Bird Bird Flu, Bird Flu's the Word

Sounds pretty bad.

Flu season is over, but there is a viral surge in California wastewater. Is it avian flu?

 

If we get a no shit pandemic, a lot of people are going to learn the hard way. Virus don't care about your politics.

 

Bird flu . . . flying under the radar. Har-de-har.

 

Fade this proposition every chance you get in 21st century America.

 

I mean learn the hard way. The kind of learning that isn't voluntary.


“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
― Robert Heinlein

 

I can confirm the number of people with nagging cold symptoms is high. It’s May and in still blowing my nose, my students are sniffling my wife is in full sinus infection mode.

 

The only way some folks would care about a pandemic would be if it turned them into a trans black person. If it doesn't do that ... ehhh, no big deal, no matter how many others die from it.

 

Yes, it’s deadly, and it’s a little worrisome that it appears to be sustaining transmission somewhat in mammals, but H5N1 hasn’t sustained human-to-human transmission, like, ever. Let alone at a rate that would cause a pandemic.

And, we make flu vaccines that work every year. There’s no reason an effective monovalent bird flu vaccine couldn’t be mass-produced in a very short period of time. And there’s also nothing to suggest our existing treatment methods wouldn’t work against it.

It has been a fear forever, simply because of how deadly it is. But let’s pump the brakes just a little bit.

 

This mirrors my experience.

 

This potential pandemic is definitely on the radar of current elected officials. I'll trust they are ready.

What about the last pandemic?

 

No one in the world was “ready” for COVID.

 

Around here, it's what I've seen called "The Pollening" so hay fever explains many runny noses and sniffles.