"On 24 April, the USDA mandated testing of lactating dairy cows prior to their movement between states, and reporting of positive influenza A test results in livestock."
This is why I'm going so hard on #FluIsAirborne. When the air is left out of the conversation, nothing gets done to stop non-lactating cows -- you know, the ones that still have lungs, and can breathe -- from continuing to spread airborne #H5N1
The sheer amount of people who stopped wearing masks as soon as they were optional demonstrates how many people never understood why they were wearing them in the first place, which is a tremendous and ongoing failure of institutional public health
Sometimes people talk like it's obvious to everyone that the #flu is airborne, but I have never seen -- in a pretty liberal area of the US -- a doctor in a respirator mask during flu season in my life (and I'm 32)
A 2013 study using non-respirator surgical masks -- so this is undoubtedly an underestimate -- still concluded that half out of 782 #influenza A transmissions in Hong Kong and Bangkok households happened this way:
This would be the first time in the history of influenza viruses that foodborne transmission occurred (whereas it is adapted to infect via airways, no matter the animal), and we would expect to see those adaptations reflected in its genome
The USDA is doubling down on mythical milkborne spread:
"The USDA said cows shed the virus in milk at high concentrations, so anything that comes in contact with unpasteurized milk may spread the disease. Respiratory transmission is not considered a primary way for the virus to spread in cattle, the department added."
No explanation given. Flu is a milkborne pathogen now. Total fucking clownshow
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I am under the impression that #influenza viruses have never been demonstrated to be foodborne, and this stuff about pasteurizing milk from infected cows sounds like public health theater to calm the plebs
I don't know -- maybe all of the shit the #covid prevention community is already doing. But that would be too embarrassing, wouldn't it? Good thing you can't die of embarrassment
Addleman, Sarah, Victor Leung, Leyla Asadi, Abdu Sharkawy, and Jennifer McDonald. ‘Mitigating Airborne Transmission of SARS-CoV-2’. CMAJ, 1 January 2021.