A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

"AI" is one of those popular topics that I try to steer around. Yes, I know what an LLM is. Yes, I know what it does. I'm just not interested in the non-stop discourse around it.

I'm going to post this so it's out there, and I will mute responses, but, I thought it was worthy of throwing out there anyway.

My wife's a teacher, and she's been noticing her school laptop has really been dragging recently. She checked task manager and the culprit is "Artificial Intelligence(AI) for Windows" taking up tons of resources.

She checked in with her boss and, "Yes! We're so excited for this. We're going to be rolling out professional development trainings about how you can work with AI to develop all of your lessons going forward!" I guess it was only a matter of time until AI started teaching the kids, I just didn't realize that time was now.

No, my wife will not be using this to write her lessons, in case that's unclear.

@ClimateNewsNow

While it's an interesting computer model, we already know this from actually finding them in people's lungs:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722020009

Another article from @HelenBranswell today. This time with an interesting Q&A with the head of the CDC's influenza division.

https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/03/bird-flu-why-h5n1-keeping-awake-cdc-top-flu-scientist/

"It sounds like your team that was ready to go didn’t go. And it sounds like from what you’re telling me that CDC is very much in the back seat on this one. That it’s the states or local authorities who are running this.

They have the authority, right? CDC does not have the authority to go into a state. We have to have an invite from state public health.

Have any states invited CDC in?

No. Not officially yet. We’re speaking to these partners if not once a day, more than that."

"There has been a single human case in Texas. Has anybody done serology testing around that individual? That would be an obvious place to start, would it not?

I don’t know that that was consented to. You have to have consent from people to follow up. Certainly it was something that was on our radar for what we would like to have and request, but to my knowledge, serology was not performed. (A report on the case published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed Dugan’s belief. The infected person and his contacts would not consent to have blood drawn.)"

@carstenfranke

Yeah, I did wonder about particularly state fairs and whether everyone was just going to go ahead with them, and I'm sure the answer is yes.

Catching up on my reading today and there's 4 new articles from StatNews.com that fit in this thread.

First, making the case for expanded wastewater surveillance:

https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/01/h5n1-bird-flu-hospital-wastewater-surveillance/

@HelenBranswell with another article about the USDA obfuscating data by labeling genomic sequences with simply "USA" and "2024":

https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/02/bird-flu-in-cows-h5n1-virus-changes-missing-data/

This one discusses a preprint

"The authors suggest the spillover event that started the spread in cattle may have happened in early December. The first detection that something was amiss with some cattle herds in the Texas panhandle dates to late January, but it took until March 25 before USDA confirmed the presence of H5N1 in a Texas herd."

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.01.591751v1.full.pdf+html

"Our genomic analysis
and epidemiological investigation showed that a reassortment event in wild bird populations preceded a5
single wild bird-to-cattle transmission episode. The movement of asymptomatic cattle has likely played a
role in the spread of HPAI within the United States dairy herd. Some molecular markers in virus populations
were detected at low frequency that may lead to changes in transmission efficiency and phenotype after evolution in dairy cattle. Continued transmission of H5N1 HPAI within dairy cattle increases the risk for
infection and subsequent spread of the virus to human populations."

The politics of public health is the topic of the next one, which is depressing:

https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/02/bird-flu-testing-dairy-state-politics-in-congress/

"Republican lawmakers have one big message on the avian flu outbreak in cows: Calm down."

No comment from me as I couldn't even get through it without having to take a walk.

And, finally, a little more info about the preprint paper from above and the recent data dump from the USDA:

https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/02/bird-flu-virus-in-cows-four-months-before-h5n1-outbreak-confirmed/

""These data support a single introduction event from wild bird origin virus into cattle, likely followed by limited local circulation for approximately 4 months prior to confirmation by USDA,” the authors wrote."

