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Ask HN: Should we be concerned about the current H5N1 outbreak?

30 points by Ladywood 4y ago

I’ve seen chatter about this pick up in the past sleepless, but I’m struggling to discern whether it’s just clickbait or not. Lots of stories about mammal transmission, mink farm outbreaks and one human case in South America.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
slackfan 4y ago
Get scared and depressed and doomscroll and watch the news more so we can sell you more stuff. Yes.
- phtrivier 4y ago
  I understand it's the general strategy, and it's pretty obvious at this point that doom articles get clicks, so they sell ads - but, do those ads work ? I've been adblocking for years, and I barely shop except for food, so I'm not sure I'm the target anyway. I get this one ad on every YouTube video, and, no, I'm not renting a holiday house, sorry, so, not a great investment either. I've always add this nagging feeling that since ads have becomed so much online, and so much "in the background", as opposed to tv and radio that did not let you do anything but watch/listen to the add, the efficiency must be harder to measure. But then, is anyone measuring how effective an add is (in terms of sales ?) You assume they would, but then, you remember the kind of ads they run, so maybe they ARE dumb enough to measure a bad proxy (how many eyeballs saw the thing) instead of the variable (how many more units did we sell.)
  - slackfan 4y ago
    >do the ads work It's vaguely irrelevant to the publishers, considering figuring that out is the advertiser's job.
sublinear 4y ago
It's just like when you enable poorly implemented static analysis vulnerability scanning and the underlying pedantic linter rules start triggering thousands of false positives. I am worried about egg prices though. /s
bruhreally 4y ago
[flagged]
mach1ne 4y ago
No. It's not viral in the sense COVID is. Minor epidemics around the world are possible but not anything really serious.
twoWhlsGud 4y ago
Maybe? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/opinion/bird-flu-h5n1-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/opinion/bird-flu-h5n1-pan...
- _tk_ 4y ago
  Thank you for a helpful reply.
ricardobayes 4y ago
We should really stop keeping animals in such high density. We should realize this practice is dangerous to us.
kkfx 4y ago
No, BUT we MUST be concerned by the new-old-classic https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198
ipsum2 4y ago
Most media outlets downplayed COVID in early 2020. Now they've over-corrected and report on every minor outbreak and stoking fears for views and ad revenue.
ideamotor 4y ago
What are expecting by asking a bunch of random people on here? The pedantic taking things literally response? “Well you should not worry because that does not help”. The axe to grind response? “Who cares because climate change will doom us all.” The psychopathic dissociative response? “None of this matters because the earth will heal itself.” The non-expert expert? “Yes/No.” Oh I’m sure you’ll get some valuable guidance on interpreting the news here.
- aspyct 4y ago
  I vote for the pedantic + axe combo \o/
petodo 4y ago
I was not concerned about COVID, I was concerned about authoritarian politicians introducing meaningless restrictions which should have no place in democracy and I was disgusted by majority of population which had no problem with them, I expected bigger disagreement despite having already very low meaning about society in general. I'm even less concerned about bird flu, but I'd be much more concerned about fascist politicians and their fascist supporters since it seems majority of society has no problem with fascism.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > I was not concerned about COVID, I was concerned about authoritarian politicians introducing meaningless restrictions which should have no place in democracy and I was disgusted by majority of population which had no problem with them, I expected bigger disagreement despite having already very low meaning about society in general. Pandemic prevention isn't a matter of authoritarianism vs democracy. Honestly, what do you think, the president of France imposed a lockdown because he likes the power trip? Maybe he does, or maybe, just maybe, there was an actual health crisis going on? Did you already forget the situation in Lombardy with the hospitals having to triage and leave people to die because they didn't have sufficient capacity? Did you forget the military hospitals being opened in parking lots to help with the load, and still tens of thousands of people dying, with draconian restrictions? Maybe you live in a country where things didn't get this bad - does it occur to you that maybe restrictions helped with that? The majority of the world's population understood the risks and accepted restrictions. Nobody dis it for fun or because they like being restricted. Epidemic prevention measures are nothing new, lockdowns and quarantines have been proven to work for centuries.
  - petodo 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - sofixa 4y ago
      > There were countries like Sweden or Florida state which didn't fall for this mass hysteria, while it was clear already at that time it's inexcusable bad approach. Sweden, that had multiple times the excess deaths of its neighbours and the economic slowdown? So their sacrifice of their own citizens served no one. > Majority of world's population proven once again it's stupid falling for whatever current thing MSM push down their throat. This is legitimately one of the stupidest takes possible. WHO, the authority on pandemics, and a bunch of local health authorities made recommendations and decisions, which were sometimes criticised by various media, but MSM right? It doesn't get more mainstream than Fox News and Daily Mail and they sure criticised all anti-pandemic measures, including masks, social distancing, lockdowns, vaccines, etc.

kcplate 4y ago

> Pandemic prevention isn't a matter of authoritarianism vs democracy. Honestly, what do you think, the president of France imposed a lockdown because he likes the power trip? Unfortunately you are not really arguing your point from a position of strength. Tyrannical behavior was rampant and it was intentionally done. Speaking from my US perspective, at almost every political level from the federal government down to local community politicians the pandemic seemed to create tyrannical behavior, and most of the little tyrants were centered around a specific political party. In my neighborhood of less than 200 homes, there is an “elected” board that controls the common areas (mainly arranges landscaping and maintenance). This board shut down access to common outdoor spaces (literally outdoor walking trails) and threatened to trespass residents if they used them. Democracy within the community would have resulted in those spaces being open. However, because the developer/builder controlled a voting majority, the board was stacked with people who followed the DNC playbook and refused to open the spaces for a full 8 months after our state lifted all restrictions and months after even the CDC knew that contracting the virus outside in sunshine alone was virtually impossible. >lockdowns and quarantines have been proven to work for centuries Quarantining the sick, yes. Quarantining the well…that was a bit unprecedented. This pandemic provided the political class with some pretty solid data on just how far and how long the general public will allow itself to be dominated by tyrants. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the general public accepted tyranny willingly and this will not bode well for the future.

sofixa 4y ago
> Quarantining the sick, yes. Quarantining the well…that was a bit unprecedented. The well.. for an airborne illness with up to two weeks incubation period and frequent lack of symptoms? Many were sick and spreading and had no way of knowing, hence the abundance of caution.
- kcplate 4y ago
  Ahh yes, the old “our intentions were good and virtuous even if the outcome of our actions was more harmful so we should be excused for our bad decisions” argument. That might be a valid excuse if the tyrants didn’t double and triple down on bad policies even after it became apparent that lockdown policies were more hurtful than helpful to the populace. Ignorance is an excuse until you are no longer ignorant.
  - jrockway 4y ago
    How was the outcome harmful? We got remote work widely accepted, very few people were denied treatment when they did get the disease, we rolled out a vaccine in less than a year, the stock market went up, and software engineering salaries reached all time highs. Listen. We botched the response to the pandemic, and many people died that didn't need to die. But at no point was having to wear a mask to get your coffee at Starbucks even the tiniest inconvenience for any reasonable person.
    - kcplate 4y ago
      > How was the outcome harmful? > We botched the response to the pandemic, and many people died that didn’t need to die. You answered your own question. but…to add to your answer, the harm done to schoolage kids is becoming pretty well known. I’d rather not sacrifice our future again to protect a bunch of 80 year olds