[HN Gopher] Why unprecedented birdflu outbreaks sweeping the wor...
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Why unprecedented birdflu outbreaks sweeping the world are
concerning scientists
Author : rntn
Score : 76 points
Date : 2022-05-26 13:30 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| tomatowurst wrote:
| what if you have bird feeders in your garden, do you think they
| pose a risk? These are small birds, are they susceptible?
|
| Maybe I should move it.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| A novel human influenza would be way more devastating than covid
| was. Sure, we know how to make influenza vaccines, but millions
| could die before vaccines rolled out.
|
| And influenza kills healthy young adults in addition to the very
| young and very old. That is devastating from a demographic
| standpoint. Covid's preying on the sick and elderly was tragic,
| but not a threat that could destabilize countries from a
| population standpoint.
| charles_kaw wrote:
| >millions could die before vaccines rolled out
|
| Millions died from covid before vaccines rolled out
| kurupt213 wrote:
| But not millions of children and healthy young adults. Those
| are very different outcomes from a public health standpoint
| corrral wrote:
| For the people who thought what we did this time was
| "lockdowns" or "shutdowns" and that many folks' reactions
| were "hysterical", the day when we have a pandemic that
| hits young kids half as hard as Covid hit the elderly is
| gonna be quite a surprise to them.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| On the other hand, long-covid is estimated to be at ~7% of
| all infections, with 5.8% of infected being out of work for
| longer than 4 weeks [1]. That is a pretty massive amount,
| given how many people have been infected with covid in
| total. I personally know two people who have been impacted
| to the point they can't work even half a year post
| infection - this virus is nothing to sneeze at.
|
| [1] https://www.rki.de/SharedDocs/FAQ/NCOV2019/FAQ_Liste_Ge
| sundh...
| dehrmann wrote:
| Exactly. Deaths and years unlived aren't necessarily
| correlated.
| sigspec wrote:
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Victoria BC recently imposed social distancing rules on wild
| birds. People are being told to pull down feeders, to ignore
| those birds now begging for food at the window. Good luck
| enforcing that rule.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| It's actually controversial rule for bird feeders. It's not
| conclusive that the bird feeders do more harm than help. Some
| research indicates birds living near bird feeders have better
| immune system and can cope with diseases better.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I'm not sure it would even reduce their social distancing.
| Maybe being more hungry increases their flocking behaviors.
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| Yes, but they can still spread it to birds that don't have
| that benefit. So does that make them a more viable disease
| vector than if they just dropped dead?
| wk_end wrote:
| Hi fellow Victorian :)
|
| To my knowledge, this isn't a "rule" that's "imposed" or
| "enforced" by the city - the SPCA (which is not a government
| agency, just a non-profit) has just asked people to do it
| voluntarily.
| xemoka wrote:
| Another Vancouver Islander here, exactly as you say, there
| has been no "rules" implemented by anyone in any government
| position. This is the BC SPCA, a non-profit, asking people
| with bird feeders to take them down:
| https://spca.bc.ca/news/bird-salmonella-outbreak/
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Not actually there myself but was speaking to family there
| about the issue. While it may not be a law enforced by cops,
| Canadians are generally pretty good about following
| announcements by groups like the SPCA.
| eloff wrote:
| That sounds like an article that should be in the Onion. Life
| imitating art.
| ryanklee wrote:
| I've got to squint pretty hard to see this. Seems pretty
| mundane and non-satirical to me. Birds have viruses and bird
| sociality contributes to them. Just stands to reason that
| controlling contributing factors like bird feeders would be
| among the mitigation strategies.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I would just assume any source of food (say, an oak tree) would
| concentrate birds and not feeding them in one place just means
| they'll go somewhere else.
|
| Trying to social distance wild animals seems to be the action
| of a bird brained bureaucrat feeling like they needed to do
| something with no evidence at all of it being effective.
| m0llusk wrote:
| The densities are completely different and result in
| different patterns of use. Bird feeders distribute large
| amounts of food from a small space. Large flocks of different
| types of birds gather at feeders and may fight for access.
| There is a big difference between a feeder having plenty of
| seed and a tree having maybe some bugs and seeds on its many
| branches.
| robonerd wrote:
| It seems like a manifestation of the old adage that when you
| only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I had no idea about this.
|
| https://www.cheknews.ca/public-asked-to-remove-bird-feeders-...
|
| My yard is crawling (hopping?) with birds all day, every day. I
| don't even have feeders, though. Victoria is bird country.
| [deleted]
| robonerd wrote:
| > _People are being told to pull down feeders, to ignore those
| birds now begging for food at the window. Good luck enforcing
| that rule._
|
| "Bird-feeder? No no, that's my squirrel feeder."
