#USDA confirmed 5 more #H5N1 #birdflu infected dairy herds in California. The state's total is 754, although 373 herds have cleared infection and emerged from quarantine.
Cumulative national total is 983 herds in 17 states. www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-po…— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) March 10, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Cow-derived #avian flu can infect pigs but doesn't spread among them, preprint suggests
None of the sentinel pigs housed with the infected pigs were infected, suggesting low viral replication, the authors say.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/a…
Photo: liz west / Flickr cc— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 3:14 PM
#Avian flu was in Oregon wastewater weeks before state's first bird outbreaks, study shows
Detections occurred most often in two communities with important wild bird habitats.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/a…
Photo: LHG Creative Photography / Flickr cc— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) March 5, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Avian flu detected in Belgian cats as outbreaks continue on US poultry, dairy farms
The cats were part of a group that lived on a poultry farm hit by the virus a few weeks earlier.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/a…
Photo: Cindy Cornett Seigle/Flickr cc— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) March 10, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Five years after COVID first arrived in New York, bird flu has mainly been a threat to animals and the people who raise them—so far. What happens if it becomes the next pandemic?
One thing is undeniable: We aren't prepared. Read the cover story now: nymag.visitlink.me/2QH4ZA— New York Magazine (@nymag.com) March 10, 2025 at 8:10 AM
… Now, the country is, in Russo’s words, “a pot of swirling virus with every species thrown in the middle.” Multiple strains of H5N1 are burning uncontrolled through cattle herds and poultry flocks in almost every region. Farmers have been forced to euthanize millions of chickens, turkeys, and ducks. Pet food made from infected meat has been linked to the deaths of multiple house cats, and the list of species testing positive for bird flu grows longer every day: squirrels and raccoons, dolphins and deer mice, polar bears and rats, skunks and alpacas. In November and December, at an animal sanctuary in Washington, 20 big cats died of the virus, including four cougars, four bobcats, and a tiger.
Most of the 70 human cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been mild. A bad case of pink eye, maybe a fever, then a full recovery. But in January, when authorities in Louisiana announced that a man had died after being exposed to sick and dead birds in his backyard flock, it seemed to signal an ominous turn. Of the 964 human cases of H5N1 reported to the World Health Organization since 2003, nearly 50 percent were fatal.
This was, and is, a crisis that seems to demand an overwhelming response. The longer we allow the virus to run rampant through animal populations, the greater our chances of disaster. Instead, we’ve had a replay of the first year of the COVID pandemic, overseen this time, until recently, by a Democratic president: Early detection gave way to months of confusion and inaction. Good guidance was circumvented or ignored. Each state had its own rules about how to handle an outbreak or whether to test for one in the first place. We are now approaching a moment when our final line of defense for both people and animals may be an effective vaccine — just as the most anti-vaccine administration in history has taken power.
Once again, we are running an experiment to see whether half-measures will be enough to defeat a virus that has proved shockingly successful at spreading around the world. For now, H5N1 remains primarily a threat to birds and cows and the people who raise them. But if that changes, one thing is undeniable: We aren’t prepared…
H5N1 is already a panzootic. It spreads easily among birds via their digestive tracts; everywhere an infected bird poops, a new host can be born. Although highly pathogenic H5N1 has been around since at least 1996, sometime in 2020 a newer, more transmissible version emerged in Europe or Central Asia. This strain, known by the unwieldy name H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, infected species H5N1 had never touched before, causing mass die-offs of seabirds and spreading rapidly beyond the virus’s original geographic range.
“It became quite clear early on that this was a completely different beast and that this was going to be potentially long term and not controllable,” said Martha Nelson, a computational biologist and the co-author of a recent paper about H5N1 in Nature. There were frequent crossovers into mammals but limited onward transmission until the first cows were infected — most likely when migrating birds left behind droppings on a dairy that got onto a cow’s udder. After that, spread was all but inevitable: Each cow stepping into the milking parlor could deposit virus on the automatic milker for the one that followed…
It's like, how many warnings do we have to give?
