It being an election year, and with all of the shenanigans that took place during the 2020 presidential race, many folks have speculated that we would end up conveniently facing another pandemic situation with a serious — and deadly — illness, and well, it certainly looks like we might be seeing a little something awful on the horizon. A brand new report from Bloomberg has revealed that fragments of what they refer to as a “potentially dangerous bird flu virus” has popped up in the wastewater of Austin, Texas.
The virus showed up miles away from the closest dairy farm, which led to researchers having a freakout and racing to find out where it all might be coming from.
Texas researchers are tracing pieces of the H5N1 virus that were confirmed in Austin’s sewage last week to see if they came from infected farm animals, wild birds or dumped milk, Anthony Maresso, lead researcher of the Texas Wastewater Environmental Biomonitoring network, said in an email. Unreported human cases, while unlikely, are also a possibility, he said.
“It is truly still a mystery,” Maresso, who’s also a Baylor College of Medicine virologist, went on to say about the finding. “The sequencing indicates there can be multiple sources.”
Bird flu has spread from domestic and wild birds, to dairy cattle and now one person’s death has been linked to a new strain.
Health officials are struggling to keep up with the flu virus that has been reported in 90 cattle herds nationwide. Three US dairy workers with mild symptoms have tested positive this year, one of them in Texas, and the risk to the public remains low. Still, bird flu has been known to cause lethal disease in rare cases. And the more widely the virus spreads, the greater the risk of human infection, US health officials said Thursday on a call with reporters.
Adriane Casalotti, the chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials, stated the “potential cattle-to-human transmission really needs to be focused on,” pointing out that health officials need to take action to increase surveillance in order to “identify any shift in the behavior of the virus” that could potentially signal its ability to start spreading more between people.
The Bloomberg report also explained that many of those who are employed at farms and dairies have been resisting getting tested for H5N1 because of the risk of losing milk production or income. As a result of this, researchers are now having to go through the wastewater in order to try and figure out where the virus is coming from. And while this approach can collect signals from large geographical areas, it still leaves the research team with the problem of pinpointing the exact location of where the virus is living and who or what it might have already infected.
The Texas wastewater group is trying to answer those questions by comparing genetic material found in sewage with samples from plausible sources such as poultry, cows and milk. The wastewater samples are from two sites that encompasses 95% of Austin’s population, which could include some small agriculture farms, according to Desmar Wilkes, chief medical officer for Austin Public Health.
There are no known permitted dairy farms whose sewage goes into the Austin system, according to city officials, although there may be backyard animals such as poultry that might be sources. No human cases have been reported in the city. Either an animal source or parts of the virus in raw and commercial milk are “good and reasonable guesses,” Baylor’s Maresso said.
H5N1 is likely spreading in cattle through contaminated equipment and clothing, researchers at the US Department of Agriculturesaid Thursday on a call. Raw milk continues to be a point of exposure, and farm cats have died after consuming it. Pasteurization kills the virus and humans should avoid consuming raw milk, according to the US Food and Drug Administration.
Guess what else is a major factor in this mess? Migrant labor. Once again,, leaving the border wide open is having serious negative consequences for the country. And yet, Biden is still dedicated to the leftist plot to screw around with our demographics. Unbelievable.
Bloomberg says that a whopping 80 percent of our milk supply comes from farms and dairies that employ migrant workers. Many of these individuals are not exactly eager to get medical treatment, even when they’re feeling under the weather. The hesitation on behalf of these migrant workers is creating yet another barrier for scientists to get a grasp on whether or not there are human cases present on farms.
At least 45 people have been tested for H5N1 nationwide, Shah said. Two cases of bird flu have been reported in Michigan, which has invited the CDC to conduct additional surveillance.
“Each state is creating its own monitoring efforts in partnership with agriculture departments, leaving a patchwork of data that is concerning to health officials in understanding the virus outside of wastewater monitoring. The variation in efforts between states is concerning, said Deliana Garcia, chief program officer of international and emerging issues at the Migrant Clinicians Network, a nonprofit community health group based in Austin,” the report continued.
“The public health system is set up in such a way it can’t act quickly,” Garcia told the publication, concluding the report. “If you have something that can spread that easily through a population of animals who are then in very close quarters with human beings, I’m very worried.”