I remember them telling us covid was low risk, that it would be contained, and not to panic. That masks didn't work, that there was no reason to buy them. And that it wasn't airborne despite evidence piling up for months. I remember the Surgeon General going on tv and telling us to wrap a t-shirt over our face as an effective mask. They took years to update their mask guidance, last I checked they still suggest surgical masks despite N95s being widely available and vastly more effective.

I remember them turning down millions of tests from the WHO so they could release their own, only to release tests that did not work and had to be recalled. That costs us weeks when days mattered. I remember the FDA going after a scientist in Seattle who offered free covid tests against FDA policy, threatening any scientist who dared to offer free local covid testing when CDC had a backlog measured in weeks. In fact, I remember the CDC fumbling at basically every possible point in the pandemic's trajectory from day 1 until present day where they release boosters right after the peak of infections, after everybody has already gone back to school and everybody's gotten sick, and when the boosters do arrive not only are they late and meaningless, they are an entire strain behind.

I remember them publishing "studies" with such poor scientific rigor that my 5th grade science project would blow them out of the water. One in particular the CDC used to prove masks work, which they absolutely do, and they went on a whole media tour touting this study, was a case study with two hairdressers. One hairdresser wore a mask and one didn't. The one who wore masks didn't infect any patients, while the maskless one did. Except this proved nothing at all because on average, most people are not infectious. Even if neither of them wore masks, it was a completely expected result. Absolute hot garbage science from the agency that is supposed to be the best at it in the world.

Fuck 'em all, that entire agency needs to be replaced.

I lived through Covid without a car, taking public transport for all my transit needs, it was mostly fine, but I was so isolated as I didn't want to risk visiting my parents out of fear that I would infect them, I also never really did anything interesting and mostly sat home.

I now have a car and if shit hits the fan again would actually be able to get out and see stuff, I am talking nature, abandoned places and just being able to see new stuff would be so much better for my metal health.

I am not really doing anything to explicitly prepare, and Sweden managed quite well all things considered.

I'm going to cook my chicken before I eat it.

What about H5N2 or H7N3?

I think it's good for early warning to reach the public. Ideally this would allow the public to support handling it post-haste. Realistically it probably will churn in the news, get a little worse, then depending on how/if it mutates, die off or go full blown and people will likely react similar to COVID. Maybe (and hopefully) a little more responsibly if the lethality stays high.

As someone who did my part with the social distancing, masks, and shots up to the 2nd booster, I genuinely just do not care any more. Let's face it the worlds trending downwards now for whatever reason we want to blame it on. If the virus gets me that's fine. I'll probably not listen to any regulations if it ever got to it.