Every disaster starts with scientists being ignored and that is not a movie… #BirdFlu #H5N1https://t.co/WoDbLrhbYY https://t.co/0aqXk6xhz7 pic.twitter.com/PPW0n3D6OZ— Danielle Beckman (@DaniBeckman) March 8, 2025
March 10th update:
Trends continue to improve! A ~20% drop in wastewater and 10% drop in ED visits this week. Overall tracking the model forecast of a ~14% weekly drop. Model + Latest WW estimates:
🔸310,000 new infections/day
🔸~1 in 110 currently infected— JPWeiland (@jpweiland.bsky.social) March 10, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Last night's update: More than 147,000 new cases https://t.co/UHaFOXeg4V
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) March 10, 2025
An important graph and caption on the impact of Covid www.nytimes.com/interactive/…
— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) March 11, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Opinion: But there is no evidence that migrants from the Southern border currently pose any major disruptive infectious disease threat to the U.S.
— STAT (@statnews.com) March 9, 2025 at 1:43 PM
======
5 years ago today: CNN starts calling COVID a pandemic pic.twitter.com/aUE9aEe581
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) March 9, 2025
#COVID-19 led to a loss of over 16 million disability-free years of life among 289 million adults in 18 European countries from 2020-2022, highlighting significant indirect impacts on mortality. @plos @plosmedicine https://t.co/8roh2xUcQT https://t.co/jDavvUjFxc
— Medical Xpress (@medical_xpress) March 11, 2025
======
Just published @science.org
A basis—lung inflammation—for #LongCovid (PASC) in the experimental model, and a potential therapy
[driven by alveolar macrophages and loss of their peroxisomes (Figure)] www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 2:00 PM
How Covid can affect the brain—the central role of blood vessel inflammation and microglia—and impact on body-wide inflammation @natureneuro.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Meta-analysis: Prone positioning benefits awake #COVID patients in respiratory failure
Prone positioning improved survival without intubation, cut the odds of intubation and in-hospital death, and lengthened the interval from enrollment to intubation.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/c…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) March 11, 2025 at 3:03 PM
1 in 5 men surveyed had erectile dysfunction up to 2 years after #COVID
These men had higher rates of shortness of breath and fatigue than those without erectile dysfunction.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/c…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 3:55 PM
======
Data show homeless people didn't have higher #COVID death, hospitalization rates
But they had lower rates of critical care admission.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/c…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) March 11, 2025 at 4:07 PM
CDC launches tool to track conflicts of interest for vaccine committee
ACIP members have routinely stated any conflicts of interests at the start of each meeting and ahead of each discussion and vote.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/p…
Photo: James Gathany / CDC— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 4:10 PM
I got your waste, fraud, and abuse right here
— Stacey Burns (@wentrogue.bsky.social) March 8, 2025 at 9:26 AM
The CDC is reportedly planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism, "despite extensive scientific research that has disproven or failed to find evidence of such links"
— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 11:24 AM
In one week:
– An unnecessary study to investigate a debunked vaccine conspiracy has been authorized.
– Federal grants to study vaccine hesitancy have been rescinded.
– False conspiracies regarding measles are been pushed by health leadership.
The scale of damage this is causing will last decades.— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) March 11, 2025 at 6:37 AM
The MAHA Commission is made up of agency heads, domestic policy advisers and RFK Jr. advisers, including "MAHA moms," and will study childhood chronic disease. https://t.co/ybIGVLcsE4
— STAT (@statnews) March 12, 2025
very much looking forward to the new york times headline
"consumption epidemic ravages city, constables, public health officials seek to mitigate deaths. public health officials not focused on cholera"
i just live in 1894 now. it whips ass.— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) March 11, 2025 at 10:49 PM
On The Road – TKH – Southern Sierra High Route 2 of 3
Baud
“Ugh. Back to the office,” said one cow.
TBone
Off topic a bit, but these PA guys were awarded a big federal contract recently. New Pig Energy is the name. Hits wrong for some reason.
https://www.pabusinesscentral.com/articles/new-pig-energy-3/
Maybe Fettermanchinema got the award…
TBone
Never going outside again, to touch grass, for me and hubby and kitties is not an option. But every time we do, I feel this nagging weight of sinking feeling hole in my chest. We have so many birds …
TBone
Trying to read the “Prepare Now” article bounced me completely off of Balloon Juice. But I’m determined and shall persevere.
Also, I’ve been telling myself I can always go back to law office work if we become instapoor, but I neglected to factor in the enhanced-since-Covid IBS that keeps me at home so frequently.
Attorneys generally want staff to be present in office because paper MUST be generated, executed, mailed, and filed…
ETA Got it:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw1877
No more clicks for Elno necessary.
TBone
@TBone: New Pig Energy has been, shall we say, less than successful at containment. Pay the fine and continue is a business model.
Containment impossible is my theme for today.
