Bird Bird Flu, Bird Flu's the Word

H5N1 might quintuple covid's toll when and if it drops on Edward Tinyhands' watch.

 

A no-shit influenza pandemic in the aftermath of all the Covid and vaccine asshattery would be a public health disaster.

 

Bird flu has made the jump to cats. Big and small.

Are humans next?

Bird flu kills 20 big cats at Washington animal sanctuary

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/25/us/bird-flu-pet-food-voluntary-recall/index.html

 

Bird flu virus shows mutations in first severe human case in US, CDC says

Bird flu virus shows mutations in first severe human case in US, CDC says

 

But Tiny Hands did such a good job during Covid, I'm glad he's back in charge.

 

Turns out maybe dry pet food is better than the stuff that costs more than the food I eat.

My dog does not need chicken pot pie.

 

I like chicken, pot and pie.

 

As previously established I’m not a pet guy, but I crack up at that one commercial for gourmet dog food that I assume costs more than a minor league baseball ticket.

“We don’t want you to think of it as spoiling your dog.”

I’ll bet you don’t!

 

Even the dry pet food — especially for dogs — is getting stupid. A 35-pound bag of even a fairly common brand like Pro Plan, Science Diet, etc. will set you back almost a benjamin.

Stick with Ol' Roy.

 

I fed Ol' Roy to my dog, except in hunting season when I fed her a food with more protein.

 

OK, all of you … I have a very important assignment for you.

Stay home … again … for 3 months … again.

Keith Poulsen’s jaw dropped when farmers showed him images on their cellphones at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. A livestock veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Poulsen had seen sick cows before, with their noses dripping and udders slack.

But the scale of the farmers’ efforts to treat the sick cows stunned him. They showed videos of systems they built to hydrate hundreds of cattle at once. In 14-hour shifts, dairy workers pumped gallons of electrolyte-rich fluids into ailing cows through metal tubes inserted into the esophagus.

“It was like watching a field hospital on an active battlefront treating hundreds of wounded soldiers,” he said.

Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 860 herds across 16 states have tested positive.

Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.

“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation," said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.”
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To quote Peter Pan … here we go-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...control-after-mistakes-by-u-s-government-and/

 

And one more thing …

Although pandemic experts had identified the CDC’s singular hold on testing for new viruses as a key explanation for why America was hit so hard by COVID in 2020, the system remained the same. Bird flu tests could be run only by the CDC and public health labs until this month, even though commercial and academic diagnostic laboratories had inquired about running tests since April. The CDC and FDA should have tried to help them along months ago, said Ali Khan, a former top CDC official who now leads the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health.

As winter sets in, the bird flu becomes harder to spot because patient symptoms may be mistaken for the seasonal flu. Flu season also raises a risk that the two flu viruses could swap genes if they infect a person simultaneously. That could form a hybrid bird flu that spreads swiftly through coughs and sneezes.​

(Actually, there are a lot more things. But just go read the article.)