Analysis suggests H5N1 D1.1 genotype may have jumped to Nevada cows weeks before detection
In other H5N1 developments, the USDA confirmed detections at live-bird markets in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.https://t.co/pjXU8y6rc8 pic.twitter.com/mkdhAx9TvU
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) February 25, 2025
#USDA didn't report any new #H5N1 #birdflu infected dairy herds today. They only reported 4 new herds last week, in CA (2), MI (1) & NV (1).
Given what's happening in the US government right now, it's not clear if there are no new herds to report or a testing backlog.— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) February 24, 2025 at 8:39 AM
Bit surprised, but the #H5N1 #birdflu case in Ohio tested positive in the hands of the #CDC. Had been told there wasn't a lot of virus in the sample and they might not be able to confirm. That brings the confirmed national total since March 2024 to 70 human cases. www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/sit…
— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) February 21, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Bird #Flu transmission from humans to domestic cats has been documented, with fatal outcomes. Cases highlight risks for farmworkers and potential virus mutation, underscoring the need for preventive measures. https://t.co/Mjv8m44qCX https://t.co/Or7iqFsm5o
— Medical Xpress (@medical_xpress) February 21, 2025
Can avian flu spread via the wind? Can't be ruled out, experts say
A 2024 outbreak of #H5N1 on three unrelated poultry farms in the Czech Republic suggests airborne transmission, which is difficult to prove.https://t.co/rXg1brBiqJ pic.twitter.com/lOJOFmeVxZ
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) February 21, 2025
Suppressing data will not make birdflu disappear
Firing USDA staff will not help end the outbreak.
Crippling public health agencies will not bring down egg prices.
Viruses don't consider politics in how they spread and adapt. They seize opportunity.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025…— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 23, 2025 at 7:50 AM
bird flu is festering in dairy cattle, and unlike with chickens, there is no federal program to contain it. instead of creating one Trump is gutting the USDA and CDC, specifically its disease control programs www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/o…
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper.com) February 20, 2025 at 11:38 AM
The always on-point Maryn McKenna — “We’re Running Out of Chances to Stop Bird Flu”: [gift link]:
Farmers in Georgia’s northeastern corner woke up on Jan. 15 to discover that birds in their flock of 45,000 chickens were ill and dying. Within 24 hours, the state’s veterinary laboratory confirmed the problem was bird flu.
Within two days, the Georgia Department of Agriculture sent an emergency team to kill all infected and exposed birds, disinfect the barns, set up a 10-kilometer quarantine zone around the farm and impose mandatory testing on every poultry operation inside it. The agency also told other chicken producers to confine all their birds indoors, and ordered an immediate stop to bringing birds out in public: no exhibitions, no flea market sales.
Georgia didn’t invent this fast response. There was a checklist to follow: the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 224-page Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Response Plan, known as the Red Book. For 15 years, the Red Book has laid out how to detect bird flu, cull affected birds and prevent further spread. Crucially, the Red Book mandates that poultry farmers get compensation for birds that are killed by the authorities, but not for ones that have died, which encourages farmers to report outbreaks as fast as possible.
Unfortunately, bird flu is no longer confined to birds. For several years, the virus has been jumping from wild birds into wild mammals, and last March it was identified in cows for the first time. Scientists are sounding the alarm: Bird flu’s jump into an animal with which humans have such close contact is a serious warning sign. If this outbreak isn’t controlled, the virus could mutate and plunge humans into a new public health emergency.
And by all accounts, not enough is being done to control the outbreak. Unlike their peers in the poultry business, dairy farmers have no Red Book for dealing with bird flu. They have been pressured to take instruction from public health authorities, but without the support they need to make those steps bearable for their livelihood. As a result, these farmers have been hesitant to act, despite being maligned for moving too slowly. Unless something changes, the specter of bird flu’s devastation will hang over the United States indefinitely — as will the threat of other emerging diseases…
There’s a sense among dairy farmers that the country’s bird flu plans were built on poultry industry structures that don’t bear much resemblance to their own operations. Broiler chickens are deposited in a barn in the first days after they hatch, and stay in that building until they are collected for slaughter, as a batch, six to seven weeks later. Poultry losses from bird flu are covered either by the U.S.D.A. indemnity or by the corporations that supply birds to farmers to grow them under contract.
