[HN Gopher] Bird Flu Infections Undetected
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Bird Flu Infections Undetected
Author : cduzz
Score : 31 points
Date : 2024-11-07 21:17 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.statnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.statnews.com)
| cduzz wrote:
| Curious how this is going to play out over the next 18 months.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Very, very poorly based on the likely direction of the CDC and
| general ID apparatus.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Man, I do not want to pick up immediately where we left off
| last time.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| There's slight solace in that bird flus are _much_ worse as
| pandemic viruses compared to coronaviruses -- but then
| again, unmonitored, uncontrolled spillovers are an
| excellent way to build a highly virulent strain. Also,
| there 's one dipshit who's likely to be involved and is
| advocating for more raw milk and less regulation around
| pasteurization and you'll never guess where you might find
| an excellent vector for bird flu transmission to humans
| from dairy cow populations..
| Fomite wrote:
| If it helps, we won't.
|
| Everyone who works in public health is already exhausted.
| Many of the things put in place during the last pandemic
| are either already dismantled when COVID money got clawed
| back in reconciliation a year or so back, or is zeroed out
| in the next Republican budget. Any public willingness to
| engage in widespread nonpharmaceutical interventions is
| effectively gone. Anti-vaccine sentiment is quite high
| right now.
|
| We'll pick up in a worse place.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Does the US have masks in storage? Because I know my
| country has more respirators now, but I have no idea
| about masks.
|
| And gloves! Talk about gloves... they only became
| available for sale again close to 2021. Around here they
| are already hard to find (no idea why).
| Fomite wrote:
| Some places do, some don't. One of the other aftermaths
| of COVID-19 is that the assumption that there will be a
| timely federal response to a major public health
| emergency isn't one to be relied on.
| phtrivier wrote:
| History will rhyme, but not repeat. For all we know, we
| might end up with RFK Jr. mandating flu shots among meat
| workers to keep the burgers flowing. (Just kidding. It
| would be a bloodbath. But then again : Vox Pensylvani,
| Vox Dei...)
| timr wrote:
| > The agency believes the virus continues to pose a low risk to
| the general public.
|
| They buried the lede. This is story about testing people who work
| in dairy farming, and finding out that a small number of people
| had inconsequential infections.
|
| For those who will surely try, you can't just divide 8 (number of
| infections) by 115 (total population tested) and use that
| proportion for anything. The error bars are large (specifically,
| using Fisher's Exact, from 3% to 13%).
| Fomite wrote:
| While wide, those are not uselessly so.
|
| "A low number, but non-zero" isn't great information, but it's
| a start. Because understanding so-called "inconsequential
| infections" would have been _very_ helpful at the start of the
| COVID-19 pandemic.
|
| "Cases are obviously symptomatic and will seek healthcare" is a
| very different beast from "Some people are shedding virus but
| are pretty sure they can power through".
| perihelions wrote:
| ( _" continues to pose a low risk to the general public"_)
|
| I don't agree, and I would point out they used identical
| language mere weeks before covid-19 exploded [0]. Federal
| bureaucracies are reactive, not proactive.
|
| [0] https://edition.cnn.com/asia/live-news/coronavirus-
| outbreak-... ( _" Coronavirus risk to American public is low,
| health secretary says"_; February 26, 2020)
| throwup238 wrote:
| Except this flu was first identified in _1996_ and there
| still hasn't been any large outbreaks in humans, just small
| pockets of infections among farm workers and their family
| members. It only took months between the first suspected
| COVID case and massive lockdowns.
| perihelions wrote:
| Well, the outbreak in mammalian livestock is very novel,
| and enormous in scale.
|
| I'm not making any points or claims about the human
| pandemic risk, because I don't know. My point is a narrow
| one: that the CDC's current messaging language is _low-
| signal_ and shouldn 't be interpreted heavily.
| Fomite wrote:
| The problem with flu is that with reassortment, and
| especially with an expansion of the host species, we're
| basically just making a bunch of saving throws, hoping
| they're all okay.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Any chance we could just stop raising so many cows and chickens?
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Sure, just ctrl-z the last ~60 years of population growth
| around the world; should be easy to get those chicken numbers
| under control then.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| India will be surprised to find that population growth
| requires beef and chicken consumption, I suspect.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _India will be surprised to find that population growth
| requires beef and chicken consumption_
|
| India is the sixth-largest consumer of chicken [1] and
| fourth-largest of beef [2] in the world.
|
| [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/chicken-c...
|
| [2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/beef-cons...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Because it's a huge country, but 40% are vegetarian. They
| seem to have kids and feed themselves reasonably well.
|
| Take a look at the per-capita numbers for the real story,
| where they're in the bottom 20 or so out of ~190.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Sure. The point is even with those low (but far from
| record low) per-capita numbers they still eat a _lot_ of
| meat there.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The point is meat/chicken consumption isn't required for
| population growth.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Isn't required but in practice occurs. With both
| population and wealth. We aren't getting rid of chicken
| or beef any time soon.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > We aren't getting rid of chicken or beef any time soon.
|
| This is a very different argument.
|
| We won't be. We could, in short order, if we all wanted
| to, without having to "ctrl-z the last ~60 years of
| population growth around the world" as asserted upthread.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _We could, in short order, if we all wanted to, without
| having to "ctrl-z the last ~60 years of population growth
| around the world" as asserted upthread_
|
| This is akin to we could wish war away. Like sure. We
| could.
|
| If you want to reduce chicken consumption, the practical
| route is reducing population or wealth.
| nomel wrote:
| 73% of the Indian population is protein deficient [1].
|
| [1] https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/indias-
| protein-defici...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You've argued elsewhere in the thread that "60 to 75% of
| the population eats meat". Now you're arguing 73% are
| protein deficient.
|
| These are hard stats to combine into a "it's the not-
| meat-eating that's the problem"; either one stat is
| wrong/misleading (I suspect "meat" includes fish, for
| example), or there are other factors than "not enough
| chicken".
| bongoman42 wrote:
| India has among the highest rates of child malnutrition
| in the world and, I recall, a majority of the world's
| stunted kids.
| smegsicle wrote:
| first world countries will be surprised to find that india
| is used as a positive example of anything
| nomel wrote:
| They will not be surprised.
|
| * 60 to 75% of the population eats meat [1][2].
|
| * Only 9% is _vegan_ , so the remaining _vegetarians_ still
| consumes dairy (Paneer, etc), and in some regions, the
| vegetarians eat eggs and fish.
|
| * 73% of the population has a _protein deficiency_ [3].
|
| 91% of the population consumes animal proteins, and they
| generally aren't getting enough.
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-
| reads/2021/07/08/eight-in-...
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1272322/india-
| typical-ea...
|
| [3] https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/indias-protein-
| defici...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > * 60 to 75% of the population eats meat [1][2].
|
| Your link agrees with me; "39% of Indian adults describe
| themselves as 'vegetarian'".
|
| > 73% of the population has a protein deficiency...
|
| Is the population growing?
| leetharris wrote:
| People are more than welcome to voluntarily stop eating meat!
| I'm curious, do you eat meat?
|
| I was vegetarian for a while and didn't mind it.
| Fomite wrote:
| If it's for flu risk, you need to add pigs to that list.
| amluto wrote:
| The current H5N1 outbreak has been going on for a few years, and
| the US already has a pretty good system for (slowly) vaccinating
| around half the population against the flu. And the US just
| switched from a quadravalent to a trivalent seasonal flu vaccine
| because one of the Influenza B strains seems to have disappeared.
| Would it have made sense to instead keep it quadravalent and add
| H5N1 to the mix?
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