6 ms·

Real nervous we're all ignoring this one. It's like learned nothing in the past four years.

chrisbrandow 2y ago
I hear people saying this, but at the same time, I feel like I read about bird flu almost daily in stories that involve scientists and researchers, so I’m not sure who is ignoring it or what we should be doing differently.
- ngcc_hk 2y ago
  The standard wolf crying scenario. We just be eating by the wolf at the end of the story.
- perihelions 2y ago
  - "so I’m not sure who is ignoring it or what we should be doing differently" It's the US government who's ignoring it. They're acting as if they have inverted priorities—putting agricultural industry interests first, as well as short-term politics and optics. The federal vaccine effort seems to at the token-effort level, on track to repeat 2020 all over again. I'm inferring this from looking at budget figures: Warp Speed spent (I think) $18 billion in 2020, while the current efforts total just 1-2% of that [0] (mostly one single grant to Moderna). That looks to me on track to repeat 2020: a year or more without a (fully deployed and mass-produced) vaccine—tens of trillions in losses in the future, because government leaders aren't proactive-thinking enough to invest a few billion today. (Here's a remarkable figure from [0]: the federal government is currently spending 7x more subsidizing livestock farms for their economic hardship from HPAI than on developing vaccines for it). Another major failing is the lack of effort (again mirroring 2020) on monitoring early outbreaks. The pandemic strain of HPAI doesn't yet exist. It's likely to come into existence, if there's large numbers of HPAI human infections, simultaneous with infections with human-adpated influenza strains—that's where you'd get the highly transmissible pandemic strain, from genetic crossover with ordinary flu. But: most farm worker HPAI outbreaks are going unnoticed [1,2]. There's very little concerted effort to monitor and prevent crossover infections in the high-risk sectors, on livestock farms. (Again, I feel we're repeating 2020: prioritizing short-term industry considerations over public welfare—as if it's more important to minimize hardship to the dairy industry, than to prevent a pandemic). Sure; there's token government efforts that look like they're helping keep farm workers safe—but empirically they're simply not working. A complication is that this industry hires large numbers of undocumented/illegal farm labor: people who deliberately avoid interactions with government officials; as well as people who avoid or are priced out of healthcare access. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/24/health/america-bird-flu-next-pandemic-kff-health-news/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/24/health/america-bird-flu-n... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/health/bird-flu-diaries-farmworkers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/health/bird-flu-diaries-f... [2] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-26/bird-flu-warnings-are-going-unheeded-at-many-dairy-farms https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-26/bird-fl...
  - amluto 2y ago
    I don’t see why a vaccination effort should be complex or expensive. Unlike COVID, A5N1 is not a newly discovered novel threat. We have a stockpiled vaccine already: https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/influenza-virus-vaccine-h5n1-national-stockpile https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/influe... And, more importantly, there is already a seasonal flu campaign every year. Interestingly, it was quadravalent until this year, when B/Yamagata was removed: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/2024-2025.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/2024-2025.html And, unlike COVID, we already know how to make influenza vaccines. I haven’t seen any explanation for why the CDC did not add A5N1 to the seasonal flu. Doing so seems likely to massively reduce the severity of a potential outbreak of human-transmissible A5N1 and maybe even decrease the probability of an outbreak at all, and it would get about 50% coverage of the US population with no special effort at all beyond the effort of specifying it for the seasonal vaccine.
    - perihelions 2y ago
