bird flu: maybe not a problem

here in Asia, for years we have reports of humans catching bird flu, usually from close contact with chickens or who ate chickens who had the disease (i.e. instead of slaughtering them and burying them they sold the meat). Wikipedia has a long article on bird flu.

The scary part is that some think bird flu via pigs was behind the Spanish flu epidemic.

The zoonotic and spatial origins of the influenza virus associated with the "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918 have been debated for decades. Outbreaks of respiratory disease in US swine occurred concurrently with disease in humans, raising the possibility that the 1918 virus originated in pigs. Swine also were proposed as "mixing vessel" intermediary hosts between birds and humans during the 1957 Asian and 1968 Hong Kong pandemics. Swine have presented an attractive explanation for how avian viruses overcome the substantial evolutionary barriers presented by different cellular environments in humans and birds. However, key assumptions underpinning the swine mixing-vessel model of pandemic emergence have been challenged  

so what is the present report on humans caring for these animals in the USA?

CDC report:

The first known cluster of human influenza A(H5) cases in the United States associated with poultry exposure occurred in Colorado; 109 (16.4%) of 663 workers performing poultry depopulation reported symptoms and received testing, and nine (8.3%) of the workers who received testing for influenza A(H5) received a positive result. All nine cases were associated with mild illness, with conjunctivitis as the most common symptom.

translation: nine of the 663 people working with these infected animals got sick from bird flu.

remember: the high mortality in other countries might have been because most people who got sick never went to the doctor to be tested, only the very sick ones, and many rural workers eat low protein diets so have less ability to fight infections.

And remember: The high mortality of Spanish flu might have been because of civilian malnutrition due to the famines caused by food blockades in world war I: and the high death rate in military due to a high viral load transmitted in crowded barracks.

So I suspect the bird flu will not be worse than Asian flu or Hong Kong flu, and after the covid kerfuffle, where panic led to unnecessary prolonged shut downs etc that probably caused more deaths than the disease I suspect civilians will no longer trust doctors even if this does morph into a major cause of death in the near future.

My cynical take: That is why the powers seeking to boss the world around by health regulations are pushing hysteria on MPox...

As for MPox: the answer to that is keep your pants on, get treatment early, and don't touch your kid if you have open pox lesions.

will toxic chemicals now be investigated?

 I am pro vaccine for routine vaccines since I saw these diseases kill children in Africa, and even saw some very sick cases in the USA before MMR etc was available.  (and saw measles deaths measles encephalitis, and Fetal Rubella syndrome)....Cost benefit ratio is important.

As for autism: I didn't see a lot on the reservation (lots of FAS) and suspect a lot of kids who 60 years ago would have been called retarded and put into institutions are now home, and hey, Retard is a bad word but autism, after the movie Rain Man, is more acceptable to middle class parents....

 but after the Dengue vaccine debacle here in the Philippines, and after the covid coverups and irrational insistance of giving it to low risk kids, such things do need to be discussed.

We grow organic rice, and both our brown rice business and Joy's working with the government to grow organic food in nearby (and very poor) Bulacan in a coop recognizes this is the healthy way to eat.

But in the meanwhile, I see junk food increasingly advertised on TV etc. and sold in kiosks for snacks. Due to soy sauce and patis, the high blood pressure problem is widespread and has been a problem for years. The decrease in stomach cancer in the US is because chemicals displaced smoking fish and meat, but it is still common in places like Japan.

But as for diabetes: Yes this is a problem. And it is dietary: The Pima Indians have the highest rate of diabetes in the US, but it is rare in their Mexican cousins who eat a traditional diet. Which is why a lot of our outreach to diabetic patients in the Objibwe (who also have a high rate of diabetes) is about dietary changes. The locals blame commodities: Government saw severe malnutrition (and people dying of TB and infectious disease due to low protein diet) so gave them high fat high protein commodities. Voila, thirty precent diabetes rate and huge adults (both tall and obese).

I am not totally opposed to food additives but junk food? that is bad capitalism.

And I left practice 20 years ago so am not up to date on a lot of this: I suspect the increase in junk food consumption is because single mothers or mothers too tired to cook from scratch after being forced to work 40 hours a week to survive.

Sigh.

I have written elsewhere about plastics and herbicides and pesticides maybe inducing metabolic syndrome (pre diabetes) in folks with this gene (which is why AmerIndians and Mexicans have such a high rate of obesity).

But remember: get rid of all these things and you have people with low grade malnutrition who die of infectious diseases. So do you use a diet that makes young people strong but they die of diabetes at age 50, or do you go back to expensive natural food, stay at home moms who know how to prepare and even have backyard gardetns, or what?

and for the third world, will getting rid of chemicals just result in food being so expensive that famines will result? (organic rice is labor intensive and costs more).

I was in Liberia when they increased the price of rice, and left two days before the army overthrew the president and there were riots all over the place. SriLanka collapsed when they went organic. And part of the blame for Syria's horrific unreported civil war was a drought that made farmers flee to the cities.

To me this is not an either or proposition; And you need a conversation about this. So having RFK join Trumpieby might result in interesting discussions areund the dinner table.

.................

update:

Using drones to spray for mosquitoes

the elites hate families, support socialism in countries that could not support these policies

Today's Inquirer Commentary (Aug. 24, 2024).

