Bird Flu

[Anianna]

With increasing news on bird flu, I thought we should have a thread to track various related topics more cohesively. 

Previous related topics:

Bird Flu Spreading in Cattle

Bird Flu from Raw Diet Infects Cats


In more recent news, a severe case in Louisiana was traced back to infected backyard poultry and a severe case in Canada in a teenager who has now recovered after weeks on a ventilator and supplemental oxygen has not been traced to a source.  Mutations of the virus have been noted in these cases.  

The real risk is person-to-person spread, which hasn't happened as far as we know at this time.  While the risk of infection remains low at this time, that we are seeing an increasing number of infections outside of the poultry industry is a concern as is increased infections in other animals like cows, domestic cats, and big cats in zoos and rescue facilities.  Mitigation largely includes things you should be doing anyway as well as a few lifestyle adaptations.


Some steps you can take to mitigate your risk:

-Practice good hygiene.  Wash hands thoroughly and regularly, after toileting, after touching things in public spaces, before handling foodstuffs, and after handling raw meats or eggs. 

-Don't consume raw or undercooked animal products including dairy and eggs.

-Do not wash meat.  Washing splatters pathogens around your sink.  Cook meats to safe temperatures to kill those pathogens without spreading them around your kitchen. 

-Sanitize surfaces that came into contact with raw meats, dairy, and eggs.

-Do not touch dead or injured birds, domestic or wild, without proper PPE including sealing goggles.  A known vector of infection in current iterations of H5N1 is via the eyes.  Conjunctivitis is an early symptom of infection.

-Outdoor cats are susceptible to contact with infected wild birds and may become a vector of infection for pet owners.  Keep your cats indoors and do not feed cats raw diets or treats, including freeze dried.  Avoid contact with sick stray cats.

-Dogs are not immune to coming into contact with dead or infected animals, so don't let dogs out unsupervised and do not feed dogs raw diets or treats, including freeze dried.

-If you have free-range chickens, it might be time to make use of chicken tractors with a tight mesh top to give them a degree of separation from wild birds and their droppings.  If you already use a chicken tractor, consider add a tighter mesh cover to catch droppings from wild birds.

-If you don't have N95 or better masks/respirators, get them before a pandemic happens.  We had to make due with cloth masks during Covid because there wasn't enough PPE for medical staff, let alone the public.  Now is the time to stock up on masks that can actually protect you while they are still available to the public.

-If human-to-human spread gets reported, avoid crowded spaces and public spaces with poor ventilation.



Another more imminent impact of the current spread of bird flu in birds:

With more flocks of domestic birds suffering infection, poultry meat and eggs may be in short supply.  Not only does this affect access and costs at grocery stores of these items, but also anything eggs are used for.  Processed foodstuffs using eggs may also become difficult to access and businesses like bakeries might find themselves without necessary ingredients.  Consider trying some recipes that don't use chicken or eggs if your diet uses a lot of these items.

Some vaccines use egg as a stabilizer and a shortage of eggs could mean a shortage of some vaccines, especially in a pandemic situation.  The current stockpile of bird flu vaccines was made for a previous iteration, so will have limited efficacy in case of a pandemic.  Updating for the mutations will either require a complete modification of how flu shots are made or could be impacted by egg shortage, leaving us in the same situation we found ourselves in early on with Covid.  



Consider lifestyle changes now to limit anxiety in the case of a pandemic.  Some potential adaptations:

-I now have a collection of reusable Tattler canning lids.  During and following Covid, canning lids were different.  I'd been canning for a decade before Covid and never had a failed seal.  Now, I can't do a batch without some seal failures regardless of the lids I am using.  Ball and Kerr lids started having faults and the market was flooded with lids unsuitable to pressure canning. 

-During the pandemic, a lot of people turned to canning.  Maybe learn how now so you can make mistakes and learn without a feeling of desperation.  Also, you can make soups and stews that are safe for canning, rendering them shelf-stable.  I make and can Brunswick Stew in the fall to have ready-to-eat meals over the winter.  I plan to add a Beef and Vegetable Stew from the Ball Blue Book soon.  I also have a lentil soup and chicken soup (no noodles, though noodles can be added at point of consumption) that are shelf-stable and can be heated and eaten or eaten directly from the jar.  Learning canning, especially pressure canning, when materials are readily available is a valuable skill that is useful even when nothing is wrong.

