Hundreds of people have been infected with the H5N1 virus since 2003 but, until now, they have all caught it from birds. The current bird flu outbreak in the States has seen herds of dairy farm cows infected in nine states.
Is it time to start stockpiling toilet paper?
Bidet.
It’s fucked up that this is posted in “politics”
Not long now. We really don’t want to live.
Not politics
Sadly, it is (see: Covid, vaccines, and other healthcare being used as political wedge issues).
It’s not politics until it someone makes it politics. There is nothing political in this story.
Is it too late to rename it Captain Trips?
Way to tempt fate mr. Flagg.
As for the end of the universe…I say let it come as it will, in ice, fire, or darkness. What did the universe ever do for me that I should mind its welfare?
from mammals to humans
What are we, fish?
the fact H5N1 hadn’t been recorded making the jump between mammals to humans before meant human to human transmission wasn’t as large of an immediate pandemic concern as it now is having made that intertaxinomic class bridge
Humans are mammals.
yes, but they are not the same species of mammals as other mammals. diseases exist which affect mammals like dogs, and cows, which do not affect humans, and are not passed between the mammal species. H5N1 has not been seen to have been transmitted to humans from another mammal species before this, making the danger of inter-human species transmission (read: pandemic) far greater and more likely than it’s been up until now when it was solely transmitted to humans from birds.
All what you’re saying is correct, but the original sentence didn’t mention species. It mentioned mammals, and to say “from humans to mammals” is a strange phrase. It’s like saying “from liquid water to liquids.”
A correct way to say it is “transmitted to humans from other mammals.”
It was already spreading from mammal to mammal. IRC there was that Mink farm last year and I think seals too. There were also cases of H5N1 jumping from birds to humans.
Given H5N1 can make the jump from birds to mammals(including humans), and from mammals to mammals, it’s not a huge shock that it’s made the jump to humans from other mammals.
H1N1 killed 50-100 million people, so the danger has always been there, and scientists have been warning about it for decades. For example, here’s a journal article from almost twenty years ago discussing this scenario:
I wonder if his symptoms were mild (pink eye) because of a small exposure, because it entered through the eye which is a hostile entry point, or because the cow changed the virus enough to be less/non lethal to humans?
I know this is a massive oversimplification, and that modern vaccines would likely work far better. But seeing as how we’re living in the horse dewormer timeline, I wonder if people who refuse vaccines would prefer to get ‘naturally sick’ from an infected cow
Cow pox helped us against smallpox
Will cow flu help us against bird flu?
Please don’t post sky news links. This “news” service should be thoroughly ignored at all times. IF WE FEED IT WE MAKE IT STRONGER.
