"Bird flu, feared as a possible pandemic, poses growing risk to people as pathogen spreads, scientists warn"
Content warning on the video there: footage from animal farms.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bird-flu-risk-as-pathogen-spreads-60-minutes-transcript/
If you're wondering why there hasn't been more news, it's because... **Don't test, Don't find.**
#birdFlu #pandemic #epidemic #zoonosis #panzootic #mooFlu #cows
#H5N1 #birdflu #mooflu #cowflu #CDC
"The journal released data suggesting some spillovers from dairy cattle into humans have gone undetected, including in states where dairy herds have not tested positive."
What could possibly go wrong? /sarcasm
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/74/wr/mm7404a2.htm?s_cid=mm7404a2_w
"H5N1 is adapting to new mammalian hosts, raising the possibility of the virus spreading between humans."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00245-6
In case it's not clear by now, biosecurity measures either aren't being taken seriously or are useless. Considering the various responses that I've seen over the last year, with my confirmation bias of course, serious biosecurity is bad for the animal farming business short-term profit goals.
#h5n1 #birdFlu #avianInfluenza #mooFlu #zoonosis #birdFarming #eggFarming #cowFarming #goVegan #fluHyperobject #hyperobjects
"How Close Are We to the Avian Flu Outbreak Escalating Into a Pandemic?"
https://www.acsh.org/news/2025/01/16/how-close-are-we-avian-flu-outbreak-escalating-pandemic-49241
A nice and readable article. I'll only quote one paragraph:
<💬>
Where are we now? As Dr. Jeremy Faust, a Harvard Medical School physician, warns, “our current circumstance is akin to a game of Russian Roulette — and there have never been more bullets in the chamber.”
</💬>
#birdFlu #avianInfluenza #mooFlu #zoonosis #zoonoses #pandemic #pandemicene #animalFarming #goVegan
A seminar on Highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 (HPAI H5N1) by an expert:
"The global expansion of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza - Prof Thijs Kuiken"
The useful part is probably the quick history of H5N1 and its HPAI version. Spoiler: it's because of bird farms. The whole presentation has a veterinary and epidemiological angle, it's not by vegans or for vegans.
Note: the presented data is outdated now in terms of how much more the virus has spread, but the rest is solid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImFD8sLFfvo
Keep these bits of information in mind for the near future when the conspiracy clowns will come out claiming that it's a "lab leak" or some other red herring.
#HPAI #h5n1 #bridFlu #avianInfluenza #pasteurization #milk #mooFlu #rawMilk #pandemicene #epdemic #zoonosis #panzootic #goVegan
"Study Warns That Cats Might Be Bird Flu Carriers"
https://www.healthday.com/health-news/pets/study-warns-that-cats-might-be-bird-flu-carriers
<💬>
🙀 Cats may provide a pathway for bird flu to infect humans
🙀 Public health experts urge increased bird flu surveillance in felines
🙀 Bird flu has a high mortality rate in cats, posing significant health risks
</💬>
Bird flu, like COVID-19, is a multi-species disease. How many species? Let's not find out.
<💬>
The virus, which began circulating in dairy cattle earlier this year, has killed many cats, mainly on farms where herds were infected. It has also sickened at least 60 people, most of whom had direct contact with infected dairy cows or poultry.
</💬>
One of the "signals" of bird flu at a cow farm is dead cats... the canary in the casein mine.
<💬>
Cats frequently mingle with both wild animals and people, which could turn them into a bridge for the virus to evolve.
</💬>
Another reason for --indoor-- cats.
There's also a possibility, usually, in government biosecurity plans, that if there's an outbreak involving humans, companion animals like cats and dogs will be taken and killed.
#h5n1 #mooFlu #avianInfluenza #HPAI #birdFlu #cats #outbreak #zoonosis #zoonoses #pets
"How Bureaucratic Infighting, Dairy Industry Lobbying Have Worsened H5N1 Bird Flu Outbreak (Part 2)"
Another article detailing the "business supremacy" status quo in the US even at the risk of a pandemic. The article also highlights the fact that the USDA is a state within a state, it's Big Ag's State. There are so many conflicts of interest there, and it's important to understand what they are to know who is going to be harmed aside from the cows and chickens.
