New bird flu variant found in Nevada dairy cows has experts sounding alarms: ‘We have never been closer to a pandemic from this virus’
New bird flu variant found in Nevada dairy cows has experts sounding alarms: ‘We have never been closer to a pandemic from this virus’
Dairy herds in Nevada have been infected by a version of the H5N1 bird flu not previously seen in cows, putting virologists on high alert.
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The constant edging with bird flu mania is going to make people not pay attention when it actually pops off.
This is it popping off. We've already lost a huge portion of chickens in the US. We're seeing dozens of cases in humans. And it's in cows too. The only reason it doesn't feel like a big deal is because we as a nation aren't doing anything about it yet, only individual farms are. Same way COVID went from "is this a big deal?" to "oh fuck shut everything down".
The big event will be someone with regular human flu getting bird flu, giving the virus opportunities to swap DNA segments. If it gets the transmissibility of our standard influenza and the lethality of bird flu, it'll be a rough six months to a year before we have vaccines for it as it rips through our population.
Especially considering flu vaccines are made with eggs, and this disease is currently thoroughly decimating our egg producing livestock.
The lethality is 52%. If it rips through the population, we're looking at total collapse well before the vaccine is available.
Highly dependent on the degree to which it's contagious. But you're right, especially considering we're looking at one of the worst flu seasons in more than a decade currently. If all flu cases were 50% lethal that'd be 10-15 million deaths.
The problem is that the CDC isn't getting to say anything right now, so we can assume that the moment they get to talk about it, the stupidest people you know are going to go "woah this was really sudden! They clearly made it in a lab!"
That's actually a really good counter point that I hadn't thought of.
Thank you, I've spent a lot of time giving myself brain damage so I can understand the perspective of conservatives.
Huff a lot of glue or paint, maybe ram a crayon or two in your brain. Then you might get close to understanding.
If we just stop testing it will go away like magic. Did you learn nothing from Covid?
When would you like to be alarmed? For me it was when it jumped to mammals.
The little boy who called bird flu, but I think the call here is that it is difficult to feel safe behind the idea that it does not cross the species barrier when you have bird flu in cows.
Unfortunately people will just think "Hey I've seen this bird flu in the news and it didn't seem bad." Then they ignore all virologist recommendations and we have a second pandemic.
Too little information is as bad as too much, it is a difficult balance. The problem with information dissemination last time was not oversaturation but that people latched onto ridiculous conspiracy narratives and that derives from lack of basic education not too much news.
And this time there will be zero investment in stopping it spreading when it starts killing people