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Wow, so clearly the party who values the unborn will take strict and swift measures against H5N1 and advocate nation-wide for vaccination once it's out...
... right?
Steady on there with your blasé attitude to vaccines. We don’t need no herd immunity, and they cause 5g. /s
Best I can do is bitch about masks
on the contrary. if the woman dies you no longer have to worry about her getting an abortion. so the bird-flu is pro-life in that way.
"While human cases are rare and usually result from direct contact with infected birds"
and currently, possibly by drinking raw milk
Yeah, but only raw chicken milk, and hardly anyone drinks that stuff.
wait, milk of raw chicken or raw milk of alive chicken?
Yes.
good.
Am I still half asleep and missing something? That 90% fatality rate is huge, why is this not bigger news?
It's not like it's 90% of CEOs. Just their brood mares. COVID was less discriminate.
Probably because the number of infected is relatively low and human-to-human transmission isn’t confirmed yet. But I agree, that’s a scary % and I’m afraid no action will be taken until it’s a full blown pandemic and then it’s too late.
Because eggs are like $4.50, so we've collectively decided that we need to detour through right wing populism and relitigate basic human rights and democratic principles before we can do anything else.
shhh, they're saving the good part for later when we're in pandemic 2.
I’m a bit confused about bird flu’s spread. I keep seeing that getting sick tends to happen with exposure to infected birds, but does that mean that it can still be transmitted from human to human as easy as other flus?
No, not yet. But it's spreading between and among more and more mammal species, which shows that the virus is changing. The next mammal species it adapts to could be humans.
Or it humans could be the third or fourth mammal down the line, which could still be very soon if it spreads to pets.
Cows are being hit the hardest now. If it continues on unchecked it could result in a massive decrease in milk supply (~20%).
There's been about 50 humans cases in the US with less than 5 that are unclear in origin and so are concerning for human to human transmission.
It seems to be a run of the mill flu for most people with an absolutely terrible conjunctivitis. Interesting that it would affect pregnant women so much more drastically.
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/bird-flu-spread-cattle-poultry-pandemic-cdc/view/
FML. I read this headline and during lunch, shared it with some coworkers. One was a pregnant mom. And I'm pretty sure I unlocked a new fear.
Two of my childhood friends are both pregnant right now. Fuck.
It's still very rare in humans. The headlines make it sound a lot worse than it is currently. It could easily change and become bad, but it's not there currently.
Unless they're involved with factory farms, they're unlikely to be in serious risk by the time they give birth.
ETA: 61 total reported cases in the US so far.
61 cases of an extemely virulent disease is actually a lot and should be concerning, but not a reason to panic. It is a good idea to be mentally ready for when it does start spreading between humans so we can quarantine without panic buying toilet paper.
Thanks for putting things into context.
The disease is still very rare, and human-to-human transmission has never been recorded. Right now, the main risks are infected birds or raw cows milk, (because apparently cows can also transmit it). The big concern right now is that transmission between different animals seems to be getting more common, which means the virus is changing. And it could 100% make the jump to human-to-human transmission at some point soon, especially as cases increase; Every new patient is a chance for the virus to mutate and begin spreading.
It’s one of the reason that the raw milk conspiracy theorists have become so dangerous recently. They’re quickly going to become the new COVID anti-masker super-spreaders if the virus mutates because they won’t stop drinking raw milk.
There are two potential issues with the study mentioned. Small sample size and most cases with pregnant women were in developing countries. My guess is that death rates among pregnant women are probably higher than normal, but not as severe as 87%. That number will probably come down as more cases are recorded.
Sure, but imagine it’s only 20 percent. That’s still disastrous. On the other hand, I am sure in 3 generations the survivors will have excellent immunity against the bird flu.
Agreed, the message to pregnant women is stay far away from this. Even if the number drops drastically, it is higher than anyone would want it to be.
The issue of the developing nations is not as valid as one might think - if one looks up the case reports mentioned in the study(P.50&ff) some of them have been treated with the full scale of modern critical care, in one case including ECMO and treatment also often included the current antiviral protocols according to the current guidelines at the times of the infection. (Which often actually were not recommended at the times during pregnancy due to the high likelihood of fetal developed damage.
While of course it can be argued that the accessibility of care might have been worse in these countries and treatment might have been started later (some case reports are inconclusive on that) the same is often the case in US case reports for the very same reasons.
The small number of patients included is also a bit of an issue, but there are simply not many reports available - the author did even include chinese-only reports in her study, so it's not for a lack of trying. This is sadly often a problem in emerging diseases, as they provide very low case numbers in the beginning or over their whole lifetime.
Additionally the scientists in the PRC since COVID are far more cautious what they publish, if they publish at all. And sadly most of the high quality papers on bird flu before COVID came from there.
Shitty situation and highly concerning.
90% in a small sample size isn't going to magicslly become 10% in the general population, and even if it did 10% is still a very high death rate.
Unborn babies? You mean fetuses?
Hey, if calling them unborn babies gets the right to take a pandemic seriously, so be it.
That strategy has failed for literally decades. There's no point in capitulating an inch when only one side is ever working in good-faith. And certainly not giving ground over scientific terminology.
Fetuses are what they are, until they're born.
Wow
oh dear