Dairy cattle, by contrast, don’t arrive and leave in herd-size batches; they move on and off farms as calves that need raising, newly pregnant heifers or cows nearing the end of their fertility. The annual turnover rate in a single herd may be 30 percent at most…
Fear that their herds would face the same 100 percent cull as infected poultry flocks — but without equivalent compensation — may have slowed cooperation with public health plans. Restrictions on interstate cattle movement were rolled out in April 2024, and testing of milk supplies began in December. But not all states have yet joined the U.S.D.A. testing plan…
Last night's update: 156,000 new cases https://t.co/d25QU1oxMq
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) February 24, 2025
Feb 21th update:
Infections starting to decline again after a plateau in the first few weeks of Feb. Should continue to trend down for the next few weeks. Current estimates:
🔸440,000 new infections/day
🔸~1 in 76 currently infected— JPWeiland (@jpweiland.bsky.social) February 21, 2025 at 7:49 PM
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The political rise of the anti-vax movement
https://www.ft.com/content/d4199db2-01c1-4260-ac60-0f547a6a2fbe— Financial Times (@financialtimes.com) February 26, 2025 at 12:07 AM
Since the first What is this weird disease bubbling out of China days, the pandemic has never not been a foreign-affairs problem:
… Vaccine scepticism was long a fringe phenomenon, with anti-vaxxers treated as cranks. But now its leading proponents are grabbing the political limelight in a manner that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.
While traditional political parties around the world are struggling to appear relevant, the anti-vaccine movement is one of the new anti-establishment political forces that is filling the vacuum, its claims and conspiracy theories often amplified by social media…
The movement is by no means confined to the US. Across the world, anti-vaxxers have seized on growing public mistrust of the medical establishment — particularly since the start of the Covid pandemic — to reach an ever larger audience that cuts across both left and right. That scepticism often then feeds hostility to other institutions.
“You start with mistrust of public health, then all of a sudden that morphs into mistrust of the intelligence community, or democratic leaders,” says Bret Schafer, an expert in digital disinformation at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. “The sceptical communities cross-pollinate and reinforce each other.”
The growing clout of anti-vaxxers has also been on full display this week when the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right, ethnonationalist party, came second in Germany’s Bundestag election with 20.8 per cent, just 8 points behind the victorious centre-right.
Best known for its anti-immigration views, the AfD is also the only large German party that opposes any vaccination mandates, a standpoint that has attracted tens of thousands of Germans sceptical of orthodox medicine…
Starting off as a grouping opposed to the euro bailouts, the party moved sharply to the right in 2015, capitalising on widespread public anger at the arrival of more than 1mn asylum seekers into Germany.
During the pandemic, it positioned itself as the main opposition to government-sponsored stay-at-home orders, quarantines, curfews and proposals for vaccine mandates.
That stance brought a new surge of support, often from sections of the population that had long been impervious to its hard-right, xenophobic messaging.
“Hippies, vaccine sceptics, people of a mystic bent, were, like us, labelled Nazis because they opposed the lockdowns, and so became disillusioned with the regime and switched to us,” says Alexander Sell, who sits for the AfD in the European parliament.
Axel Salheiser, a sociologist with the Research Institute for Social Cohesion in Jena, Germany and an expert on the extreme right, says the AfD was able to elaborate a populist narrative based on the idea of an “overreaching state, that they equated with a dictatorship”…
======
How did SARS-CoV-2 transform from a slow mutating virus to accumulating a very large number of mutations quickly?
Rapid evolution within immunocompromised hosts
@theatlantic.com @sarahzhang.bsky.social
Gift link:
www.theatlantic.com/health/archi…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) February 24, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Vaccinated kids at 57% to 73% lower risk of long #COVID, CDC study suggests
The protection against long COVID from vaccination is likely even higher, because the estimates don't account for prevention of infection by vaccination, the authors say.https://t.co/RRIFvz81YC pic.twitter.com/Vp06bo0Ylr
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) February 25, 2025
Women have a higher risk for long covid. Estrogen may play a role. https://t.co/OV1ntqCMPn
— Jess 🇨🇦 (@MeetJess) February 21, 2025
From a thread by an actual, practicing infectious disease specialist on the latest ‘OMG the vaxxs will kill us all!!!’ scare:
This was my after dinner reading. TLDR – 64 patients and a pretty weak signal with a non negligible confounding factor of fairly recent covid infection in the vaccinated individuals with chronic illness symptoms is insufficient to make a meaningful conclusion.