      - "B/Yamagata was removed" I remember that! It's not often we celebrate the extinction of a species :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28723310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28723310 ("This influenza lineage may have become extinct (nature.com)", 47 comments)
- schiffern 2y ago
  * Mandatory bird flu vaccination for farm workers in high-risk large facilities.[1] * Mandatory N95 (or better) PPE for farm workers in high-risk large facilities. * Mandatory testing for bulk milk tanks. We're living in a crazy surrealist theatrical performance when we charge animal activists with bioterrorism charges (despite wearing head-to-toe PPE[2]), but meanwhile farm worker in these high-risk facilities (who are around sick poultry constantly) aren't required to have any sort of protections.[3] Unfortunately half of American are currently anti-science enough to oppose these sensible, minimal measures tooth and nail. If this really is an adversary nation bot psyop to divide Americans[4] and get us act against our own self-interest... well played, adversary nation! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42248570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42248570 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42292384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42292384 [3] https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/10/bird-flu-virus-dairy-farmers-resist-ppe-recommendation/ https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/10/bird-flu-virus-dairy-far... [4] https://old.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1gouvit/youre_being_targeted_by_disinformation_networks/ https://old.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1gouvit/youre_being_t...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - marky1991 2y ago
    If they had a vaccine why would they need facemasks? I hated going to the grocery store in a facemask, much less working a 12h shift at a poultry farm. That sounds awful to me.
    - marky1991 2y ago
      Oh , I guess if the vaccine worked poorly or unpredictably like the flu vaccine. Still, I personally think facemasks at a poultry farm are impractical. But I don't really know, I've never worked at one and have never met anyone that has.
    - pstuart 2y ago
      Working 12h shifts in a poultry farm sound awful with or without a mask. The air there likely calls for PPE regardless of bird flu.
libertine 2y ago
The problem isn't what wasn't learned but the fact that it became one of the flags of political propaganda. If this reaches a pandemic level we're going to witness a massive catastrophe because the Public Health as an institution was completely obliterated at a global level for political gain. Robert Kenedy Junior, the guy who said COVID-19 was designed to not affect Jews[0], will be in charge of the HHS. [0]https://www.timesofisrael.com/rfk-jr-who-mused-covid-was-designed-to-spare-ashkenazi-jews-tapped-to-head-hhs/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/rfk-jr-who-mused-covid-was-des...
- redserk 2y ago
  Hey, at least egg prices will be lower! (/s) Cheap political quips aside, it makes me uneasy and frustrated that vaccination is currently very popular but is being turned into a political issue just for a big grift. The overwhelming majority of research shows vaccines are safe and effective. While I personally think it’s worth verifying research to the contrary, too many people make contrarianism with cherry-picking against science-backed norms their entire personality. Cherry-picked Contrarianism as a personality is tolerable in limited doses, like from a certain batch of folks on HN, but not something I’d want from policymakers.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
  What did he actually say? I skimmed the article and didn’t see it quoted.
  - atherton33 2y ago
    From AP, RFK said: > "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” he added. “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted at that or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential of impact for that." The article notes he claims that this quote "twisted" his words. https://apnews.com/article/robert-f-kennedy-jr-covid-comments-c77edc6fa547879e1456470552a40bb4 https://apnews.com/article/robert-f-kennedy-jr-covid-comment...
blackqueeriroh 2y ago
[flagged]

