1y ago

Bird flu virus has been spreading in US cows for months, RNA reveals

www.nature.com

A strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza has been silently spreading in US cattle for months, according to preliminary analysis of genomic data. The outbreak is likely to have begun when the virus jumped from an infected bird into a cow, probably around late December or early January. This implies a protracted, undetected spread of the virus — suggesting that more cattle across the United States, and even in neighbouring regions, could have been infected with avian influenza than currently reported.

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Apparently we only realized that this outbreak was occurring after it'd been spreading for about 5 months or so.
The data also show occasional jumps back from infected cows to birds and cats. “This is a multi-host outbreak,” says Nelson.
It's also been jumping across multiple mammal species. No confirmed human-to-human transmission yet, but...
- Except only idiots drink nonpasteurized milk so it won't spread to the general population. Or we already would have had a pandemic.
  Using our standard protocols works, no need to fear.
  
  Oh good - there's plenty of those lunatics around where I live.
  
  So about 40% of the population in the US?
- The virus spreads mostly asymptomatically. If the cows don't get sick and their milk production doesn't decrease suddenly nobody starts testing for viruses.
This all true?
The risk of transmission from cows to humans is considered low, as the virus requires a large dose of virus to infect humans. Additionally, the virus is not easily spread through milk or other dairy products, as it is inactivated by pasteurization.
- Guys the risk is super low, don't stop the cow torture industry okay? It's the most important thing right now.
  
  this was my concern, too. Especially after reading about how the WHO didn't want to say covid was airborne because it would be hard to deal with or something so they stuck to a completely unsupported droplet theory to basically protect businesses from having to provide better ventilation
  
  If the risk is high, they simply kill all the cows. That's the reason eggs were so expensive a couple years ago.
- as it is inactivated by pasteurization.
  Well, if it is actually pasteurized. Some anti-science people in the US will soon learn that there is a reason for pasteurization of milk...
- I mean I heard my doctor at the time tell me corona virus probably wouldn't be a thing in Feb 2020.
  
  Yep, same. Doctor hassled me for wearing a mask in a health clinic. Told me it was gonna be fine. Told her Trump said the same thing, so we were definitely fucked. She didn't like that.
this might be a silly question, but why not attempt to vaccinate the cows?
- There's no vaccine yet. It's being worked on.
No one could have ever seen this coming /s
Reminds me of this
- These cows were fed boiling distillery waste, often leaving the cows with rotting teeth and other maladies. The milk drawn from the cows was routinely adulterated with water, rotten eggs, flour, burnt sugar and other adulterants with the finished product then marketed falsely as "pure country milk"
  Humans never learn
  
  Capitalist never learn
This might be a dumb question, but how does this have a predicted 50% mortality rate in mammals, but the cows aren't dropping dead left or right?
Idk if the 50% is accurate, but I see it keep getting repeated.
- The mortality rate is specific to humans.
  
  How could they possibly know that when those numbers were thrown around before a large enough sample size has caught it?
  I am not even aware of 30 human cases to date.
Can't wait till all the people who talked shit about bushmeat during the COVID pandemic to stop consuming cows and cow products.
You know, to be consistent. 😏
- To be fair, Covid was likely a lab leak from an American company trying to evade regulations and doing development in China
  https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/scientists-proposed-making-viruses-with-unique-features-of-sars-cov-2-in-wuhan/

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