| nick_ wrote:
| An upside-down funnel on the pole (into the ground) solves
| the squirrel feeder issue :)
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Perhaps, but only if you define the "issue" as squirrels
| getting bored because the feeder is too easy to get into.
|
| My favorite in this vein was a metal sleeve on the pole
| holding the bird feeder that was held up by a weight inside
| the pole. Squirrel climbs up sleeve, which then falls down
| due to the squirrel's added weight. Disappointed squirrel
| deposited back on the ground. It worked until one of the
| squirrels chewed a hole in the pole and ate through the
| cord holding the weight. This really happened on a bird
| feeder belonging to a friend's parents. (Related question:
| how on _earth_ did the squirrel figure that out?)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It might slow them down a few _minutes_ but they will
| figure it out. There is no such thing as a squirrel-proof
| bird feeder.
| klyrs wrote:
| Not a stable one, anyway. A normal feeder, hung from a
| drone flying 50' over a field, is squirrel-proof until
| the battery runs out.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Fifty feet in the air, swinging below a drones ... such a
| feeder would also be bird-proof.
| klyrs wrote:
| broke: pffft, a trifling concern
|
| woke: _three_ drones, to stabilize the swinging, and
| hanging far enough that the noise wouldn 't be a bother.
|
| bespoke: a 50' pole interrupted by a 500rpm lawnmower
| blade at about 15' up, and topped with a bird feeder. The
| only reason people think squirrel-proof bird feeders are
| impossible is because they don't want to harm the
| squirrels. (and, for the record, neither do I)
| linuxlizard wrote:
| My bird feeder does pretty well.
| https://morebirds.com/collections/caged-squirrel-proof-
| bird-...
|
| Outside my office last winter:
| https://imgur.com/gallery/LTVz9t0
| wombatpm wrote:
| Except when the squirrels can leap and land on the feeder
| itself. There are few good squirrel solutions
| pixl97 wrote:
| Squirrel maze 1.0
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZFjoX2cGg
|
| Squirrel maze 2.0
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTvS9lvRxZ8
|
| Oh, and be cautious with those squirrels....
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpZZQ2ov4lc&t=30s
| myth_drannon wrote:
| P.E.I the same rules
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| I'm worried about my 5 chickens and what happens if they catch
| it(I know they will die but like does the USDA come knocking and
| then burn my flock and coop to the ground?). I've taken down the
| feeders and gotten a fake owl to try to get rid of birds in the
| vicinity but they are still all over the place. There is not
| really anything more I can do but lock them up in the coop all
| summer but that would drive them nuts and could stress them out
| to the point of death anyway. This sucks.
| carabiner wrote:
| Buy new ones if they die? Looks like they cost $20 each.
| klondike_ wrote:
| Prices would go up in a bird flu epidemic
| javajosh wrote:
| So this would be a very HN thing to do, but what about building
| autonomous turrets that identify birds and shoot them with
| something that scares them away? (Note that killing them is not
| only distasteful, but adds another problem: those bird corpses
| will attract other unwanted animals, so it's a non-starter
| anyway).
|
| EDIT: instead of downvoting, please comment so I can understand
| why you don't like this idea.
| rascul wrote:
| > So this would be a very HN thing to do, but what about
| building autonomous turrets that identify birds and shoot
| them with something that scares them away?
|
| Indeed it is a very HN thing to do:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30642632
| softcactus wrote:
| There's nothing actually wrong with this idea but it does
| read almost as satire. It sounds like an Onion article.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Onion article
|
| Remember ThinkGeek's SkyTag?
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120218133853/http://www.think
| g...
| rolph wrote:
| just putting in 2 cents, first is the harsh reality of using
| lethal means to defend a flock is not somthing most people
| want to handle; second is a domestic flock is a smaller
| priority than a large wild bird die off event. these are
| reasons right there, but not reason enough for me
|
| I would probably be raising chickens in something like a
| greenhouse/pavillion, and using hygienic technique to
| minimize crossover events.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Obligatory mention that killing most birds is a federal crime
| under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
| [deleted]
| javajosh wrote:
| Well, yet _another_ good reason to just scare them away!
| meibo wrote:
| Your model would have to differentiate between birds and
| chicken, sounds like an interesting problem to solve.
|
| Playing a loud noise would probably be enough, but you
| obviously don't want to scare your chickens, so maybe a auto-
| aiming nerf gun that shoots 20cm below the detected target?.
| junon wrote:
| The noise would work for a week, tops. The birds would get
| used to it.
| wincy wrote:
| Just actually shoot 1 in 100 or so and that'll keep them
| away.
| setr wrote:
| I know chickens can fly a little, but I imagine they don't
| really do so -- so only targeting and acting on things
| above ground level should be largely sufficient
| pixl97 wrote:
| ERROR: UPS man is now detected as a buzzard.