Anyway
Ugh – that MAHA commission looks lo be populated by Jenny McCarthy, every supplement influencer and all the quacks Oprah had on her show
jonas
Here’s what will happen with the vaccine/autism “investigation”:
CDC: “Our study has concluded, along with countless previous ones, that there is no discernable link between childhood vaccinations and autism”
Skeptics: “So they’ve gotten to you, too!? QAnon said this would happen…”
We truly live in the Age of Stupid.
TBone
@Anyway: even my vet hospital prescribed a supplement. One dose for Noah and STRAIGHT into the trash it went. Nearly deadly poison proffered by Chewy and my vet.
Fucking $80 snake oil (more than that for shipping and handling)
jonas
@Anyway: All they’re missing is Dr. Nick (“Hi, Dr. Nick!”).
TBone
@jonas: ha! YES
TBone
@TBone: trying to contain myself today is futile 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dMko8DlY9IA
CaseyL
The wages of stupidity are death. Always have been.
USians are dumb as… I can’t say “as rocks,” because that would be a slander against rocks.
I have long believed that ongoing human stupidity was going to end in a population crash from some cause or other, whether nuclear war or pandemic or climate collapse.
So far we’re two out of three. Maybe Trump and his collection of End Timers will go for the trifecta.
New Deal democrat
I’ll start out with the biggest headline news: as of last Friday’s update, there were only 39,700 deaths from COVID in the 52 weeks ending February 8. At the recent weekly pace of decline, that number will be under 35,000 by March 31.
Meanwhile, the preliminary weekly death count continues to decline, at 274 for the week of March 1, suggesting a final count of about 700 for that week.
And the good news continues in wastewater particulates as well, down to 2.90 per mL as of the week of March 1, vs. 5.49 at the Holiday peak and 1.47 at last summer’s lows, consistent with a weekly death count of about 500 in a few weeks.
The next variant update will be Friday. As of two weeks ago, there was no new variant of concern.
Barring the appearance of a new, more virulent variant*, all but the severely immune compromised among us can probably put COVID in the rear view mirror.
(*ETA: and of course the issues from “long COVID”)
TBone
@New Deal democrat:
I DISSENT
Objects in mirror closer than they appear.
I’m a hotbed of virulence.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
I’m just glad there are new diseases for AL to cover.
TBone
@Baud: what’s a memory hole for
Anyways?
Baud
@TBone:
Time marches forward. If COVID wants the spotlight again, it knows what to do.
New Deal democrat
@Baud: I fear that the new bird flu may make COVID, which killed less than 1% of the population, look like a piker.
*Every* seasonal flu in the past century has been a descendant of the original Spanish Flu” of WW1. Scientists have always feared that when the next jump was made, it would be as big a destroyer as that original flu.
And here we are. With RFK Jr in charge.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
Better he take the blame for 20 million deaths than Dems take the blame for 200,000.
ETA: Politically speaking
Ohio Mom
There were two different vaccines-cause-autism theories, if you can legitimately call them theories. I’ll describe them the best my foggy memory will allow (it’s been twenty years since these theories appeared. I stoped paying attention to them long ago).
The first was promoted by Andrew Wakefield. He said the “live” MMR irritated the gut and the irritated gut somehow allowed the larger MMR particles into the bloodstream and then into the brain, where they caused havoc. I don’t remember the explanation of how the blood-brain barrier was breached.
The Wakefield theory has been thoroughly debunked.
The other theory had to do with a type of mercury which was used as a preservative in whatever vaccines without “live” virus parts are called (can’t use preservatives in “live” vaccines, it will kill the “live” parts, that’s what preservatives do, kill live things).
These vaccines are bottle in multi-dose containers, it’s cheaper that way than bottling them in single-dose containers (“live” vaccines are in single dose containers).
Once the seal is broken, you need a preservative, hence the mercury. I forgot exactly what the mercury supposedly did to children that supposedly caused autism, it was something akin to lead poisoning.
The mercury preservative was replaced by a different preservative in childhood vaccines very long ago; I believe it is still used in at least some vaccines given only to adults.
There is nothing to research, though I’m sure this committe or commission or whatever it is will find something.
And now I’m going to eat breakfast,
Soprano2
@jonas: It’s not a question of if they’ll discredit a study by an RFK Jr.-run HHS, but how they’ll discredit the study that once again finds no link between vaccines and autism. Either that, or they’ll twist the data into a pretzel that appears to show some kind of link, all the other scientists will discredit it, but they’ll point to it forever as an “HHS study” that “proves” their untrue theory. Either way, it’s a waste of money.
