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CO poultry workers test positive for bird flu after outbreak at egg facility
- clumsysmurf 2y agoNew Atlas had an article on a possible invention that could help people working in high risk areas like this: https://newatlas.com/wearables/worker-wearable-air-curtain-blocks-viruses/ https://newatlas.com/wearables/worker-wearable-air-curtain-b...
- rolandog 2y agoThat's ingenious! Do they have a model with airco and a beer-dispensing straw? ... Asking for a friend.
- hulitu 2y ago[flagged]
- fsh 2y agoSome of the scariest viruses of the 20th/21st century emerged in large-scale farming operations (1918 influenza, SARS-CoV-1, most likely SARS-CoV-2). It seems like these farms are massive accidents waiting to happen.
- dist-epoch 2y ago[flagged]
- fsh 2y agoThere is zero evidence for this theory. On the other hand, we know that dangeous viruses emerge from farms every couple of decades (see above). I find it prudent to focus on the known risk, rather than speculate on a hypothetical one.
- dist-epoch 2y agoWhat is the non-zero evidence that SARS-COV-2 originated from a farm? What is that farm? What were they farming?
- fsh 2y agoThere is no direct evidence. Due to the experience with SARS-CoV-1 and fear of repercussions, farmers in China mass-culled susceptible animals before any testing could take place. However, SARS-CoV-1 was traced to palm civets, and both -1 and -2 seem to be very well adapted to small carnivores. So a fur/meat farm with civets, raccoon dogs, minks, or something like that is probably a good guess for the origin.
- aodonnell2536 2y agoBut not the laboratories doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in the exact vicinity of the virus’s origin? Even considering that several workers of this laboratory got sick with COVID in 2019, right before the outbreak? C’mon, it’s been 4 years already, this is becoming ridiculous.
- fsh 2y agoI don't find this convincing at all. Pandemics need high population densities to start, so it is very likely to have the origin in a large city. Even if a virus did emerge in a smaller city, it would probably fizzle out without raising alarm and being detected. At the same time, large cities in industrialized countries usually have at least one virology lab. I could easily find one in each of the top-10 most populous Chinese cities (which includes Wuhan). SARS is relatively new and hit China pretty hard, so it is also not surprising to have a lot of research in the country. Overall, it would probably be more surprising not to have a SARS research group close to the origin of a pandemic. The lab worker story is bunk. According to the institute itself, no COVID antibodies were found in a serology study of the workers (see page 119 in https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/final-joint-report_origins-studies-6-april-201.pdf https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/final-j...).
- dghughes 2y agoTwo researchers working in Canada stole data from a CL4 rated virology lab under pressure from China it seems. One of the researchers (husband and wife) helped with the invention of the Ebola vaccine but you have to wonder what the hell's going on otherwise. Lies and scandal: How two rogue scientists at a high-security lab triggered a national security calamity https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/winnipeg-lab-firing-documents-released-china-1.7130284 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/winnipeg-lab-firing-documen...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Some of the scariest viruses of the 20th/21st century emerged in large-scale farming operations Before that they emerged from small-scale farming. “Whooping cough comes from pigs as does flu as well as from birds; our friend the cow alone is responsible for measles, tuberculosis and smallpox” [1]. Proximity, to humans and animals, drives disease. [1] https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk
- salty_biscuits 2y agoWhooping cough does not come from pigs. Pertussis is a bacterium that is a human only thing.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Pertussis is a bacterium that is a human only thing B. pertussis “evolved from Bordetella bronchiseptica or a B. bronchiseptica-like ancestor… B. bronchiseptica infects a broad range of mammals, including humans, and although it can cause overt disease such as kennel cough in dogs and atrophic rhinitis in pig” [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro3235#Sec2 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro3235#Sec2
- eth0up 2y agoIn some instances, it comes from feisty bureaucracies: The San Francisco Chronicle, December 17, 1979, p. 5 reported a claim by the Church of Scientology that the CIA conducted an open-air biological warfare experiment in 1955 near Tampa, Florida, and elsewhere in Florida with whooping cough bacteria. It was alleged that the experiment tripled the whooping cough infections in Florida to over one-thousand cases and caused whooping cough deaths in the state to increase from one to 12 over the previous year. This claim has been cited in a number of later sources, although these added no further supporting evidence.[52][53] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentat...
