Dairy herds in Nevada
“There are things you must know. The village is dying; the signs are everywhere. Withering crops… dying brahmin… …sick children.”
Finally a silver lining to a trade war. Shut down those borders and stew in your own bird flu variant.
Oh, the pandemic-industrial complex is back on the menu. We’ve spent decades industrializing agriculture into viral petri dishes, then act shocked when nature mutates around our hubris. Cows are just the latest domino—watch the blame shift to “wet markets” or migratory birds while factory farms keep hosing antibiotics into troughs.
But sure, let’s hyperventilate about proximity to doom. Never mind that zoonotic spillover’s been a ticking clock since we decided monoculture and profit margins trump ecosystem logic. The real virus here? Capitalism with a side of amnesia.
Making America great again: the USA will be leading the world in new pandemics. By crippling the safeguards, removing science and news… because in chaos and death, dictators can continue to hold power over a fearful and panicked population.
It’s a good thing we keep historically unprecedented numbers of live animals in historically unprecedented close quarters. The beef and dairy industry has made some great strides in ending the human race
A perfect time to get rid of the CDC and the NIH. Also, let’s stop funding medical research. No sharing medical information that might make the ruling dumb shits look bad- thats treason.
Yey! The American flu…
I’m pretty sure the Spanish flu is also really the American flu…
Wonder if they have betting odds on another March outbreak and lockdown.
Good timing - we’ve got a President who has experience in handling pandemics.
Yes he didn’t do a good job last time so I’m sure this time he learned his lesson as is ready to take action
Susan Collins…? This you?
You never claimed he handled them well!
Nope, just experience. Nor did I claim he didn’t have a hand in helping them occur.
Stock up on Ivermectin and Bleach, this gonna be a wild ride.
Blech.
In response to an emailed series of questions, a spokesperson for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the agency still deems the risk to human health for the general public to be low.
For how much longer can we trust their pronouncements? All the US government departments are under the control of compulsively lying anti-science Nazis.
There is still a CDC?
I’m surprised too. I thought is was all shut down or the workers fired until only the cleaning crew was left.
As a dairy farmer myself, im paying extreem attention to all of this. Ive been paying attention to it since we found out about it a year ago. Our response has been absolute garbage and ill be one of the first to call out our absolutely shitty response. Im on the front lines right now. We have not dealt with this problem with the seriousness and attention it deserves.
That being said, this comment chain feels wierd. Like, the discourse im seeing is setting off real red flags right now for me. Im not so sure that lemmy is as secure as i expected it to be.
Im still here and will stay here, but something doesnt feel right about our conversation in this thread right now.
It’s weird but you can’t say what is weird or why.
You what’s actually weird? Your comment goes on for three paragraphs and says absolutely nothing but somehow has 50 upvotes. That’s very weird
Yeah you are right. Sleep deprivation is the only thing i can blame.
What are some of the best practices and precautions you yourself are taking or can take in this kind of situation? Must be rough though, I’m sorry.
Wash your hands. Dont drink raw milk.
All employees are provided free diposible ppe. Gloves, face masks, face shields. No one really uses them, and from what we know of the virus, the risk even for those of us who are handling animals every day, is very very low. Im not worried about catching bird flu, im worried about my cows catching it. The negative health impacts in humans is small and low. It hasnt crossed over strongly enough to cause us damage.
The farm workers that have been diagnosed with bird flu? It was conjunctivitis, aka pinkeye. Hardly something most people worry about.
But on the other hand, the cows do get sick. Fatality is nonexistant to low, except for the west coast for some reason, but the cows do run fevers and do lose milk production. Its a virus, so the best care we can support our cattle with are supportive. Push water and electrolytes, give medicine to lower fever. And wait. Same as if your kid gets the flu.
And last of all. Do. Not. Drink. Raw. Milk.
If your cat drinks h5n1 infected milk, it will develope brain swelling and die. Currently nothing happens to humans, that we know of. But If all we have to do to prevent that is pasteurization, why wouldnt we? And if a wild mutation is all it takes to get a spillover event into humans, why would we take that risk?
I’m sure that this seems obvious to you, but it’s not clear to me… are you saying that human to human transmission isn’t worth worrying about, even if the virus mutated to be more infectious between humans?
Having a quick read, it seems like infections in humans range from unnoticeable to very severe, so I guess it’s going to be a question of the ratio between severe and mild cases, which is unknown level given that we would need a mutation before it became relevant.
Did I just answer my own question?
In any case, this threat to your dairy must be very stressful. Good luck!
Obviously we dont want anyone to get sick. But the normal cases that we have seen so far, the symptoms are mild. These cases have been, for the most part, from individuals that had handled infected animals or had close proximity to them. Dairy workers, poultry farmers, back yard chicken enthusiasts, etc. The more severe cases tend to be individuals with compromised immune systems or pre existing conditions.
What we want to avoid, and what has not happened so far, is the virus spreading from human to human. All cases so far are believed to be from infected animals infecting a human. This is good. Just like with covid, or any novel disease for that matter, the worst thing you can do is have a spillover event where a new virus mutates just enough to infect a new species and the infection is contagious between individuals in that population . The new bird flu has not reached that stage. It may eventually, or it may never. But for the vast majority of the population, dont touch dead birds, dont drink raw milk, dont lick bird poop off of park benches. And you will be fine.