I hear people saying this, but at the same time, I feel like I read about bird flu almost daily in stories that involve scientists and researchers, so I’m not sure who is ignoring it or what we should be doing differently.

ngcc_hk 2y ago
The standard wolf crying scenario. We just be eating by the wolf at the end of the story.
perihelions 2y ago
- "so I’m not sure who is ignoring it or what we should be doing differently" It's the US government who's ignoring it. They're acting as if they have inverted priorities—putting agricultural industry interests first, as well as short-term politics and optics. The federal vaccine effort seems to at the token-effort level, on track to repeat 2020 all over again. I'm inferring this from looking at budget figures: Warp Speed spent (I think) $18 billion in 2020, while the current efforts total just 1-2% of that [0] (mostly one single grant to Moderna). That looks to me on track to repeat 2020: a year or more without a (fully deployed and mass-produced) vaccine—tens of trillions in losses in the future, because government leaders aren't proactive-thinking enough to invest a few billion today. (Here's a remarkable figure from [0]: the federal government is currently spending 7x more subsidizing livestock farms for their economic hardship from HPAI than on developing vaccines for it). Another major failing is the lack of effort (again mirroring 2020) on monitoring early outbreaks. The pandemic strain of HPAI doesn't yet exist. It's likely to come into existence, if there's large numbers of HPAI human infections, simultaneous with infections with human-adpated influenza strains—that's where you'd get the highly transmissible pandemic strain, from genetic crossover with ordinary flu. But: most farm worker HPAI outbreaks are going unnoticed [1,2]. There's very little concerted effort to monitor and prevent crossover infections in the high-risk sectors, on livestock farms. (Again, I feel we're repeating 2020: prioritizing short-term industry considerations over public welfare—as if it's more important to minimize hardship to the dairy industry, than to prevent a pandemic). Sure; there's token government efforts that look like they're helping keep farm workers safe—but empirically they're simply not working. A complication is that this industry hires large numbers of undocumented/illegal farm labor: people who deliberately avoid interactions with government officials; as well as people who avoid or are priced out of healthcare access. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/24/health/america-bird-flu-next-pandemic-kff-health-news/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/24/health/america-bird-flu-n... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/health/bird-flu-diaries-farmworkers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/health/bird-flu-diaries-f... [2] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-26/bird-flu-warnings-are-going-unheeded-at-many-dairy-farms https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-26/bird-fl...
- amluto 2y ago
  I don’t see why a vaccination effort should be complex or expensive. Unlike COVID, A5N1 is not a newly discovered novel threat. We have a stockpiled vaccine already: https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/influenza-virus-vaccine-h5n1-national-stockpile https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/influe... And, more importantly, there is already a seasonal flu campaign every year. Interestingly, it was quadravalent until this year, when B/Yamagata was removed: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/2024-2025.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/2024-2025.html And, unlike COVID, we already know how to make influenza vaccines. I haven’t seen any explanation for why the CDC did not add A5N1 to the seasonal flu. Doing so seems likely to massively reduce the severity of a potential outbreak of human-transmissible A5N1 and maybe even decrease the probability of an outbreak at all, and it would get about 50% coverage of the US population with no special effort at all beyond the effort of specifying it for the seasonal vaccine.
  - perihelions 2y ago
    - "B/Yamagata was removed" I remember that! It's not often we celebrate the extinction of a species :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28723310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28723310 ("This influenza lineage may have become extinct (nature.com)", 47 comments)
schiffern 2y ago
* Mandatory bird flu vaccination for farm workers in high-risk large facilities.[1] * Mandatory N95 (or better) PPE for farm workers in high-risk large facilities. * Mandatory testing for bulk milk tanks. We're living in a crazy surrealist theatrical performance when we charge animal activists with bioterrorism charges (despite wearing head-to-toe PPE[2]), but meanwhile farm worker in these high-risk facilities (who are around sick poultry constantly) aren't required to have any sort of protections.[3] Unfortunately half of American are currently anti-science enough to oppose these sensible, minimal measures tooth and nail. If this really is an adversary nation bot psyop to divide Americans[4] and get us act against our own self-interest... well played, adversary nation! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42248570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42248570 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42292384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42292384 [3] https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/10/bird-flu-virus-dairy-farmers-resist-ppe-recommendation/ https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/10/bird-flu-virus-dairy-far... [4] https://old.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1gouvit/youre_being_targeted_by_disinformation_networks/ https://old.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1gouvit/youre_being_t...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- marky1991 2y ago
  If they had a vaccine why would they need facemasks? I hated going to the grocery store in a facemask, much less working a 12h shift at a poultry farm. That sounds awful to me.
  - marky1991 2y ago
    Oh , I guess if the vaccine worked poorly or unpredictably like the flu vaccine. Still, I personally think facemasks at a poultry farm are impractical. But I don't really know, I've never worked at one and have never met anyone that has.
  - pstuart 2y ago
    Working 12h shifts in a poultry farm sound awful with or without a mask. The air there likely calls for PPE regardless of bird flu.

libertine 2y ago

The problem isn't what wasn't learned but the fact that it became one of the flags of political propaganda. If this reaches a pandemic level we're going to witness a massive catastrophe because the Public Health as an institution was completely obliterated at a global level for political gain. Robert Kenedy Junior, the guy who said COVID-19 was designed to not affect Jews[0], will be in charge of the HHS. [0]https://www.timesofisrael.com/rfk-jr-who-mused-covid-was-designed-to-spare-ashkenazi-jews-tapped-to-head-hhs/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/rfk-jr-who-mused-covid-was-des...

redserk 2y ago
Hey, at least egg prices will be lower! (/s) Cheap political quips aside, it makes me uneasy and frustrated that vaccination is currently very popular but is being turned into a political issue just for a big grift. The overwhelming majority of research shows vaccines are safe and effective. While I personally think it’s worth verifying research to the contrary, too many people make contrarianism with cherry-picking against science-backed norms their entire personality. Cherry-picked Contrarianism as a personality is tolerable in limited doses, like from a certain batch of folks on HN, but not something I’d want from policymakers.
pfannkuchen 2y ago
What did he actually say? I skimmed the article and didn’t see it quoted.
- atherton33 2y ago
  From AP, RFK said: > "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” he added. “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted at that or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential of impact for that." The article notes he claims that this quote "twisted" his words. https://apnews.com/article/robert-f-kennedy-jr-covid-comments-c77edc6fa547879e1456470552a40bb4 https://apnews.com/article/robert-f-kennedy-jr-covid-comment...

blackqueeriroh 2y ago

[flagged]