- cma 2y agoWasn't SARS-CoV-1 from a wildlife market, not a farming operation? Factory farming wasn't the issue there if it was from trapping in the wild, but maybe cramped conditions before sale made it spread more amongst the confined animals in a similar way?
- fsh 2y ago"Wildlife" markets usually sell farmed animals, otherwise the produce would be prohibitively expensive.
- darby_nine 2y agoI don't like the name, but "bush meat" is also a common vector for past infections. I believe HIV was thought to have transferred to humans via non-farmed simian blood.
- adammarples 2y agoIt's fairly likely that covid was from the large coronavirus research lab just down the road that was experimenting on making coronaviruses more transmissible to humans
- cma 2y agoTalking about cov1 not cov2
- ahazred8ta 2y agoDuring the first month of the covid-19 outbreak, there were no cases within a 15 mile radius of the WIV lab south of the river. Zero. All the people infected had been within 200 meters of the wet market north of the river. Wuhan imports food animals from all over southeast asia and animals from Laos are known to carry the BANAL coronavirus which looks like it's an ancestor of sars-cov-2. Also, the WIV did not perform any gain-of-function experiments during 2019/2020; the people who would have done that were working on other projects.
- ahazred8ta 2y ago
- TruffleLabs 2y ago"Some of the scariest viruses of the 20th/21st century emerged in large-scale farming operations (1918 influenza, SARS-CoV-1, most likely SARS-CoV-2). It seems like these farms are massive accidents waiting to happen." What source says 1918 came from large scale farms? Large scale farming in 1918 would not have existed as we think of it today, as average farm size was about 150 acres with approximately 6 million farms. For reference, 2022 average farm size was 464 with approximately 1.89 million farms. Sources: Changes in agriculture 1900 to 1950 https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/41667073v5p6ch4.pdf https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/41667073v5... Farming and Farm Income https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
- newzisforsukas 2y ago> 55 symptomatic poultry workers tested by CDPHE as of Friday Seems like that is a lot of people?
- explaininjs 2y agoThat’s the people who had any symptoms of anything at all who were in the test set. Only three of them tested positive, for a grand total of 5 cases since May 2022. Yellow journalism at its finest.
- ljf 2y agoEdit - shows we didn't read the article properly, which states the 48 are not yet returned- from the article: On Friday, the CDPHE returned with a larger team to the site and tested 48 additional symptomatic workers, a spokesperson said in an email to Denver7 Friday evening. "The test results from samples collected today (July 12) are still pending," the spokesperson added, saying those samples will be tested this weekend. --- previous post - - - At least according to twitter (which may or may not be correct) - the results for 48 of the 55 are not yet available, so only 4 people have had a negative test so far, and 5 have been positive. -- 2nd edit - - Looks like you edited your previous post, where you claimed the 48 tested negative. Posting this here for completeness so that my post makes sense.
- explaininjs 2y agoNobody has tested positive since the 2 from 2022. The three counted in this article are what’s known as “presumptive positive”, which is a different term reserved for those who have not tested positive. It’s just another scare tactic, one which saw heavy exploitation in the COVID era. I personally tested presumptive positive once: they treated me as though the test was positive and prohibited me from receiving medical care. In fact it was explicitly not positive, I never experienced any symptoms, and they relented and let me recover the procedure some number of weeks later – with no change in testing. edit: I neither made nor recanted any claims as to the positivity of the other 48 in my first comment, I do not know why you are asserting I edited claims out.
- pfdietz 2y agoThis is actually good news, since even with all those infected people there was no additional person-to-person transmission found.
- huppeldepup 2y agoYou know those youtube videos where a puppet in an arena is shown and it’s iteratively selected/respawn/retrained for getting across an obstacle field? This is exactly that. First obstacle has been cleared and now the population is waiting for a mutation that gets them compatible with the human cell wall.