-We got a bidet attachment and hand sprayer.  We have washcloths for drying and a little wicker waste basket lined with a pillow case for used cloths.  The whole pillow case can be pulled out and dumped in the washer.  I have a backup stash of tp for if the washer needs repaired or if someone is sick with the runs to mitigate spread of disease, but we're all set if another pandemic renders tp scarce. 

-We already had a Food Saver, but we made more use of it since Covid.  If you haven't already, consider stocking up on ways of storing things like rice, oats, and flour over long periods of time.



Please feel free to share more mitigation ideas and adaptations you experienced during Covid that may help should another pandemic rear its ugly head.  We have ample reason for foresight and planning, but no reason for panic.  Proceed accordingly.

[Anianna]

There are currently two cases of unknown origin in children California, at least one of which is in San Francisco. 

Testing is done at the state level and starts with generalized testing to identify influenza type A or B.  H5N1 is a subtype of A.  A positive test for influenza A with conjunctivitis should trigger testing for subtype, but there is no standard requiring states to do so, so there is some concern that testing may be sporadic and might not be giving us the whole picture, much like we experienced early in Covid spread. 

San Francisco has been unique in that H5N1 has been detected in wastewater since the spring with no known outbreak in livestock.  Other localities with wastewater load detection can be linked to livestock outbreaks.  Investigation is ongoing, but it is currently believed that the origin may be contamination from wild or feral animals in storm water, which is processed with their wastewater.

[tirls]

That´s a very nicely written post, damn. 

Thanks for reminding me to repurchase some FFP2 masks, we are nearly out.
I did find out during the pandemic that if you tripple up some fabric meant for bed covers for people with allergies against house dust mites you get an adequate protection. The covers have a particle size of 1 μm,  FFP2 around 0.2 to 0.3 μm if I remember correctly.
Not quite as good but we were renovating our house during the pandemic and needed dust masks. I sewed some out of the bedding fabric and there was barely any residue on the innermost layer. Very comparable to the FFP2. I would´t necessarily trust them for medical purposes but for building purposes or at times when we ran out of the other ones completely they are very nice to have. And washable at 60°C.

One thing that surprised me was how little flour and yeast you could get. We had weeks without any available. I now have a large pot full that lasts me around half a year without refilling and have started a sourdough up. The other food items I could replace somehow, but we couldn´t get flour or flour related items at all.

We have started trying to cut back financially and save money. Things have gotten expensive during the pandemic and a lot have not come down a lot. Ideally we´d be aiming at around 50k which would get us through quite a bit.

[Anianna]

Without federal level data, it's difficult to follow patterns nationwide.  California is known to have cases of H5N1 in people, so I checked their patterns of infection for influenza.  Keep in mind that this data is for every kind of influenza and is not specific to H5N1 and is only data from California.  




Just FYI, H5N1 is one of many subtypes of influenza A.  There have been definite pet to human infections in California at this point, but it remains unclear if any of the cases are human to human.   There have now been multiple cases documented in a single household.  It's not clear if every affected member was infected by a pet or if there are now human to human cases, which would be the concern. 

I've seen a lot of people interested in getting their own chickens due to egg prices and low availability.  The worst H5N1 case in the US from which the infected person died occurred in Louisiana and was traced to their backyard chicken flock.  Several backyard flocks have tested positive.  I don't think it's a good time to get new chickens, but if you do, educate yourself and take the steps necessary to protect your birds. 

Here are some alternatives to eggs based on the purpose of the eggs in a recipe:
https://www.allrecipes.com/article/egg-substitute-for-baking/

[KentuckyCarbine]

Nice write up Anianna!

[Anianna]

The EIS is the investigative arm of the CDC that tracks and mitigates food borne illness, infectious disease, and germ warfare for the US.  The EIS training program in the US includes trainees from all over the world and acts as a safety net for us even beyond our own borders. 

We may lose the EIS and/or the EIS training program, which could mean no more federal tracking of H5N1, tuberculosis, or any other outbreak.  This would make us susceptible to food borne illness outbreaks, infectious disease outbreaks, and any acts of germ warfare in our country.  If only the training program is lost, that means our current investigators are the last and it would only delay the inevitable.

https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/trump-cdc-cuts-include-epidemic-intelligence-service-outbreak-investigators/

[majorhavoc]

Cornell University School of Veterinery Medicine has a nice repository of data gathered from a variety of federal and state sources on their The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) Resource Center.

[Zed hunter]

We just had a local official suggest we get chickens for the eggs.  Guess he hadn't heard about the home chicken owners contacted U5N2.