| derekp7 wrote:
| > Your model would have to differentiate between birds and
| chicken
|
| Sounds like a job for XKCD 1425.
| ssully wrote:
| Possible alternative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarecrow
| javajosh wrote:
| They said they tried a "fake owl", but yes maybe a human-
| like scarecrow would work better. If so it would certainly
| be simpler and cheaper!
| takeda wrote:
| Yeah that would work, but how will I be able to put it on
| my resume?
| muttled wrote:
| If you could put constructing straw men on your resume
| then you'd be competing with tons of internet trolls.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Put poison high off the ground out of reach of the chickens.
| Eventually the birds will figure out that area is bad news
| and avoid it.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... Somebody posted an automated water pistol for scaring
| pigeons not long ago.
| _Microft wrote:
| Another guess at tomorrow's top submission: _" Show HN: I
| turned my coop into a 3D CAVE to keep my chickens from going
| crazy"_ ;)
| javajosh wrote:
| Well, now that you mention it, it _would_ be interesting to
| see if a screen, or the content of the screen, had any
| impact on the chickens. Probably the easiest thing to
| measure would be egg production, but you might be able to
| measure "well-being" in some way. (I don't know much about
| chickens, but I've heard they are extremely stupid, so it
| may have no impact.)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > I don't know much about chickens, but I've heard they
| are extremely stupid, so it may have no impact.
|
| They are instinctive rather than intelligent, but
| strongly exhibit stress symptoms when kept in tiny
| overcrowded pens. A screen in an otherwise bare box might
| not provide sufficient stimulation and reward, e.g. the
| 'pleasure' of finding food when chasing small bugs across
| the floor.
| [deleted]
| rolph wrote:
| they are very responsive to light spectrum; intensity;
| and periodicity. you can manipulate egg production, and
| breeding cycles by manipulating lighting parameters, and
| providing specific nutritional supplements.
| pjmorris wrote:
| Ten years ago, somebody built a squirrel detector/watergun
| combo to protect their bird feeders without harming the
| squirrels, [0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPgqfnKG_T4
| pcan77 wrote:
| Same, I live in CA and thankfully it hasn't been reported in CA
| at all somehow. I live by a popular bird flyway so it's a tad
| concerning.
| peteradio wrote:
| I'm under the impression song birds and the like don't really
| transmit too well, mostly its waterfowl. Having ducks, geese
| etc flapping about your yard would be something to worry about.
| fmakunbound wrote:
| Uh curious how your hens feel about the fake owl watching over
| them.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Chickens don't seem all that smart to me. Either that, or
| they've become so domesticated they just assume whatever is
| going on around them is okay because humans are allowing it
| to happen. In either case, my suspicion is that they won't
| give a cluck about some silly fake owl hanging around their
| coop.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| the poultry free range birds are being moved indoors and still
| allowed to be labeled free range. The risk to flocks is so
| great.
|
| Sucks for everyone involved, but not as much as euthanizing the
| flock
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.11.479922v2....
| "Intercontinental movement of H5 2.3.4.4 Highly Pathogenic Avian
| Influenza A(H5N1) to the United States, 2021"
|
| Bits I found interesting:
|
| > The initial US detection was from a sample collected on
| December 30, 2021 from a wigeon in Colleton County, South
| Carolina (A/American_wigeon/South_Carolina/AH0195145/2021(H5N1),
| GISAID [https://www.gisaid.org] accession no. EPI_ISL_9869760).
| Immediately following this initial detection, there was an
| additional wild bird detection in South Carolina
| (A/bluewinged_teal/South_Carolina/AH0195150/2021(H5N1), GISAID
| accession no. EPI_ISL_9876777) and detections in neighboring
| North Carolina (Figure 1). Within six weeks there were 137
| additional detections in wild birds, indicating high
| susceptibility to a novel virus and continued dispersal. All
| birds were apparently healthy hunter harvested dabbling ducks.
| There was no detection of North American lineage IAV in any of
| these samples.
|
| ----------------------
|
| State - Wild bird species - Number of Clade 2.3.4.4. HP IAV
| Detections
|
| ----------------------
|
| South Carolina - American wigeon - 7
|
| South Carolina - Blue-winged teal - 9
|
| South Carolina - Gadwall - 7
|
| South Carolina - Northern shoveler - 1
|
| North Carolina - American green-winged teal - 9
|
| North Carolina - Northern shoveler - 3
|
| North Carolina - American wigeon - 51
|
| North Carolina - Gadwall 15
|
| North Carolina - Mallard 4
|
| North Carolina - Northern pintail 3
|
| North Carolina - Wood duck 1
|
| Virginia - American green-winged teal - 2
|
| Virginia - Mallard - 1
|
| Florida - Blue-winged teal - 2
|
| Delaware - American wigeon - 1
|
| Delaware - Northern shoveler - 2
|
| New Hampshire - Mallard - 20
|
| ----------------------
|
| Total Detections: 138
| [deleted]
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| ars wrote:
| " the virus killed roughly 10% of the breeding population of
| barnacle geese"
|
| Isn't that a very good thing? !0% is not enough to seriously harm
| them, but it is enough to make sure that the survivors are
| resistant. If it stays at 10%, then after a couple years the
| birds should be immune to it.