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1…— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 9:04 PM
Certainly not one that supports causation to any degree or warrants breathless headlines from multiple news outlets. COVID is still way more dangerous than any of the vaccines we have available to mitigate it's effects.
— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 9:04 PM
======
Glass half full — sometimes the WH occupying forces can be shouted down:
“Discarding the tests “feels like an act of self-destruction here. It’s going to be expensive. And it takes away a tool that the administration would want to use in the scenario that we get a highly immune-evasive variant”” https://t.co/4C3kwCgYNY
— Amesh Adalja (@AmeshAA) February 21, 2025
The United States has joined a WHO-led flu vaccine meeting, despite the Trump administration's plans to withdraw from the global health agency.
CDC vaccination committee meeting postponed days after RFK Jr. took over at HHS https://t.co/z34mnv83uj
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 21, 2025
… The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was slated to meet in Atlanta from Feb. 26 to 28 — the first gathering since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as Health and Human Services secretary.
HHS director of communications Andrew Nixon confirmed Thursday the meeting was postponed, and the ACIP meetings website also reflected that. Nixon did not respond to a follow-up question about a new meeting date. The group meets three times a year, typically in February, June and October.
Kennedy was critical of ACIP during his confirmation process, and ACIP is on a list of federal advisory committees that are being reviewed, according to an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on Wednesday…
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices advises the CDC director on how FDA-approved vaccines should be used; for example, recommending which groups of people should get shots and when. Its decisions are not binding, though agency directors almost always follow them…
According to the now-postponed meeting agenda, which was still available online as of Thursday afternoon, topics included a new meningitis vaccine, a vaccine to prevent a mosquito-borne illness called chikungunya, and RSV and influenza vaccines.
Addendum from the Washington Post:
… The Food and Drug Administration licenses vaccines, but clinicians wait for recommendations from the CDC advisory panel to understand the best ways to use them. In addition, insurance generally does not cover new vaccines without a recommendation from the vaccine panel.
News about the postponed meeting drew swift reaction. More than 50 medical experts and organizations sent a letter to Kennedy, Cassidy and the CDC’s acting director, Susan Monarez, to preserve the panel’s meeting and agenda.
The meeting holds “tremendous weight and relevance,” said the letter, which included signatories from the American Medical Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease. “Infectious diseases are constantly evolving opponents; vaccines are among the best tools for constantly adapting and responding to the latest public health threats.”
The meetings are held three times a year. They are usually all-day meetings and discussions and votes are broadcast through a live video stream, the type of activities in which “a thoughtful, transparent and well-organized scientific community engages,” the letter said…
Regular meetings of the panel are scheduled months in advance, with notice about public comment for each meeting. Meetings where votes will take place must allow a period for public comment.
For weeks, CDC officials have been asking whether the meeting could proceed, but without formal approval to go ahead, appropriate notice for public comment was not opened. HHS officials imposed an abrupt halt on external communications by CDC and other health agencies a month ago, disrupting the flow of much basic information from the agencies to other health organizations and community groups.
HHS spokesman Nixon said the vaccine advisory panel’s work groups — or subcommittees focused on reviewing relevant data and developing recommendations to present to the full panel — met as scheduled this month and will present at an upcoming ACIP meeting.
During pandemic, ivermectin use rose 10-fold, hydroxychloroquine use doubled, study reveals
Hydroxychloroquine use was evenly distributed across the United States, but outpatient use of ivermectin was significantly higher in southern states.https://t.co/64BRZknOEf pic.twitter.com/qalt4cmmwR
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) February 24, 2025
#Breaking – HHS orders CDC to halt some vaccine ads, saying RFK Jr. wants message focused on ‘informed consent’
Utah Republicans push to let patients supply their own blood as vaccine concerns linger https://t.co/eMPtmaKm7s
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 20, 2025
This week’s entry in the DON’T PANIC sweepstakes:
Good thing we recently withdrew from the WTO and killed USAID's international public health programs www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0…
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) February 25, 2025 at 1:34 PM
🦠 HKU5-CoV-2: What We Know So Far
Been getting a lot of questions about HKU5-CoV-2, the newly identified bat-derived coronavirus. Here’s what we know, and why you don’t need to panic.
www.nature.com/articles/d41…— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 8:31 AM
3/ So why not panic? A few key reasons:
✅ Limited Infectivity – It doesn’t appear well adapted for human infection, reducing the risk of an outbreak.