As with other crises, the "bad times" help to show who's been foolish and unwise. It's when the debt for ignorance and selfishness gets paid.
Eventually, even the overly protected animal pharmers will suffer as the diseases rip through their "living stocks" and various commerce barriers are raised to isolate the damage from others.
Much like the potable water crises (also tied to Big Ag), societies will have to choose between saving access to a necessity for all OR saving capital owners and related jobs.
So how many will die this time on the animal-blood soaked altar to business?
For those who don't know yet, go look up how big the wild animal farming sector has been and is in China.
I don't think that "One Health" is going to cut it.
#avianInfluenza #mooFlu #pandemic #epidemic #zoonosis #OneHealth #USA #h5n1 #birdFlu #covid #sars-cov-2 #animalFarming #capitalism #businessAsUsual #USDA #goVegan
Remember how SARS-CoV-2 emerged out of China's wild animal farms and traditional markets, and how the government there failed to prevent it, stop it, and investigate it seriously? (Yes, the lableakers are still 🤡.)
Well, the US government is doing the same with the avian influenza strain which are emerging as a large outbreak across multiple species, and among the US bird and cow farming sector. This avian influenza virus has also infected a mysterious amount of workers so far, possibly dozens, and it's just one bad day away from getting adaptations to become a new pandemic in humans (such as by mixing with pig influenza or with seasonal influenza).
Here's a long article showing a bit of the governmental failure and how that's tied to the meat industry and the "state within a state" which is the USDA:
"Inside the Bungled Bird Flu Response, Where Profits Collide With Public Health"
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/inside-the-bungled-bird-flu-response
<💬>
“The functional intent was, nobody was allowed to talk to anyone,” says a Midwestern veterinary specialist. “That’s when our phones started ringing. That’s when we started putting it all together. It became very clear: Everything was on the down low, and that really hampered the response from the very beginning.”
</💬>
While the meat industry is more "cool" about killing sick chickens, they abhor the idea of killing sick cows. It's a weirder instance of speciesism.
One Health? More like One Sickness. You know what it is.
#avianInfluenza #birdFlu #mooFlu #biosecurity #USDA #USA #dairy #BigDairy #BigMilk #BigMeat #zoonosis #zoonoses #pandemic #epidemic #panzootic #epizootic #oneHealth #publicHealth
Think Like a Vegan: What are zoonotic diseases and how do they affect us and other animals?
"Maybe you think about Covid 19. How about HIV-AIDS? Is your impression that zoonotic illnesses are something relatively new? Or uncommon?
In this episode, I'll explore just how far back in time zoonotic illnesses go and think about how our entanglement with other animals affects us -- and them -- on a cellular level"
#MooFlu forever
The NYT finally notices that the avian influenza virus been victorious in infecting US cow farms:
"How U.S. Farms Could Start a Bird Flu Pandemic"
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/21/health/bird-flu-cattle-pandemic.html
The virus is not going away. Apparently, the cows' udders are excellent viral breeding spots. So the Big Dairy industry is going to literally fulfill Rob Wallace's book title from years ago: "Big farms make big flu".
The fact that it's endemic in cows or "enzootic", as they put it, means that the cows are plague spreaders. Wherever they go: bird flu. Wherever the raw milk goes: bird flu. Whoever works there: bird flu. Whoever works there and travels to other animal farms... flu chaos. That's the thing, influenza viruses don't stay the same, they evolve and they also mix with other influenza viruses ("reassortment"). This means that any other influenza virus needs to be kept away from these cows, including seasonal flu (humans) and pig flu. What are the odds of this isolation happening successfully long-term?
The NYT article noticed that this failure is akin to what happened in China in 2019 when they successfully failed to end the (very large and profitable) wild animal farming sector which was the breeding ground for SARS-CoV-2. Whoever is reading this, you can be certain that there already are "lab leak" conspiracy theories about the mooFlu in the US. Neither regimes are going to do anything about it, as these sectors are large and create GDP, and what is needed is to end them.