| at_compile_time wrote:
| This wasn't the first virus spawned by animal agriculture, and it
| won't be the last. I'm sure that people are genuinely concerned,
| but their concern rarely leads them to question their
| participation in the systems that cause these problems.
| [deleted]
| cheese_van wrote:
| In some gov circles, the scenario often postulated is that a bird
| flu variant would be globally spread by Hajj pilgrims leaving
| Mecca to return to their various homes. The average yearly Hajj
| partipation is about 2.5 million people. It's estimated by some
| that 500 million migratory birds pass through Saudi Arabia.
| rcohngru wrote:
| Couldn't the same be said for any major area that attracts
| millions of visitors each year? Before covid ~30 million people
| were visiting Paris each year from all over the world.
| christkv wrote:
| I think the concern is how packed people are during the
| pilgrimage making it a perfect caldron of potential
| infection. Like a packed concert but with millions.
| onion2k wrote:
| I would guess that the combination of migratory birds and
| temporary visitors is what's important. Paris doesn't have
| much in the way of migratory birds.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| The temporal distribution matters. Hajj is 2-3 million people
| over something like 5 days. The next largest global event I
| can imagine is the World Cup, which is estimated to be 1.5
| million people distributed across several venues later this
| year.
| CommanderData wrote:
| World Cup has copious amount of hookup culture (just look
| through Tinder when the season plays in your city), Grindr
| and general clubbing in these areas.
|
| I've been a visitor during a World Cup and its not just the
| football people go for.
|
| There's even a term for it: World Cup fever, not just
| isolated to world cups, many other sporting events have the
| same problem of being super spreading events for STIs
| https://sexualhealthbucks.nhs.uk/latest/world-cup-fever/
|
| I'd also say prolonged contact and mingling is worse then a
| short one like above, plenty of time to pub and club crawl,
| sleep with multiple partners, allowing disease to expell
| after its normal 5-6day incubation period.
| pvg wrote:
| No because the Hajj is time-specific. It also brings together
| many people who might not otherwise travel.
| Afforess wrote:
| This just reads like straight racism against Middle Easterners
| & Islam. There are billions of migratory birds in the USA and
| much greater freedom of travel in the USA than Saudi Arabia.
| Millions of tourists, business persons, and visitors come to
| the US every day. And the US also has much higher numbers and
| density of factory poultry farms.
|
| There is no reason to make a complicated argument that the Bird
| Flu will start in Saudi Arabia due to Islam. It will probably
| start in the good ol' USA.
|
| https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/09/more-4-billion-bird...
| wincy wrote:
| Remember when news media was condemning alarm about the
| coronavirus as "racism?" Chinese people really were more
| likely to have coronavirus though, you didn't need a degree
| in demography to understand why.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/canada-
| chinese...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Wuhan is crowded and it could spread quickly there" isn't
| racist.
|
| "And that's why I won't go to SF's Chinatown for lunch"
| was, as is the racist harassment detailed in your link.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I agree and disagree in some sense. We've seen countless
| superspreader events in the US, and animal husbandry in the
| US entails concentration camp-like conditions, which are the
| perfect storm for disease development, rapid spread and
| zoonosis. Our agricultural practices end up getting spread to
| other markets so that they can remain competitive, which
| means those perfect storms are spread all over the planet.
|
| However, there's no reason to pick on the Middle East in
| particular. Pilgrimages tend to get a lot of people from
| disparate areas to convene in a small centralized area at the
| same time. Research has shown pilgrimages in Europe were
| responsible for spreading leprosy in the Middle Ages, for
| example. Research has also shown that pilgrimages in
| modernity act also as disease vectors, although not with
| leprosy, with research studying the Hajj in particular,
| showing a 78x increase in the spread of meningitis[1].
| Similarly, there's been research on COVID cases stemming from
| the Sturgis Rally in the US, suggesting that it was
| responsible for hundreds of thousands of cases of the
| disease[2].
|
| [1] https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s
| 128...
|
| [2] https://docs.iza.org/dp13670.pdf
| pvg wrote:
| It's one of the largest annual gatherings around with the
| kind of reach and population cross-section many large
| gatherings don't have. The infectious disease risks are both
| known and actively managed, you couldn't reasonably host the
| thing without that, eg:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24857703/
| [deleted]
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