Bird flu in Canada may have mutated to become more transmissible to humans
81 points by amichail 11 hours ago | 38 comments
  • therein 10 hours ago |
    Let this post make you notice they have been working on an mRNA payload that supposedly provides immunity against this already, however they were working on a self-replication feature but they merged that branch beforehand so this new version will have multiple new features.
  • xyst 9 hours ago |
    Reports like this remind me of very early COVID days. And USA just elected a POTUS that did a shit job of getting us through that same pandemic. With the cabinet that he has (rfk jr, oz…), let’s just hope these are truly fringe cases and doesn’t lead to an outbreak
    • llamaimperative 9 hours ago |
      Don't worry, we're unlikely to know whether that's the case anyway. All we'll have is word of mouth to augment suppressed (or never collected) data, which is just the same as the problem not existing!

      https://youtu.be/Ti4sSRonNwY?t=27

    • nightowl_games 8 hours ago |
      One lone case doesn't remind me of early covid. Many cases reminds me of early covid.

      Though this case is concerning.

      • xcrunner529 6 hours ago |
        Cases were happening in China around Dec ‘19 and I was worried. Then a case in the US followed by “no reason to worry”. Then it spiraled.
    • bee_rider 8 hours ago |
      Ya know, I could have sworn I remember reading a little bit about COVID in Nov of 2019, but my recollection doesn’t line up with the Wikipedia timeline. I remember being nervous around campus at the time… although there were some other pretty bad colds going around that year, so maybe I just got mixed up.

      I think I recall a little bit on Reddit in Dec 2019 and Jan 2020, is that plausible?

      Anyway, “early COVID” had a feeling to it—stuff was going on in China but news was taking a long time to trickle out, probably just because of the language barrier, and also because nobody (general public-wise) was paying attention to that sort of thing. The bird flu stuff seems quite different, it’s been reported on quite a bit, people are hyper-vigilant about this kind of stuff now, and it has been bouncing around quite visibly in non-human animals for ages. Plus it is in the US, so we hear about it immediately.

      Not saying it isn’t anything to be worried about, but we’re getting updates in realtime.

      • drjasonharrison 8 hours ago |
        First case in December 2019. February 2, 2020 fogging machines on city streets in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLdwCdyiDCw

        We were definitely reading about the lockdowns in Wuhan in January 2020.

        January 19, 2020, the first case in Washington state was detected in a man who had recently traveled from Wuhan.

        Surveillance blood samples from Dec 13, 2019 to January 17, 2020 from several nine US states were tested for COVID-19 antibodies: "Of the 7389 samples, 106 were reactive by pan-Ig. Of these 106 specimens, 90 were available for further testing. Eighty-four of 90 had neutralizing activity, 1 had S1 binding activity, and 1 had receptor-binding domain/ACE2 blocking activity >50%, suggesting the presence of anti–SARS-CoV-2–reactive antibodies. Donations with reactivity occurred in all 9 states"

        https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472

      • nostrademons 7 hours ago |
        2019-2020 was also a big H1N1 (Spanish/Swine Flu) year, as were 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. Entirely possible that's what you remember reading about or getting. If COVID hadn't happened Spanish Flu would've been a big headline anyways; as it is, a lot of the people who think they got COVID before March 2020 probably actually had H1N1. Before then the case numbers are orders of magnitude higher for flu, but COVID was more transmissible and almost 10x more lethal, and so post-lockdown it dominated.
        • thenipper 31 minutes ago |
          I remember going in for a physical Jan 2020 and my doctor talking about lot about the flu. He gave me the pneumonia vaccine and then was like oh there is this other thing but probably nothing to worry about…
      • anonzzzies 6 hours ago |
        Nov sounds early but I was in China in oct-dec '19 and jan '20 and then it was definitely talked about a lot going to feb when I left (luckily and completely coincidental). I had to go on another business trip right after and returned, again completely coincidental (I was an idiot in hindsight), just 2 days before my country fully locked down. On that last trip I contracted covid which gave me an annoying couch.