Baud
@Soprano2:
I just assumed they’d put some fake scientist in charge of the study and have it produce the results that they want.
TBone
@Baud: I was referring to how we’ll handle new diseases but you are correct, sir.
Baud
@TBone:
I should invest in hedge funds that invest on funeral homes.
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: In a way it’s sad, people are so desperate to have an explanation for why their child is autistic they can seize on anything, no matter how crazy, that they might think explains it.
Baud
@Soprano2:
We should have told them the cause was climate change.
stinger
I guess I’d rather know that life on Earth was wiped out by viruses rather than by humans.
Still, it does seem odd: “Kill the hosts! Kill all the hosts!” “Umm, then what, Great Khan, Lord of the Virii?”
Baud
@stinger:
A human virus is probably a net gain for life on earth, unlike other anthropogenic disasters.
mrmoshpotato
@Anyway: Will it be lead by Dr. Oz?
Barbara
Meanwhile, parents of autistic children continue to be preyed on by rent seeking charlatans who push every kind of untested “treatment.” The kind of thing that comes across my desk:
TBone
@Baud: 🎯 good eye
Baud
@Barbara:
Sounds woke.
CliosFanboy
@Ohio Mom:
FWIW, it wasn’t plain mercury, it was a compound including mercury in a miniscule amount. But the alt med nuts freaked out as if babies were being fed old fashioned thermometers
WereBear
If your health is fine, skip my rant:
Our current food outlook, driven by profit and marketing, is about pushing plants beyond their usefulness, because they can use cheap-as-dirt starches and claim it’s a plant-based food for HEALTH. Snack chips are a great example, but what recent research has uncovered is that they are far from empty calories.
Grains are starch which turns to sugar, and sugar itself, interfere with absorption of B vitamins. Supplementation does not help, because the mechanism is inhibited via Syndrome X, a metabolic disorder.
Chronic COVID has a lot to do with the rampant lack of nutrition from the population. Bread has become a manipulated product with UPF-4 level chemicals to make it rise faster and bake attractively. This creates a form of “negative nutrition” which was a previously unknown factor in health.
Our “bread” is considered a pastry in Ireland. This is far far far from the pumpernickel of my ancestors. We “enrich” our grain products because the bran is taken out. It goes bad, and ruins storage time.
It’s also the only source of nutrients in the whole thing. So we take it out, try to put it back in, and we have something more profitable than actual food. As I told my “healthy aunt,” why would I regard pasta as healthy? When the only thing besides calories is what health authorities put into it?
She came through a hip replacement with flying colors with an emphasis on bio-available protein. Animal foods are healthy. They just aren’t as profitable as the junk they sell, pretending it’s produce.
But no one acknowledged the difficulties because a giant profit making machine, based on the lipid hypothesis, was already geared up and running incredible profits on margarine and statins.
It could ruin the economy! Instead, we ruined the population. Read the book, Death by Food Pyramid, by this same excellent researcher, to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
They don’t tell you the 8 grams of protein in a 40g serving of pasta is really 5.5, because plant sources are only 70% bioavailable. If you don’t know this, it’s science information that has been kept from you.
And, to quote a recent paper The rise and fall of protein malnutrition in global health:
TBone
@Barbara: Some cases of autism may be connected to undiagnosed Lyme Disease via in utero transmission (many people are unaware they have it because the two step hurdle presented for confirmation by blood test is rarely accurate once cleared). The recombinant Outer Surface Protein A vaccine fiasco is a lifelong regert I’ll never shake as well.
Yes, I am a kook, why do you ask? My specialist at the Chester County Tickborne Disease Center warned me to never speak of these things in public if I didn’t want to be pegged as a cuckoo.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-022-00429-5
As well, the plaques left in the brain by borrelia spirochetes are eerily similar to those same tangles left by Alzheimer’s.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Pretty much. I’ve long said that if Hillary had won in 2016, we’d have had maybe 30,000 Covid deaths in 2020, and she’d have been crucified by the GOP and the ‘liberal’ media for that devastating failure to protect Americans, and consequently the 2020 election would have put Trump in the White House.
WereBear
@TBone: I managed to do my job well until laid off in the Pandemic, and then my industry collapsed, but it’s all I can do to run my own little cat business. Even then, I miss emails and crash from my now-chronic condition.
Which gets worse with stress. You see the crux of the matter, here.