#avianInfluenza #HPAI #milk #bigMIlk #bigDairy #cows #cattle #zoonosis #pandemic #birdFlu #enzootic #capitalism #BigBusiness #BigFarms #BigFlu
"An H5N1 pandemic is inevitable — here’s why."
https://canadahealthwatch.ca/2024/07/17/an-h5n1-pandemic-is-inevitable-heres-why
It's a bit fascinating how nature keeps providing reasons to stop exploiting animals. These reasons are, of course, natural negative feedback loops.
It's very simple.
Farm animals and humans are becoming the largest vertebrate biomass on the planet, as a whole. And the "one health" biosecurity idea is a myth. We're not doing the things that really reduce the risks, such as ending animal farming, natural habitat destruction, "exotic" animal trafficking, and even clamping down on international tourism.
On the meaning of and relationship between dragon-kings, black swans and related concepts https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832021001678
#h5n1 #mooFlu #avianInfluenza #hpai #biosecurity #oneHealth #zoonosis
"Features of H5N1 influenza viruses in dairy cows may facilitate infection, transmission in mammals"
Of course... they had to kill more mice and ferrets for testing. 🫤
<💬>
“Together, our pathogenicity studies in mice and ferrets revealed that HPAI H5N1 derived from lactating dairy cattle may induce severe disease after oral ingestion or respiratory infection, and infection by either the oral or respiratory route can lead to systemic spread of virus to non-respiratory tissues including the eye, mammary gland, teat and/or muscle,” the authors write.
</💬>
<💬>
Typically, avian and human influenza A viruses do not attach to the same receptors on cell surfaces to initiate infection. The researchers found, however, that the bovine HPAI H5N1 viruses can bind to both, raising the possibility that the virus may have the ability to bind to cells in the upper respiratory tract of humans.
</💬>
This means that it's only a matter of time until some infections in human infections rise due to animal farming activity, animal product handling, or consumption of unpasteurized animal products.
Note: influenza viruses can "mingle". Someone who has a seasonal flu can also have this cow adapted bird flu, and the viruses can borrow adaptations from each other (reassortment), so this year's flu season may become exceedingly interesting. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0912807107
#mooFlu #avianInfluenza #hpai #h5n1 #birdFlu #cows #influenza #milk
"Bird flu pandemic risk high as cow cases appear and officials warn of humans’ role"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/19/bird-flu-pandemic-risk-cattle-human-cases
<💬>
Poultry operations have reported cases likely linked to dairy farms, indicating the virus may be spilling back from cows into birds.
</💬>
The meat industry is a carnival of death.
<💬>
Although officials believe this outbreak was originally sparked by a single introduction from migratory birds into cows – for instance, via feed contaminated by bird feces – late last year, genomic analyses now suggest it is being spread between animals and farms by human activity
</💬>
Taking turns being vectors.
<💬>
Among employees at dairies with outbreaks, one in five employees work at other dairies and 7% work on poultry operations as well. That’s in addition to the veterinarians, nutritionists and haulers who regularly visit multiple farms. Three in five Michigan dairies with outbreaks use shared vehicles to transport cows, but only 12% clean the vehicles first. All but one of the affected dairies belong to the same milk co-ops.
</💬>
Remember how we had "security theater" or "hygiene theater" in the first years of COVID-19? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_theater
Well, professional clowns have been doing biosecurity theater for a long time. That's why the "One Health" initiative make me laugh. The lax biosecurity is a key part of the business, one more free externaltiy in service of The Economy and delusions of being a magical non-animal beings.
Everyone who ignores this threat (by not calling for the immediate end of animal farming, hunting, and pet ownership) is at the level of the Herman Cain Award winners who die in an ICU while screaming that the virus isn't real.
The role these "the economy / jobs tho" people are playing is the same one so plain portrayed in Don't Look Up!