        Coming out of covid, suddenly it appears we can work with slack, zoom, etc and I have not been on a business trip since.

        • bee_rider 5 hours ago |
          It is funny, I guess it is it uncommon at all given the nature of a, well, pandemic. But you got it so early. I dodged the thing for like two and a half years I think. Our experiences were so different, haha.

          Did you get out much, being immune and all?

          I guess it’s somehow just occurring to me that, despite this giant shared experience that we all had as a society, a lot of us had it in totally different ways.

          • anonzzzies 5 hours ago |
            My big mistake was ignoring all the (growing) news that this was bad; my last business meetings where in very busy spaces and so where my wife's meetings. So we both had it early.

            We weren't allowed to go out very far, it was a weird time, but luckily we live in the countryside and not in a city so not too much change besides police blockades to stop you from venturing too far.

      • ashoeafoot 2 hours ago |
        The first ive heard of it was a wave of sickleave traversing through the machine integrator community ,many of them travelling back from the coast. Oh and then adv china.
      • piva00 2 hours ago |
        Dec 2019 is when I first read something on reddit about it, I remember thinking "oh, SARS is coming back".

        I remember commenting about it during Christmas dinner that year, spending whole January reading the news dripping from China, and then it hit us hard in Sweden in February, my friends and I were a little more prepared than others (had a month's worth of food stocked, didn't need to leave the house until late March for groceries).

    • dyauspitr 8 hours ago |
      They’re just going to deny anything is wrong, sweep deaths under the rug and carry on with absolutely nonsensical “gut feel” reactions to real problems. Hell, didn’t Hegseth say he doesn’t even believe in germs and so he doesn’t wash his hands.
      • letmevoteplease 7 hours ago |
        This is pretty clearly a joke: "Really, I don't really wash my hands ever. Germs are not a real thing. I can't see them, therefore they not real. I can't get sick."

        https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1856494554624442433

        • tharkun__ 6 hours ago |
          And the Fox news hosts laughed at him! That's a good thing I suppose!

          But seriously: God am I glad I don't watch all these kinds of shows. I'd be much more sad than I already am about the state of America.

        • dyauspitr 3 hours ago |
          Interesting, I didn’t know the context. They’re not blameless though, with all the conspiracies they’re in bed with it’s hard to tell what’s a joke anymore.
    • shiroiushi 8 hours ago |
      It's really concerning how the next 4 years in America will turn out; during his 1st term, along with some clowns, Trump at least picked some people who were pretty competent. This time, the competent people want nothing to do with him (and vice versa) and he's surrounded himself entirely with incompetent clowns.
    • raylad 7 hours ago |
      So far, there's always a global pandemic whenever Trump is president.
    • UncleOxidant 6 hours ago |
      Will there even be a flu shot next year with rfk jr. in charge of HHS? NIH formulates what goes into to the next year's flu vaccine in the spring and HHS is over the NIH.
    • OCASMv2 3 hours ago |
      What would have a democrat president done different during the first year of the pandemic?
  • mullingitover 9 hours ago |
    I wonder if we'll be firing any more pandemic surveillance staffers like we did last time[1].

    [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-us-slashed-c...

  • jorgesborges 8 hours ago |
    It’s easy to subscribe to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency[0] and receive updates on cases of AI in livestock across the country. I was a subscriber for a year or so and thought it was fun but ultimately received too many emails — sometimes multiple cases a month. Not once did any of those get blown up to a media-worthy case, which I always found interesting: relatively high frequency but low severity.

    I suppose the “severity” is low only because the rate of transmission to humans is low. The article mentions how we come into contact with wild animals especially birds more often than we might think. I wish they expanded on that — from touching things in public? from unwashed food? These aren’t wild populations of birds right?

    Also gotta love the “we’re hoping no more transmissions occur and the mutation dies out” statement. I mean I don’t have a better plan.

    [0] - https://notification.inspection.canada.ca/