The UK Health Security Agency has increased their numbers the pandemic threat level of H5N1 bird flu from a 3 to 4 on a 6-point scale.
My take is that we have completely failed to stop the spread of cattle, there has been an infection from animals to humans which is something we cannot calculate properly, but so far this virus has not changed in a way that it is compatible with humans.
The failure to stop cattle rustling is worrying because it shows that we cannot stop human outbreaks. We can easily test, separate and remove cattle!
It’s really annoying that dairy farmers refuse to cooperate in testing:
So far dairy farmers, by and large, have refused to cooperate with efforts to determine how deeply the virus has penetrated American herds, seeing the potential stigma of admitting to having cows infected with the H5N1 virus as a greater risk than the virus itself.
We have to test at very high rates and be divided and issued. Dairy farmers should be compensated and they are being compensated but clearly the farmers should not have a say in the matter of inspection. Foreign! Preventing an epidemic is much cheaper in terms of resources and restrictions on freedom than dealing with one.
And what about Operation Warp Speed to vaccinate cattle? Vaccinate. Vacca! It’s right there in the name! If only we could come up with a clever acronym for Operation Warp Speed for COWS.
Developing a vaccine for cattle could also speed up a human vaccine if needed.
Here are some key points from the UK HSA:
There is ongoing transmission of influenza A(H5N1) in the US, primarily in dairy cattle but with involvement of many species including poultry, wild birds, other mammals (cats, mice, wild mammals) and humans (1, 2). There is high uncertainty about the path of the outbreak and no visible reduction in transmission due to the biosecurity measures introduced so far. There is ongoing debate as to whether this current outbreak should be described as sustained transmission given that transmission may have been facilitated by animal husbandry activities (3). However, given that this is a permanent core, most of the group viewed this outbreak as a continuous transmission with associated risks.
…There is evidence of zoonotic transmission (human cases detected in animals). There may be some underestimation of mild zoonotic conditions.
..Overall, no evidence of change in HA suggesting human adaptation to these changes was found. Although genomic surveillance data may lag behind disease, the lack of evidence of viral adaptation to α2,6SA receptors after thousands of dairy cows infected with the disease may suggest that infection among cattle is not highly dependent on adaptation to human receptors. Evidence of which sialic acid receptors exist in cattle, which is needed to support this hypothesis, is still preliminary and needs to be confirmed.
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