Visit https://t.co/TtpNkgGpix for fearless views and more.
Get the Inquirer here: https://t.co/tLGNXII3Jk pic.twitter.com/705atO9oYJ

— Inquirer (@inquirerdotnet) August 23, 2024

Caregivers: The invisible people

Polio in Gaza

 the first reports I read about a case of polio in Gaza was hinting it was Israel's fault.

But that is fake news:

And while a vaccination campaign would likely be effective, the situation is being used to try and force Israel to pause its efforts in Gaza for seven days.

Last month, poliovirus type 2 was detected in 6 out of 7 sewage samples that were collected from Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah and were passed to the Israeli Ministry of Health.
2/6》

— COGAT (@cogatonline) August 18, 2024

Polio in Gaza: 🧵 1/6

💉 95%+ Gazans are immunized against polio
💉 Israel is working with @WHO & @UNICEF to get 1.3m more vaccines into Gaza
💉 UNICEF campaign will cover 600,000 children under 10 for new mutation
》》》 pic.twitter.com/j1RsS1ZSyo

— COGAT (@cogatonline) August 18, 2024

MPox: psst it's an STD

an STD of course. 

 “The priority is to rapidly interrupt the transmission of the virus. We’re collaborating with partners in support of countries to reinforce outbreak control measures and ensure that communities are central to ongoing efforts to effectively end these outbreaks,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. 

 pattern of transmission varies across the region, with the spread of new variant (known as clade 1b) in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo linked to transmission through sexual contact and high population movement, while in South Africa most of the cases are among people identifying as men having sex with men.

are these guys gays, or men who are working in mines or factories who had to leave their families and wives behind in the tribal areas, so have no other access to normal sex? 

Transmission in West and Central Africa is associated with the 2022 global outbreak. However, further analysis is required to better understand the patterns of transmission to refine the response to the outbreak.

so they are tracing sexual contacts, which is of limited use of course.

one problem is that some of these strains are mild so only with the rash in the genital areas which are not usually seen.

If this is true, then there could be a lot more cases, and of course it means that the reported death rate could be a lot lower than reported.

I will have to try to find more reports on this: but of course when the WHO reports this as a big threat at a time when the WHO is trying to get every country agree to letting the WHO override national laws, and at a time when a lot of us distrust the WHO who lied a lot about covid.

Sigh.

so what about anti viral treatments etc?

Article here.

 

As of 29 August 2023, a total of 89,596 confirmed cases of Mpox (monkeypox) have been documented across 114 countries worldwide, with 157 reported fatalities. The Mpox outbreak that transpired in 2022 predominantly affected young men who have sex with men (MSM). While most cases exhibited a mild clinical course, individuals with compromised immune systems, particularly those living with HIV infection and possessing a CD4 count below 200 cells/mm3, experienced a more severe clinical trajectory marked by heightened morbidity and mortality.

so again, those with HIV get sicker with it. Well, duh. Again this means the high mortality cited by authorities might be artificially high, meaning for normal people not only is the risk low (skin contact where abrasions let lesions spread it to you in non sexual contact), but if you don't have HIV and you aren't malnourished you probably won't die. (our poorer patients in Africa got very sick and had slow wound healing due to their low protein diet)

interestingly, the old small pox vaccine gives protection.

However, considering that the smallpox vaccine seems to offer approximately 85% protection against Mpox, individuals previously vaccinated against smallpox appear to be less susceptible to infection

the article discusses various anti virals and also the immune globulin for severe cases. Of course, more recent articles in the news suggest none of these anti virals are better than placebo, but since anti virals must be started early in the course of treatment, and given the fake data in covid where studies were distorted because the anti virals or ivermectin etc was given after the person had been sick for days, one does wonder about such things.

and since ivermectin has action against many viruses, has this been used at all in this epidemic? I can't find any articles about it.

Fetal Fentanyl syndrome

this is now getting in the headlines.  

in areas where a lot of fentanyl is used, they are finding babies who are with drawing from this narcotic.

Not only does prenatal opioid exposure result in short-term consequences (withdrawal) shortly after birth, it also creates long-term sequelae that may predispose these children to physical, emotional, psychiatric, cognitive, and socioeconomic problems in the future.

  

But this CDC report is from 2022. is about withdrawal symptoms and possible brain damage

Front Pediatr. 2022; 10: 1039055. Published online 2022 Nov 7.

Withdrawal symptoms are common:Between 1999 and 2014, the number of pregnant women with opioid use disorder (OUD) increased from 1.5 to 6.5 cases per 1,000 hospital births (1). This led to a steep increase in the number of neonates with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) from 1.2 to 8.0 per 1,000 hospital births, with some areas reaching 20.0 per 1,000 hospital births

Not only does prenatal opioid exposure result in short-term consequences shortly after birth, it also creates long-term sequelae that may predispose these children to physical, emotional, psychiatric, cognitive, and socioeconomic problems in the future.

 

Now there is a syndrome described:

more here at UKMail:

Dozens of babies diagnosed with new condition linked to fentanyl that causes deformed heads, conjoined toes and clubbed fingers

lead poisoning from pouches of fruit drinks

 CDC

A collaborative multilevel response led to detection of approximately 500 cases of childhood lead exposure potentially linked to consumption of apple cinnamon purees nationwide. Voluntary recall of the implicated products prevented additional exposures.

manipulating data