#avianInfluenza #HPAI #mooFlu #birdFlu #zoonosis #epizootic #panzootic #dontLookUp #cows #meatIndustry #cattle #dairy #OneHealth #biosecurity #OneFlu #TerrorManagementTheory #goVegan
"Turning Point USA is promoting drinking raw milk amid bird flu outbreak. The organization is selling “got raw milk?” T-shirts"
<💬>
The T-shirt description reads, “Spread the word about the perks of raw milk, like good-for-you bacteria and essential nutrients, that get lost in the pasteurization process with this adorable crop top t-shirt printed using eco-friendly inks!”
Turning Point USA host Alex Clark has also repeatedly promoted raw milk on her YouTube channel.
</💬>
#rawMilk #h5n1 #avianInfluenza #birdFlu #mooFlu #farRight #conservatism #grifting #dairy #animalFarming
"Cows infected with bird flu have died in five US states"
<💬>
Reports of the deaths suggest the bird flu outbreak in cows could take a greater economic toll in the farm belt than initially thought. Farmers have long culled poultry infected by the virus, but cows cost much more to raise than chickens or turkeys.
</💬>
<💬>
In Colorado, some dairies reported culling cows with avian flu because they did not return to milk production, said Olga Robak, spokesperson for the state Department of Agriculture.
Ohio Department of Agriculture spokesperson Meghan Harshbarger said infected cows have died in Ohio and other affected states, mostly due to secondary infections.
The Texas Animal Health Commission also confirmed that cows have died from secondary infections at some dairy operations with avian flu outbreaks.
</💬>
and
<💬>
Bird flu virus particles were found in beef tissue taken from one dairy cow sent to be slaughtered for meat, and meat from the animal did not enter the food supply, USDA said last month.
</💬>
The supply of flesh that humans heat. But there are other buyers out there.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/cows-infected-with-bird-flu-have-died-five-us-states-2024-06-06/
#MooFlu — #Milchkühe in den USA sind mit dem #Vogelgrippe-Erreger #H5N1 infiziert. Die #Influenza-#Viren sind in hohen Konzentrationen in deren #Milch nachweisbar. Mario Rembold fragte nach den Hintergründen und den potenziellen Gefahren für den Menschen: https://www.laborjournal.de/rubric/hintergrund/hg/hg_24_05_02.php
"New tests confirm milk from flu-infected cows can make other animals sick — and raise questions about flash pasteurization" https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/24/health/new-experiments-milk-h5n1-infected-cows-raise-questions-flash-pasteurization/index.html
More #mooFlu research:
<💬>
First, they confirmed the raw milk was chock-full of H5N1 virus. Then, they stored some of the raw milk at refrigerator temperature to see if levels of the virus in milk would drop off over time. Over 5 weeks, viral levels in raw milk dropped a bit, but not much.
</💬>
This should also imply that the virus gets into fermented raw milk products. And if you look for "raw milk ice cream", you'll see that there are sellers and there is a market. I find the issue of ice cream more interesting because it can be stored for a long time, which means outbreaks *later*.
<💬>
Heating the milk to 72 degrees Celsius, or 181 degrees Fahrenheit, for 15 or 20 seconds — conditions that approximated flash pasteurization — greatly reduced levels of the virus in the milk, but it didn’t inactivate it completely.
</💬>
This is flash pasteurization, meaning that the heat is applied for a shorter duration, but at a higher temperature. And this is the most common method; I've seen it in action and it's usually some nice machine that efficiently does this, which means that it's cheaper than the "vat pasteurization". Speaking of vat, I'm not sure how many people still do this since the rise of "cartons", but I grew up with raw milk plastic bags and boiling the milk; unfortunately, I wasn't raised vegan. Anyway, I distinctly remember the challenges of boiling cow milk, so I wonder how many of the raw milk buyers are doing their own pasteurization (boiling = vat pasteurization at high temperature).
<💬>
“But, we emphasize that the conditions used in our laboratory study are not identical to the large-scale industrial treatment of raw milk,” senior study author Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist who specializes in the study of flu and Ebola, said in an email.