Yeah that all makes total sense, common sense, even lol, thank you. I was moreso wondering about any preventative measures or practices you could take to protect your cows from contracting the virus. I understand it spreads like any other virus, so I suppose there really isn’t much else you could feasibly do. I appreciate your insight
Ah i understand. No problem.
The current vector that is infecting dairies is from infected wild bird populations. We cant stop that. Blackbirds pigeons starlings finches. Theres too much bird food around everywhere. Cow to cow transmittion from one location to another is not really a factor. Its wild birds.
My dairy has implemented extra tracking in the form of, well, its basically a fitbit for cows. And with the data we collect, we can detect sick cows when they are still subclinical. It gives us a huge heads up and improves the health of the herd because we can start supportive treatment sooner. But it is not preventative.
What we need is vaccinations. The poultry industry had vaccinations for decades for bird flu. They didnt use it. We could have a cow vaccine spun up in 6 weeks, but for some reason we couldnt get usda approval in the last year before trump. The likelihood of us getting that cow vaccine approved now… its not looking too good in my opinion.
… lemmy has misinformation, just like everywhere else. Especially saw it in the lead up to the US Elections
And the bigger it gets, the worse it will become. Lemmy will have an “eternal September” just like every other place
I hope you can figure out what’s weird about it and share. It seems like a normal Lemmy thread to me:
- Concerns and questions about public health
- Acknowledgement of the political challenges we face
- People getting caught up on the small details in other comments
- Sarcasm as a coping mechanism
- People apologizing when they’ve made an error
Don’t take the list above as any kind of condemnation; I do all of them all the time, too.
Eh i think it was lack of sleep and a false alarm of the ole spidey sense going off.
But yeah, for a minute there something didnt seem right. now that there are more comments, it all seems good again.
Yeah the comments are pretty rational
Howdy, Podunk. Rednecks have to watch out on Lemmy.
There is some manipulation happening, my bullshit sensor has pinged more than once. There are also some folks that might be aliens or tankies or some sort of venomous communist/vegan you definitely wouldn’t want to share a free love commune with.
How likely is it that blue rare steak would transmit H5N1, do you reckon? USDA study.
There is currently no study that i have seen that has even hinted at any flu virus being transmitted through meat consumption.
And biologically speaking, its not really a vector that any influenza virus would be a real threat in. The common vectors of air and saliva from breathing or coughing are where flu viruses excel.
That being said, the usda has found that cooking temps as low as 120 degrees farenheight significally inactivate the virus.
Where you should be worried is raw milk. Pasteurization was developed for a reason. The science is over a hundred years old. Before bird flu, i would occasionally run over to the dairy and fill up a jar of milk rather than go to the store. Just something for the morning cheerios when i was low on milk from the store. I will not do that now. Drinking raw milk now is like playing russian roulette with patient zero in a brand new pandemic. Do not do it. Pasteurized milk only.
Secure? What makes you believe Lemmy is secure?
Those that do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it. History has the chance to do possibly the funniest thing ever right now. To be clear, the death of millions is tragic, and hordendous, but historically speaking it’s fucking hilarious that he stepped into office and repeated the exact same steps that led to covid spreading so rapidly last time!
Given the fact that D1.1 seems to be more virulent in humans, this could indicate a major change in terms of public health risks from the earlier scenario with the B3.13 strain,” veterinary science pioneer Juergen Richt, a former director at the National Institutes of Health, tells Fortune.
Hopefully it doesn’t amount to anything, but if it does, we’re fucked. States will lose federal funding for even suggesting people take basic precautions.
If nothing happens now, there’ll be another chance sub enough. Industrial animal husbandry is pretty much a pandemic generator.
A vaccine for chickens exists, that was never required because it would restrict exports to certain countries; hurting profits.
Now we have permanent reservoirs of the disease in cattle and wild birds.
Note that Biden did allocate 1.8B in funding to deal with birdflu in humans over his 4 years.
So basically we had the Biden admin coasting as boat passes the point of no return so as to not upset the capitalists short term profits, and Trump taking over and paddling directly towards the waterfall.
?
The virus developed in SE Asia, and had been rampaging through the animal kingdom especially including wild birds for years before it arrived on any farm Biden had jurisdiction over.
How is the current permanent reservoir in the wild anything to do with US policy? I actually completely agree with you that the Biden administration fucked up massively by not treating it as an urgent problem to any degree once it arrived here, enabling it to get a real solid foothold in US farms, but I think you picked a super weird way of framing that valid criticism within facts that don’t exist. When do you think it got established in wild animals and when do you think it arrived on US farms?
(I think the USDA actually bought tons of avian flu vaccine back at the end of Obama’s term, and then no one ever used it because of the export concern and it expired, and that formed a lot of not wanting to do it again. Also, there is disagreement about how good an idea giving the vaccine is, which is the whole reason it causes export issues. But if you are saying that is stupid logic, in the current pandemic environment, I will agree with you.)
I am going by an explanation I heard from a doctor awhile ago, but he seemed to think the reservoir in cattle would have been preventable if they took immediate measures, and that one was particularly threatening.
Hm, yeah, the reservoir in cattle is real bad and it’s all down to not taking the virus seriously all last year. I was just wondering where the pigs and wild birds came from, I hadn’t heard of either of those and the wild birds one didn’t immediately make sense to me.
I have edited my post accordingly.