✅ Possible Cross-Protection – If it shares some features with SARS-CoV-2, prior infection & vaccines may offer partial immunity.— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 8:31 AM
✅ Better Preparedness – Unlike in 2019, we now have advanced diagnostics, vaccines, and antivirals ready to respond.
✅ Most Bat Coronaviruses Don’t Jump to Humans – Hundreds exist, but only a handful have ever spilled over.— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 8:31 AM
4/ The bottom line
There’s no immediate cause for concern, but researchers worldwide are monitoring HKU5-CoV-2 closely.— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 8:31 AM
As I wrote in a reflection on the last "mystery" illness outbreak:
"The real mystery is why we continue to accept a world where preventable diseases claim countless lives, even as wealth and innovation abound."
substack.com/home/post/p-…— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 25, 2025 at 1:40 PM
On The Road – TKH – Jordan Trail Part 6
Nukular Biskits
Anne, in case I haven’t said it before, I appreciate the work you put into these (and other) posts.
Thanks.
v/r
bo
frosty
I’m glad I don’t have to panic about the new bat virus. I don’t have room for another panic right now LOL
Thanks for these updates for the last five (!) years. I’m better informed than anyone else I know.
p.a
Anne, I have thanked you previously, but not enough. Thank You.
Worrying about modern vaccines in the face of a deadly virus is like worrying about powder burns when you shoot yourself.
Scout211
But when conspiracy theories can’t compete with real life consequences of not vaccinating your children, shit gets real.
New outbreaks of preventible communicable diseases just might be the new “informed consent” that RFKjr isn’t expecting.
TBone
Noah Three Miracles is improving, bit by hard won bit, every single day. But he still won’t eat all the calories he needs voluntarily – his brain was rewired and I’m trying to psych him out every day. He’s so smart, it ain’t an easy job. He used to love to smell whatever I’m eating to decide if he should beg for a morsel. Yesterday, he visibly gagged when he smelled my bagel with cream cheese. Ever seen a cat gag? If it weren’t so sad, I’d have been guffawing.
Off to prepare the huge, plastic syringe of Science Diet Urgent Care goop for the tube, and all the meds …
Baud
@Scout211:
Enough to change to a liberal outlook?
People who hate libs always end up the most covetous of liberal outcomes.
Mousebumples
Thanks, AL! I often get to these threads late, but I appreciate the work you put in to collect all this info and share it with us.
Rusty
AL, thank you for your dedication to keep us all so well informed. I am ever grateful.
New Deal democrat
With the exception of the week of January 11, when there were 1,001 deaths, the US has not had fatalities of over 1,000 in a week for the past 5 months. For the last full week of reporting, January 25, there were 859 deaths. The 1st preliminary estimate of deaths for February 15 was 272, the lowest in 3 months, suggesting a final number for that week of about 650-800. The weak winter wave is abating, as also demonstrated by the latest wastewater surveillance, which is at a 2 month low, although a little over double the level just before Thanksgiving.
Even better, the total number of deaths over the past 52 weeks was only 41,300. Within two weeks, that number could easily be under 40,000, and by the end of March under 35,000. At that point for all intents and purposes we could call the COVID pandemic over, although the issues about long COVID will likely continue for years.
There are no new variants of note. Back-cross variant XEC continues its slow gains taking over from KP.3.x.
oldster
These roundups are super useful, and I often share with friends. Thanks.
TBone
The CIDRAP & Medical Express articles about confirmation of bird flu here in PA & transmission to cats is coming with Noah & me to his next checkup/tube check/bandage change. Thank you, A L. I don’t want to puss off the vets, but it is incumbent upon me to not capitulate in silent complicity.
He’s finally getting new blood test workup by their lab. It’s been almost six weeks since his last (only) labs.
Music for courage boosting morale
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uH7auL7aN6k
eclare
Thank you so much for continuing these updates, Anne Laurie! They must take hours to prepare.
Got an MMR booster around 2008, I’m good.
TBone
@TBone: P.S. because they do large animal care, there is a sign promoting PA Dairy! out in front of the animal hospital.
I’d taken Noah there for bloody diarrhea right before Josey Wales of the Nicked Ear got sick and
diedhad to be euthanized at Christmas because of wasting away from not eating.Mousebumples
Question for the commentariat – any good egg substitutes you’ve found for baking, cooking, etc.? Whether official (eg Eggbeaters) or unofficial (eg sugar free applesauce)… I’m open to suggestions.
Professor Bigfoot
That’s gonna be their strategy for everything: “Bird Flu is gone, there are no more reports of any such phenomnen!”