</💬>
It's true that further processing, which is done in these milk factories, can change the results. They mention the importance of homogenization, but there's also dilution as cow milk is pooled from many sources, so if just a small % of that is infectious, then the dilution will reduce the viral load per unit of fluid, making pasteurization more likely to succeed. I'm not sure about the homogenization and emulsification help in this sense:
<💬>
a process that emulsifies the fat globules in milk so the cream won’t separate.
</💬>
I'm not sure about this one. I've seen this in research on tuberculosis bacteria in milk, but not for viruses. Just like with SARS-CoV-2, there is a question of the non-linear effects of viral load (more viral particles, exponentially worse outcomes). They can't really answer. And, who knows, maybe homogenization will make it easier to cow milk to be accidentally aerosolized and/or inhaled.
I wouldn't *expect CNN to go for the pessimistic reporting...
So, yeah. The raw cow milk drinkers are working stochastically to bring about a new pandemic. And probably new waves of as a bonus tuberculosis. Did you know about drug resistant tuberculosis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidrug-resistant_tuberculosis
#avianInfluenza #birdFlu #milk #rawMilk #cowMilk #zoonosis #pasteurization #h5n1 #HPAI
"Raw milk lovers are spinning the government's H5N1 warnings into a conspiracy theory" https://boingboing.net/2024/05/13/raw-milk-lovers-are-spinning-the-governments-h5n1-warnings-into-a-conspiracy-theory.html
...
<💬>
In another, Paul Saladino, a popular fitness influencer also known as Carnivore MD, shirtlessly sings the supposed praises of raw milk, saying, "This is nothing like that pasteurized, homogenized milk you get in the store, guys."
</💬>
It's the flatearthers of nutrition, health, and ethics.
<💬>
Some raw milk enthusiasts are not only ignoring the recommendations of the FDA, CDC, and pathologists but are actively spinning these government warnings into a conspiracy theory. The LA Times recently published an article highlighting some of these raw milk enthusiasts who are:
</💬>
Going to refer to my previous post on how the power of raw milk is... white.
https://veganism.social/@veganpizza69/112415539847271397
#rawMilk #h5n1 #influenza #avian #birdFlu #avianInfluenza #conspiracy #carnivore #paleo #mooFlu
23/🧵 "Far-right figures are promoting raw milk amid bird flu outbreak in dairy cows"
"The CDC and FDA have long warned that consuming unpasteurized milk poses serious health risks" https://www.mediamatters.org/infowars/far-right-figures-are-promoting-raw-milk-amid-bird-flu-outbreak-dairy-cows
The "milk drinker" story has been part of white supremacist narratives for a while now, some may remember the public milk drinking demonstrations. Their core idea for this story is that "the white race" is superior and carrying a baby adaptation like lactase production into adulthood makes "the white race" "superior".
Perhaps most people don't know that most of the human species does not have "baby intestines" after weaning.
This notion probably feeds into paleo-fascist stories, despite pastoralism and milk drinking being a recent (Holocene) feature. I've already pointed out the connections to eating meat and hunting in this thread, including with the Nazis.
The raw milk aspect is the interesting one, at least to me. At face value, they buy into the wellness stories about raw milk as cure for various ailments and as a supplement, because biohacking is the bleeding edge of wellness. Of course, they ignore the dangers of eating raw milk; it wouldn't be a good daily liquid supplement if it had downsides. As a side-note, I hope that everyone here understands how "biohacking" fits into the competitive individualist race of capitalism as a type of health/fitness hoarding (facilitated by monetary wealth).
I don't see it as simply a "white race" aptitude for lactase secretion after they grow up. That's something they may teach children as a starter. They don't really care about science, fascism is about a story, facts are incidental. But they are optimists, as is the tradition in the traditionalism, conservatism, fascism spectrum. Optimism bias means that they think nothing bad will happen to them, that they're special. Others? Well, others don't matter. These are COVID-19 crisis deniers too, of course, and it's unclear how many Herman Cain Awards and Darwin awards their communities have received over the years. An avian influenza pandemic would be a different story, a different outcome (much higher mortality).