TBone
@WereBear: I too also am living the crux of that matter! Hugs to you my dear. We’ll hold hands and walk through this fire together.
lowtechcyclist
@Ohio Mom:
Thimerosal was the preservative in question. From the CDC site (glad it’s still there!):
WereBear
I watched some media where people are being warned not to go to measles parties, countered by women pointing out they won’t tell you, they know it’s shameful, but they WILL do it and they WILL hide it. So the speaker will not let her children play with unvaccinated children.
These lemmings want the cliff.
Barbara
@TBone: The money that will be used to fund yet another useless study of the relationship between autism and vaccines could be used to study the actual causes of or study possible ways to treat autism or just relieve the burdens that autism can pose for families.
I don’t know about the relationship between Lyme disease and autism, but one thing that occurs to me is that autism seems to have increased everywhere, whereas Lyme disease tends to occur in pockets (increasing to be sure as climate change expands the range of ticks that carry the disease). If there were a relationship you would hypothesize at least some geographic distribution of autism that is roughly parallel to the distribution of Lyme infection.
And oh yeah, there used to be a vaccine for Lyme disease that failed because of vaccine paranoia. It would be ironic in the most unfunny and despairing use of that word if you could avoid many cases of autism in children by making sure their parents were vaccinated for Lyme disease.
Anyway, count me skeptical but not disdainful of the possible connection between autism and Lyme disease.
TBone
@WereBear: I advise a new and better source of entertainment. Less stressful. Exhibit A
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i5hA_WigcTk
TBone
@Barbara: there is still a Lyme vaccine available; however, it is only available if you’re a dog.
But I have received many enticing offers to invest in Valneva, the company currently working on a new Lyme vaccine for humans.
Oops it’s now been taken over by Pfizer
https://www.pfizer.com/news/announcements/pfizer-and-valneva-issue-update-phase-3-clinical-trial-evaluating-lyme-disease
Barbara
@TBone: No need to worry about autism in dogs.
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: I think looking for a cause for their child’s autism, and in that process, maybe considering vaccines, is an expected part of the process through which families integrate the diagnosis into their story or self-concept.
With most disabilities, you know at birth, with autism, your child will not be identified until they are at least two years old, and typically much later; some are not identified until they enter kindergarten and the teacher says, “Whoa!” Parents have years of thinking their child is “normal” (we say “typically-developing”) to shed. That can be very hard, emotionally.
For most families, the longer you live with the fact your child is autistic, the less interested you become with seeking out the cause. The next phase is looking for a cure. Eventually, most come to the conclusion that services and supports are what is most important.
I never believed in a cure but I know many families who believed that with enough speech, behavior modification and other interventions, their child would become “normal.” This seems to be especially true for families with kids who are “higher functioning” or as we currently say, “have lower support needs.”
Judging by some friends, it takes until their kid’s mid to late twenties before they give up on this dream. I am watching two friends go through that now. It is hard keeping from being too blunt with them.
As we all have observed, no matter what their circumstances, some people never quite grow up all the way. And so it is with the developmental arc of parental autism acceptance, some people never get past perseverating on the cause or the cure.
They will be cheering RFK on, while the rest of us freak out about our children’s Medicaid Waivers and Social Security benefits being taken away.
TBone
@TBone:
TBone
@Barbara: lol
Ohio Mom
@CliosFanboy:
@lowtechcyclist:
Thanks for filling in the gaps in my memory. Some parents are now complaining about the substitute preservatives.
It is true, the ingredients in vaccines sound weird to lay people. But then again, so do the ingredients in processed foods. I can’t pronounce half of them. I still like a Froot Loop when they come my way (mostly in hotel breakfast bars).
Ohio Mom
@Barbara: There are so many issues with autism diagnoses.
The first children diagnosed were from educated, well-to-do families because they were the ones with the wherewithal to seek out and travel to the experts. I once saw a old film about autism moms and a Black mom said she was told her son couldn’t be autistic because he wasn’t white (the families making pilgrimages to the experts were all upper-middle class and white. Talk about a bad sampling!)
Even today, minority children are underdiagnosed, and so are girls, whose symptoms tend to present differently.
The DSM changing the criteria doesn’t help either.
There are probably many autisms, with different etiologies and prognoses (similar to the way there are many cancers with different causes and different prognoses).
Some people think genetic research will be the key but I remain skeptical. We know the genetics of any number of developmental disabilities — Down Syndrome, Prader-Willi, etc. — and that knowledge has not increased or improved treatment options.
Which goes back to, Hands off the social safety net that supports the disabled!