"In the last few years, H5N1 has spread from wild birds to a variety of carnivorous mammals, including foxes, bears, and seals, but in each of those instances, the virus has hit a dead end. The outbreak in dairy cows represents one of the first times that this bird flu virus has demonstrated the ability to efficiently transmit between mammals, said Thomas Mettenleiter, a virologist who served as the director of the Friedrich Loeffler Institut — Germany’s leading animal disease research center — from 1996 until he stepped down last year. The other instance was a number of outbreaks at mink farms in Spain and Finland in 2022 and 2023, respectively."

New article from StatNews again today, this time titled "Pasteurization inactivates H5N1 bird flu in milk, new FDA and academic studies confirm"

https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/01/bird-flu-pasteurization-inactivates-h5n1-in-milk/

I think the take home message in the article is:

"On Wednesday, the agency reported results from testing of a further 201 products, which included cottage cheese and sour cream, in addition to milk. Any PCR-positive samples were then injected into embryonated chicken eggs, to see whether any active virus could be grown — the gold standard test for assessing the viability of an influenza virus. None of the samples produced viable, replicating virus, Prater said."

"In addition, several samples of retail powdered infant formula as well as other powdered milk products. All PCR results from these products were negative. The agency did not disclose when it plans to make its full analysis, including which products were purchased from which states, available to the public."

"Bolstering the FDA’s data, academic researchers at the Ohio State University and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital told STAT Tuesday night that their own study of 58 PCR-positive milk samples taken from Texas, Kansas, and eight other states in the Midwest also failed to turn up any evidence that H5N1 can survive the pasteurization process."

@QuietLurker

That's the truth!

@QuietLurker

I'm never offended by questions, although I'm definitely not an expert. Just someone with a science background who reads a lot, and used to have a head cheese maker roommate for years :)

I know you didn't really ask about eggs, but, you mentioned them. I put eggs and chicken in the same category for now, personally. I don't see any substantial change in their situation just because cows got H5N1. There's something like 430 billion birds in the world and 90 million cows in the US. It's not a huge reservoir overall, although, any new viral reservoir can lead to new and often unpredictable mutations.

Sour cream's a great question and I don't have a great answer beyond making sure it's made with pasteurized milk/cream.

I did read somewhere recently that a lot of Mexican-style soft cheeses are sometimes allowed to use unpasteurized milk. I haven't dug into the subject deeply, but, if that's true, I'd say the same thing about your cheese. Just make sure it's from pasteurized milk.

Somewhere in the thread above was a mention that something like 4% of people supposedly drink raw milk more than 1 time per year. If that's true, that would be something like 13 million people. That seems impossibly large to me, but, let's assume it's correct for the moment. If even 10% of them were currently sick with bird flu, that would be over a million people. I think we'd know. I'm not saying that there's no risk at all. Clearly, we've made some changes just to be on the safe side, but, to date, I don't see any evidence that there's a lot of people with bird flu, unless it's simply not distinguishable from COVID.

@QuietLurker

I've addressed this a little last week, but, I think it still stands today. It sucks, but, you're not wrong about the track record. You have to make your own decisions until a different track record is established.

We don't drink milk, but we did buy some to make kefir with every couple of weeks, and we quit doing that for now. That said, it should be safe if properly pasteurized.

We eat cheese and haven't stopped. I'm far from an expert, but, from what I know from personal experience cheese makers know if something is growing in their cheese and throwing off the chemistry, pH, etc.

We don't buy grocery store beef, so, I haven't given it too deep of thought. Off the top of my head, we've lived with bird flu theoretically infecting any given chicken for years now, and if cooked above 165 it should be safe. I would think the same applies to beef, but, I know we are a nation of medium/medium rare beef. Since there's really no science on infectious dose from eating infected meat it's hard to intelligently discuss.

If it were me, I might wait until we have some more information on that, specifically the USDA's ground beef testing. But that's easy for me to say when it doesn't affect us, personally. If you live on a beef diet you might have a different outlook on that.