- agilob 2y agoSweet puppy virus solves another puzzle?
- pfdietz 2y agoNo, not really. When the virus gets into a person right now, it's an evolutionary dead end. There's no iteration going on there.
- adammarples 2y agoThis is only true of the virus population in the infected people. The virus population still in birds is still at square 1. When the virus is eradicated from the infected people, we go back to square 1.
- vasco 2y agoGood news would be no transmission, as every new human host is another chance to mutate the virus just enough to make it a big worry.
- blumomo 2y ago[flagged]
- DJBunnies 2y agoNot at all, it’s just unfunny.
- banku_brougham 2y agoNo, it was funny as satire for this reason: Governments were derelict in any attempt to slow the spread of the pandemic. So of course straight-to-vaccine strategy is the only option they will talk about.
- DJBunnies 2y agoWild world you must live in.
- banku_brougham 2y ago:oh no meme: The statements from CDPHE sound to my ear like boilerplate 'downplay' language. There are 55 symptomatic people, that's amazing. Confirmatory tests are important of course, but what a data point. How large would the workforce have to be for 55 concurrent symptomatic (safe to assume those included have clear symptoms) people to be uninteresting? If this is only "bird to human" infection, isn't that a notable rate of transmission? I'd think even a workforce of 1000 handling dangerous pathogens daily would be getting ill more like 10 per week over a period of time. Its alarming that 55 are ill all at once. We are all going to be reading a firehose about physical contact vs. respiratory transmission again just like the old days. I haven't forgotten that it was something like 6 months before the government revealed that Cov-19 was a respiratory transmission despite knowing in Dec 2019.
- onion2k 2y agoIf there was a single case of bird-to-human transmission, and that person went to the canteen when they were at the peak of their contagiousness and passed it to 54 others, you'd see the same impact. You can't guess this stuff.
- fragmede 2y ago> I haven't forgotten that it was something like 6 months before the government revealed that Cov-19 was a respiratory transmission despite knowing in Dec 2019. Can you expound upon this? Your claim is some government said in May that Covid was a respiratory disease?
- banku_brougham 2y agoI'll dig it up, but it wasnt that long agi. We all lived through it. Remember washing vegetables and surfaces because they were telling us in the US about fomites and surface transmission after touching your face? It was a long time before the CDC recommended masks, and that outdoor transmission was far less likely.
- banku_brougham 2y ago
- LUmBULtERA 2y agoAfter the CDC just gave Moderna $176m to develop another vaccine[0] and the possible fatality rate of H5N1[1], I'm stocking up on masks again. Not to be alarmist, but it sucked last time around when all hell broke loose and I couldn't find any masks anywhere. That said, hopefully if anything DOES get bad, mask production will ramp up must faster next time around. [0] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/07/02/hhs-provides-176-million-develop-pandemic-influenza-mrna-based-vaccine.html https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/07/02/hhs-provides-176-m... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1
- bananapub 2y agogonna be pretty embarrassing when we get a global pandemic because some middle manager in some town no one has ever heard of lied on a form.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- _heimdall 2y ago> underscoring the need to get a virus that’s already killed more than 6 million birds Well that's a clever slight of hand. The virus didn't kill 6 million birds, the humans tasked with culling flocks did.
- nindalf 2y agoYou mean sleight, not slight. That’s no slight on you, anyone can make a slight mistake. That said, the way you put it sounds cruel. Is it your claim that a cull wasn’t necessary or that not culling would have left more birds alive long term?
- _heimdall 2y agoYes, I did mean sleight. Thanks for the correction there. My claim was more simple than either option you gave. My claim is that the virus didn't kill 6 million. Those deaths would be attributed to the proximal cause of whomever decided they needed to be culled. I'd also argue there's a longer timeline culpability for anyone who decided to raise flocks of birds in such terrible conditions as is found in industrial bird operations. Though yes, I would be surprised if every bird in those facilities died from the flu had they not been culled. We don't know nearly enough about how the virus spreads, especially in the context of large scale industrial operations, to predict how many birds in the region would have died without the culling.