46 points | by ctoth9 hours ago
What makes this notable is the speed and scope of adaptation: In January this was just another bird virus. By March it was in cows, then infected a dairy worker, and now we're seeing it maintain airborne transmission in ferrets while being 100% lethal to them. Yet the human case was mild.
This ties directly to what we're seeing now with 8 poultry workers infected in Washington and 15 dairy workers in California. In less than a year, H5N1 has gone from a bird problem to widespread mammalian spread with increasing human spillover.
When one of the leading researchers calls it 'one of the most pathogenic viruses' he's seen in ferrets, while it remains relatively mild in humans, it's a clear sign of ... something Worth watching where this Bird Flu thing goes if nothing else. I expect not to hear much about it until after the election though.
> Ferrets are a common model for studying how influenza viruses that primarily affect birds are able to adapt to mammals, a topic that Kawaoka and his colleagues at UW–Madison’s Influenza Research Institute investigate since such a jump could trigger an influenza pandemic.
Several million similar infections can easily mutate into something worse.
What is bad is its novelty to our immune system, not necessarily its initial mortality rate.
It was a series of overreactions in the media to studies like this one that led me to be skeptical of the news reporting about COVID in its early days. I came around, but a lot of others didn't. Overblown health scare headlines cause real harm for science communication.
What this shows is that the virus is able to jump the barrier to mammalian lung cells with a few iterations, and already has by way of some human exposure. There is no particular reason to think that a lung infection in humans wouldn't be 100% lethal as it is in ferrets or sea lions. So far, the only infections in humans in the US that we know of have been essentially relegated to the eyes. But it appears that the virus is primed for more than that now.
I'm not suggesting that the media go crazy causing a panic, or that the media do anything at all, since they only seem to inflame every situation. But looking at the data from this report, I think it is reasonable to assess that we're on a tragectory toward a highly lethal airborne H5 virus, and take appropriate steps to shore up vaccines and antiviral stocks.
I take your point, that the suggestion in that case study is that the virus caused it directly (RTPCR from the conjunctiva tested positive for the virus). He did have a full-blown case of conjunctivitis, though.
A sample of the virus taken from the worker was 100% lethal in ferrets, though it spread inefficiently and does not appear to be continuing to spread.
And the only goal the game really supports is killing everyone, instead of eg going for the largest sustainable population of your organism. (Think more like one of the bugs that cause the common cold, and less like the black death.)
See https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AcceptableBreaks...
Madagaskar staying safe is not good enough IRL.
Reduce, not counteract.
Viruses evolve to spread, not to kill. There just _is_ evolutionary pressure against high lethality.
Ebola kills too quickly for hosts to move around and spread it, but that's in small villages in the jungle. What if there's just enough time for the host to take a crowded train and attend a Presidential campaign rally with tens of thousands of other people before feeling too sick? This might be a better strategy for an ambitious virus in the post-Covid world than a slowly escalating illness that just makes people call in sick and stay home.