So what we're really seeing with these cowboy clowns is an intentional reconstruction of biohazards to fit their stories of biological supremacy. It's a weaponization of pathogens via ecology. As the COVID 2020 pandemic has shown, there are people among us who have no qualms about going around spreading disease to others, even intentionally.
Sure, the InfoWars clowns are probably grifters trying to sell their white supplement 🥛, but that's always the case with fascists. The line between "fascist" and "scammer" is dashed and thin; we try to play smart with the dichotomy of "but are they evil or are they merely scammers?" and the answer is "Yes." Hitler, for example, was a secret billionaire after also monetizing his infamous role: https://www.thedailybeast.com/adolf-hitler-secret-billionaire
You can see the evil-grifter dichotomy as being about opportunism. From the bottom up, it's the opportunism of scams, of grifts. From the top-down, it's the opportunism of massive wealth transfers to a few and of massive stealing, usually from an "other" group; sometimes, that's the stealing of an entire land. They called it "Lebensraum". What is an empire if not an armed ponzi scheme trying to grow?
And now we get to how this connects to raw milk, even if they're not very conscious about it. The Lebensraum of nazis was, in fact, a rehashing of settler-colonial expansion, of empire building to make a better world *for a 'superior' group*. And we can look to what happened when European settlers, centuries ago, reached "new" lands and met with indigenous people who were far from the mainland. Disease, epidemics, mass death. Why? Europeans, with a history of pastoralism (includes MENA and parts of Asia), were carriers of deadly diseases from all that contact with non-human animals while already being survivors of those deadly disease (after many generations of dying, probably in childhood) and pronatalist ideologies (having lots and lots of kids). The invasion of the Americas lead to so much death among the indigenous that the atmospheric CO2 dropped. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261 (and if you're wondering how "eco"fascists want to solve climate change... there's your answer)
I think that this is what these fascists are looking for. Essentially, they don't want to get into legal trouble, but they would like to do harm. And, as we've seen with the COVID-19 pandemic, harming others with viral pathogens is pretty much legal; it's not just an added hazard as structural violence, it's a way to harm vulnerable people without getting in trouble (to harm disabled people, immunocompromised people, poor people). If you know a thing or two about the US, you're aware of the class and ethnic/race divide and who those people are. I don't think that I need to point out how "eugenics" fits into this.
Again, this has been made obvious during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic:
➡️ https://gnet-research.org/2020/05/28/the-coronavirus-isnt-immune-from-the-far-right/
➡️ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/tribal-elders-native-americans-coronavirus.html
The Amazonian indigenous people are actually living under the threat of Western settler-colonialism right now, it's not even something in the distant past.
If we consider the hypothesis that "every accusation is a confession" (from conservatives), then it's obvious that they are not shy about using biological weapons. What most don't get yet is that the animal industry, both CAFOs and extensive ranches, are acting as pathogen factories; no lab required for this emergent "Gain of function" outcome, just trial and error with numbers; it's low-tech, it's slow, it's happening. Poultry CAFOs are responsible for the "HP" in "HPAI", they made the highly pathogenic part. You don't need a lab, you don't even need a plan. The general biosecurity plans for animal farms are, in fact, trying to counter this.
This situation can be viewed as a biological arms race, and they're optimistic about being resistant to pathogens, be that SARS-CoV-2 or HPAIV or whatever is next, so they weaponize their bodies, as carriers, in an effort to apply "survival of the fittest" to everyone while believing that they're the fittest.
We don't know how an avian influenza pandemic will work out, but it won't be an affluenza pandemic.
Link to actual article about the raw milk fascists:
#fascism #nazis #milk #rawMilk #h5n1 #influenza #coronavirus #pandemic #eugenics #zoonosis #lebensraum #colonialism #mooFlu #whiteSupremacism
"One flu over the MooMoo's nest"
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/bird-flu-outbreak-could-threaten-115000829.html
#cowCuddle #birdFlu #avianInfluenza #carnism #zoonosis #avianInfluenza #mooFlu #goVegan