“There’s no more global warming, there are no reports of any such phenomenon!”
Grrrrrrr….
”There’s no police brutality, there are no reports of any such phenomenon!
TBone
Of course, I might be spreading my immunocompromised long Covid and killing cats. JFC, can’t wear a mask 24/7. I still mask up in indoor public spaces and met a lovely cashier at the supermarket, also masked, and we ranted about how silly it is to get sick instead. She’d just recovered from 3 weeks of pneumonia and learned the hard way!
Ramalama
@TBone: Glad the Miracle Cat is still hanging in! Thanks for the Boz Scaggs song (sometimes I cry like a bird, too).
Also thanks Annie Laurie for doing the yeoman’s work on the state of the country’s health.
TBone
@Ramalama: muah! It’s a NEW day.
Kayla Rudbek
@Mousebumples: ground flax seed soaked in water, applesauce, I think Bob’s Red Mill or others may also sell something labeled as egg substitute for baking that’s dry and stored in the pantry. JustEgg liquid is another option although I use it more as a scrambled egg substitute, not entirely sure how well it would hold baked goods together. Aquafaba (i.e. the liquid from canned chickpeas) as a substitute for egg whites; I haven’t tried it myself but apparently it whips up and can act as an egg white substitute for meringue. Eggbeaters do contain eggs so I can’t have them myself due to allergies.
TBone
Deleted
David_C
Thank you Anne! Those of us in public health (including at the funding end) have been having high-level angst for some time, especially now during budget season. Glimmer of hope: the HHS guidance that came late on Monday was pretty enlightening, implying that non-response to that OPM email was a very viable option and that we should assume that everything we write will be read by “malign foreign actors.” We’re in crisis mode, and Reddit and Bluesky are becoming our go-to places.
WereBear
To all the elected Democrats who went back to “business as usual” and continued to NOT foil the Republicans…
Why are YOU pretending it’s a mandate? Is this just a JOB for you? One you don’t have to do well?
On the other hand, the Blue State AGs were on the ball and planning for eventualities back in July of 2024. And don’t tell me the military doesn’t have alternatives, that is what the Pentagon DOES is it not?
Okay. I feel better.
Geo Wilcox
Two year old child dies of H5N1 in Cambodia. The child had been playing and sleeping near the chicken coop after they showed signs of illness and death.
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501645670/2-year-child-dies-from-bird-flu-in-cambodia/
Scout211
@Mousebumples:
Here’s a recent article from Good Housekeeping.
They tested many different egg substitutes using a brownie mix with each.
TL;DR: The worst and the best:
TBone
@Scout211: thank you! Greek yogurt, wow! ‘Tis pasteurized first.
chemiclord
@Baud:
They’ve ALWAYS wanted liberal outcomes; but they generally insist those outcomes happen on their terms; only including those they approve of and excluding anyone they don’t.
TBone
@Geo Wilcox: not ignoring you. Can’t face that yet…
WereBear
@chemiclord: Like the way they hate science but love the toys it makes?
Kristine
@Scout211: oh, thanks for the link. Interesting.
Mousebumples
@Kayla Rudbek: thanks for all the suggestions. I’ll check them out.
@Scout211: Oooh, thanks for the link. I appreciate the double check. I’ve used applesauce in a pinch, but the flavor doesn’t always mesh with the dish.
lowtechcyclist
@New Deal democrat:
My comparison from early on was to deaths involving motor vehicles: that we could stop paying so much attention to Covid when it was causing fewer deaths than our primary means of transportation. So it looks like we’re finally there.
Yutsano
@David_C: Heh. I hope these malignant foreign actors enjoy reading my terse bullet points.
Kirk
Since I don’t see the update for today I’m posting this in yesterday’s.
A resident of Rockwall county, TX, has been diagnosed as having measles (edited correction). NBC link.
For those not familiar, Rockwall county is part of the Dallas-Ft Worth metroplex. In other words the measles are in Dallas.
The medical officials are saying the patient never went to or had contact with West Texas and instead imply they got them from a recent trip to Asia. Then those officials have the temerity that there’s no way this person infected anyone during travel and recent days. Which means they’re lying or ignorant because the window starts 4 days prior to the rash.
I have a bet with myself that by the end of next week we have multiple cases in the DFW area. 2/3 of Rockwall’s voters chose Trump. It’s also heavily anti-vax. And a large proportion commutes into or through Dallas on a daily basis.