The Pandemicene

 Bird Flu is still not officially a pandemic concern, but there are some convincing arguments that it should be:

Lazarus Long wrote about the teenager who contracted H5N1:

"The Canadian BC teenager is in a hospital that barely uses surgical masks, under Bonnie Henry who screwed up SARS1, then COVID. She thinks aerosols only come in cans. Trigger warning: I am going to lay out the worst case for you. Going to get dark. 

First, the subclade, or variant, that this poor kid has is D1.1. It's not the dairy cow subclade - that is B3.13. There's a good breakdown of what a clade is here. D1 is lighting up the Pacific flyway. 33 outbreaks in 2.5 weeks. Genotype D1.1 has: Eurasian HA, PB1, MP, NS - all ea3, North American PB2 (am24), PA (am4), NP (am13) NA [am4(N1)]. PB2 is not good. 

A 2014 study points to AH1N1 (one of the seasonal influenzas) antibodies providing some protection against H5N1: "seasonal influenza A(H1N1) and avian influenza A (H5N1) share the same neuraminidase subtype, N1." Another article talking about this (July 2024). And that's where this gets dark. There is a very good possibility that all of these dairy workers have previous exposure. The teenager does not, and do the disease is ripping him up. 

If that's true, grab your children and a FloMask respirator. (No affiliation, I just like them for kids.)

Ready to get even darker? Technically, the 1918 virus was an H1N1 virus, too. The 1918 pandemic was unusual. There was an unusual W shaped relationship between age and mortality. 18-43-year-olds died the most. But why? This is a hypothesis from this study: Basically, previous exposure led to their T-cells freaking out due to previous exposure, versus previous exposure NOT leading to their T-cells freaking out. So, this idea that the kids are at higher risk is the latter idea. A well-regulated T-cell response for the dairy workers. Yay for them; boo for kids. 

And ready to get darkest of all? Covid. We are getting infected year after year with variants. There is no guarantee that someday the Cytokine Cyclone of Variants won't come along and kill everyone who was exposed to the Alpha variant. Or Beta. Or Delta. Or... you get the idea. This is THE pandemicene. 

This most definitely belongs in the dark thread: Fraser Health putting out the most minimizing, "don't worry your little head" letter that I have seen in quite a while."

Then Long goes on to explain that H5N1 is very stable in water, so it can spread to birds landing on lakes, and we have sightings of very sickly geese with probable H5N1. And RFK is unlikely to help matters. The containment in that BC hospital offered masks, but didn't require them, and they only offered ASTM Level 1 surgical masks. 

If you stopped wearing a well-fitted N95 or better, it's not a bad time to get back into that habit!