40
Bird flu infects another Sioux County dairy farm • Iowa Capital Dispatch (iowacapitaldispatch.com)
submitted 5 months ago by usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml to c/iowa@midwest.social
21 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

Seems like from all the cows that have been infected, none have fallen seriously ill and all have fully recovered. Among the hundreds (thousands?) of cows that have been infected, are we at 3 total people who have caught it from them? And all had a minor illness and made a full recovery.

You're clearly saying it's no big deal. 🙄

[-] protist@mander.xyz 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Over 700,000 people die every year from common variants of the flu, where 463 people total have died over the past 20 years from H5N1. We should always be working to reduce flu mortality, and this H5N1 outbreak is certainly something to watch closely and be prepared for potentialities, but also the sky is not falling.

It's literally not a big deal right now, because there have been zero cases of human to human transmission. You're treating this like it's the same as COVID already, but it's not

[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

No, I'm treating this like it will inevitably become another pandemic. Viruses mutate, and this one has already jumped from birds to cows. It's only a matter of time.

[-] protist@mander.xyz 2 points 5 months ago

That sounds exhausting. How have you changed your behavior to affect something that doesn't yet exist and that you have zero control over?

[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Well I don't eat eggs or drink milk, so I'm not contributing to the petri dishes of laying ops and dairy farms. Maybe if we didn't pack animals together and torture them for money we could slow down the emergence of new diseases. It always comes back to animal exploitation.

But I think you misunderstood me. I was only saying that when this inevitably becomes a pandemic there will be zero government response. I wasn't saying that we should be shutting down society this instant, but rather, that when this jumps human-to-human we'll just ignore it.

[-] protist@mander.xyz 2 points 5 months ago

The government has already funded the production of several million doses of vaccine against H5N1, and is planning to produce more, so it seems the government is already doing something.

[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

Vaccines millions won't take.

But you're right, one thing our society can do is produce medicines. That's it. When this jumps human-to-human we'll be told "take your vaccine, get back to work, pay no attention to the bodies piling up."

Did you know our life expectancies are falling? Why do you think that is?

this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
40 points (100.0% liked)

Iowa

296 readers
29 users here now

Is this heaven? Hell no, it's Iowa.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
jimrob4@midwest.social
UnkTheUnk@midwest.social