WereBear
@stinger: This is how viruses evolve into gentler forms, lest the virulence lead to spontaneous human combustion and good luck getting close enough to spread from something like that.
WTFGhost
It’s amazing that the one thing that should have come out of Covid-19, didn’t: you don’t end infections by letting them run through the population. I mean, if you were capable of learning anything, against your own stubbornness, because you wouldn’t back down from incontrovertible facts, you’d know that letting infections run through populations causes them to mutate, often in current-strain-immune-system evading ways.
You couldn’t *not* learn that, if you had the least bit of intellectual honesty, and the least concern for human life. Oh, Pope Franky, remember: you said TRUMP was as good for LIFE even though he MURDERED condemned criminals – your rules, execution of the condemned is MURDER, not mine – and after he helped kill hundreds of thousands of people. GREAT WORK, FRANKY-BOY! St. Francis of Assisi will make you change your effing *NAME* as you cross the Pearly Gates, dude!
(It takes an ex-Catholic to really bring the anger about this. The sheer hypocrisy, from a pope who pretended to care about the poor and needy!)
WTFGhost
@Ohio Mom: When I think of people trying to make autistic kids “normal,” I try to think of all the mockery and abuse my family gave me to try to make me “normal”.
You want to give your child a sense that they’re never safe? Make sure your family treats them like an effing freak, as well as their classmates. *THAT* will help him socialize!
Ahem. I do have strong feelings about this, as well as PTSD.
WTFGhost
Mercury is a heavy metal; unless it is used in a particular form, it will not leave the body, and is toxic, just like lead. If enough of a load is built up, chelation therapy would be used to draw out the toxins. So: if you were forced to eat shark and swordfish while waiting for a sea rescue, you might need chelation, if you ate enough, because those fish can have toxic amounts of mercury in them. It might matter if you were a woman of childbearing age or not – mercury is far more dangerous to a developing fetus than to an adult.
The mercury FORMERLY used in vaccines *is* excreted by the body. Doctors are *not* stupid – not about basic body chemistry.
Ohio Mom
@WTFGhost: When I said the mercury was supposed to do something akin to lead poisoning, I was laying out the anti-vaxxer arguments nutty autism parents cling to. Maybe I didn’t make clear enough I think it’s all nonsense.
Bill Arnold
@TBone:
Avian Influenza Outbreak: Should You Take Down Your Bird Feeders? (March 5, 2025, CornellLab)
(TL;DR, no, not yet, unless you keep chickens.)
Longer, and more to your point, especially if you don’t feed wild birds:
Randal Sexton
@Ohio Mom: one of my kids had an autistic diagnosis and we went pretty deeply at programs to develop his language acquisition skills. Short story is that it worked. I feel like I should tell more of the story but I’m on ferry right now. No one would ever guess that he had that situation now. He is one of the most articulate and funny people I know.
WTFGhost
@Ohio Mom: Nod. I wasn’t trying to suggest otherwise, though my brain is fuzzy and may have done so inadvertently. My apologies in any event.
Bill Arnold
@WereBear:
That is not a law of biology, especially if multiple species can act as reservoirs, or if the pathogen can persist in the environment by other means.
E.g. anthrax (not a virus), which often (almost always, if respiratory) kills its host, then forms spores and contaminates the soil for many decades.
Ohio Mom
@WTFGhost: No need to apologize, I think of you as a kindred spirit and want to make sure you think of me that way too.
Ohio Mom
@Randal Sexton: And here we have an example of one of the many different autisms, or perhaps a case of misdiagnosis? Like any medical evaluation method, there are a certain percentage of false positives and false negatives.
This is a link to my favorite explanation of the autism spectrum: https://www.google.com/amp/s/neuroclastic.com/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you-think/%3famp
Anyway, your son’s story illustrates quite clearly that interventions and therapies work. Hooray for speech-language pathologists!
In the olden days, no one thought autistic children could learn to speak, so no one taught them how to use language, and they remained nonverbal — a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sign me,
Happy for your son and your family
jonas
@Ohio Mom: I recall reading somewhere as well that the mercury compound used in that preservative solution wasn’t a kind that could be absorbed by the body anyway, so if any was present in the injection, you basically passed it right out. Any chemists/biologists here feel free to correct me if I’ve misremembered.
sab
My office has geese that nest on the roof. I do tax prep and these guys arrive every March. A highlight of my tax season. My boss strongly disagrees.
Our flock came through this week, but they are tiny. Not many at all.