Finally! A Louisianan is hospitalized with a diagnosis of H5N1 bird flu. And California declares a bird flu emergency because of -- Cows. Wait, what?

The first US case occurred in early 2022 with 4 days of fatigue. The first case diagnosed worldwide was in 1997. 27 years later, the US finally has a severe case, but it's due to wild birds

From CDC:

December 18, 2024-- A patient has been hospitalized with a severe case of avian influenza A(H5N1) virus ("H5N1 bird flu") infection in Louisiana. This marks the first instance of severe illness linked to the virus in the United States. The case was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday, December 13. Since April 2024, there have been a total of 61 reported human cases of H5 bird flu reported in the United States.

Partial viral genome data of the H5N1 avian influenza virus that infected the patient in Louisiana indicates that the virus belongs to the D1.1 genotype related to other D1.1 viruses recently detected in wild birds and poultry in the United States and in recent human cases in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington state. This H5N1 bird flu genotype is different than the B3.13 genotype detected in dairy cows, sporadic human cases in multiple states, and some poultry outbreaks in the United States.

So all that culling that was ordered by CDC and USDA did nothing to prevent the one serious illness. Because you cannot wipe out bird flu in wild birds. It will always be with us, just like Eastern Equine Encephalitis, a mosquito-borne virus, which affected one in 20 million Americans this year.

Yet, look at how many chickens have been killed, almost all needlessly. Killing chickens has led to 21 (mild) human illnesses in the culling staff. No one has ever been reported to have gotten the disease from eating an infected chicken, so why all the culling? Nor has there been a single report of anyone getting it from milk.

By the way, Europe does not have any cases, and they don’t seem too worried about bird flu and are not desperately seeking Susan cases, as we are.

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html

Remember:

• In 1997, when bird flu was discovered in humans for the very first time, bird flu had a mortality rate of about 50%

• Since then it has mutated and has very low virulence for most birds and nearly all humans. However, governments still use the same terminology for severity in birds of HPAI (high pathogenicity avian influenza) and LPAI (low pathogenicity avian influenza). All the strains in commercial chickens and cows have been of low pathogenicity for humans, though designated as HPAI.

• There have only been 3 reported deaths due to bird flu in the entire world this year. Last year there were 4, and the 2 years before that only 1 case each was reported. Here is WHO’s compilation:

  

  You can see that once upon a time bird flu was more of a problem than it is now. For unknown reasons, the US government treats it as if it is still a dire threat.

Gruesome Newsom had to get into the act, despite no serious cases in CA, and no one who has caught bird flu from milk. EMERGENCY!

SACRAMENTO -- California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Wednesday "to streamline and expedite the state's response" to bird flu.

The declaration is a result of more cases being detected in Southern California dairy farm cows.

The Governor's Office says the emergency proclamation will give state and local agencies additional flexibility in areas such as staffing and contracting.

There has been no confirmed person-to-person spread of the virus as almost all cases in California involve individuals who've come into contact with infected cattle.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/18/bird-flu-hospitalized-louisiana

The first person in the US to develop severe illness from H5N1 bird flu has been hospitalized in Louisiana, officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed on Wednesday.

Officials believe the person had contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock, which would be the first time a person has gotten avian influenza from a backyard flock in the US – which the CDC’s Demetre Daskalakis called “notable”.

The news comes as the US continues to expand its efforts to track bird flu infections amid a growing outbreak. There have been 61 confirmed and seven probable cases of H5N1 in people in the US.

States will now be required to test bulk milk in order to understand the extent of the spread among dairy cows and identify new outbreaks, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) announced on 6 December.

Labcorp also announced on Tuesday that the first commercial test for H5N1 was now available to the public with a physician’s order.

Another probable case of bird flu in a person in Delaware was identified in the first week of December through routine influenza surveillance, Tim Mastro, deputy director of communications for Delaware Health and Social Services, said in a statement.

This person did not have any known exposure to animals, Daskalakis said.

But “confirmatory testing at CDC was not able to confirm H5 infection”, Daskalakis said, so the probable case is not included in the tally of confirmed national cases.

H5N1 was detected at the only wastewater site that monitors H5N1 in Delaware during the week of 7 December, near Georgetown, Delaware, the center of the state’s poultry operations.

“There have been no detections in poultry or livestock in Delaware,” said Stacey Hofman, chief of community relations for the Delaware department of agriculture.

“We know that H5N1 is in the Atlantic Flyway, and with a large number of migratory waterfowl in Delaware at this time, it is believed that is the cause of this detection” in wastewater, she said.

Among humans, the confirmed case in Louisiana and the probable case in Delaware “do not change CDC’s current risk assessment for the general population, which remains low”, Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on Wednesday.

But, he added, “people who work with or have recreational exposure to infected animals are at higher risk of infection”.

Anyone who comes into contact with animals should take precautions, he said, including wearing a respirator and getting tested if symptoms develop.

The person in Louisiana was sickened by the same variant as the teen in British Columbia, who remains in critical condition after six weeks of illness.

This variant, found in wild and domesticated birds, is different from the one circulating in dairy cows, officials said. Additional genomic sequencing of the virus is still under way at CDC.

I thought I’d let you know who Dr. Daskalakis is; he is the person in charge of all US vaccines at CDC now, because he did such a good job convincing 1.2 million gay men to get the monkeypox vaccine, which they probably did not need and which causes myocarditis. I have written extensively about how CDC hides the results of its pivotal trial of the Jynneos vaccine in the Congo, conducted between 2017 and 2020. So we still don’t know if the vaccine works and the side effects when given to Africans. But never mind, it has been rolled out for millions of Africans over the last few months anyway. And, did you know, the recent Disease X in the SW Congo turned out to be Malaria. Not sure why it took 7 weeks to figure that out. But had it been bird flu, I’m sure we would have been on it!