by Michael
Have you noticed that the mainstream media is suddenly full of very alarming stories about H5N1? When hundreds of millions of birds were dying because of the bird flu, the mainstream media didn’t seem to care very much, and so most people in the general population didn’t seem to care very much. Then the bird flu started infecting lots of mammals all over the globe, and the mainstream media still didn’t seem to care very much. But now here we are in the middle of 2024, and the mainstream media has suddenly decided to ramp up the fear level. Even though there has only been one confirmed human case in the U.S. so far this year, the mainstream media is pumping out article after article about the threat that H5N1 could potentially pose to humanity. Do they know something that the rest of us do not?
It is quite true that if a version of H5N1 comes along that can spread easily from human to human, the death toll could be catastrophic.
Are we on the verge of seeing that happen?
The New York Times is reporting that H5N1 “has acquired dozens of new mutations”, and apparently some of them “may make it more adept at spreading between species”…
The bird flu virus sweeping across dairy farms in multiple states has acquired dozens of new mutations, including some that may make it more adept at spreading between species and less susceptible to antiviral drugs, according to a new study.
I don’t like the sound of that at all.
Researchers are telling us that the bird flu “acquired mutations in late 2023 that allowed it to jump from wild birds to cattle in the Texas Panhandle”…
In the new study, the researchers collected samples containing virus from 26 dairy farms in eight states. Cows are not typically susceptible to this type of influenza, but H5N1 appears to have acquired mutations in late 2023 that allowed it to jump from wild birds to cattle in the Texas Panhandle, the researchers said.
The virus then appears to have spread on dairy farms from Texas to Kansas, Michigan and New Mexico. In at least a dozen instances since then, H5N1 has also spilled from cows back into wild birds, and into poultry, domestic cats and a raccoon.
This is a very chilling development.
In the past, the bird flu would appear for a while and then go away.
But for the past couple of years it has been wiping out millions upon millions of birds all over the planet with no end in sight.
From this point forward, will H5N1 also be a permanent threat to our cattle population?
Needless to say, that could represent a very serious threat to our food supply.
Even more alarming is the fact that the strain of H5N1 that a dairy worker in Texas caught reportedly had “a mutation that allowed it to infect people more efficiently”…
The only person to have been diagnosed with bird flu during the current outbreak carried a virus with a mutation that allowed it to infect people more efficiently. One cow in the study also carried H5N1 with that mutation. More than 200 others were infected with versions of the virus bearing a different mutation that offers the same advantage.
Why are we only learning about this now?
And what is going to happen if this mutation which enables H5N1 to “infect people more efficiently” starts spreading among wild animals all over the nation?
The New York Times is making it sound like we really could be on the brink of a major outbreak among humans.
Thankfully, the dairy worker in Texas that caught this version of the bird flu did not die, but he did experience “bleeding in his eyeballs”…
The first image of a Texas farm worker infected with bird flu from a cow shows he suffered bleeding in his eyeballs.
It is thought to be the first known case of mammal-to-human transmission and comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned bird flu (H5N1) viruses “pose pandemic potential.”
The dairy worker attended a hospital in March after experiencing painful red, weeping eyes with burst blood vessels.
Even more disturbing, some of the cats that consumed raw milk from infected dairy cows in Texas experienced “brain hemorrhaging” and “blindness”.
Is this new version of H5N1 also able to cause “brain hemorrhaging” and “blindness” in humans?
Hopefully authorities will have some answers for us soon.
What we do know is that viral fragments are getting into our milk supply.
In fact, the FDA discovered that viral fragments were in approximately one out of every five samples of grocery store milk that they tested…
Tests by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of retail milk samples might give some indication of how widespread the virus is. The agency found viral fragments in one in five samples of commercial milk, although this virus had been deactivated by pasteurization so was not infectious.
The good news is that it appears that the pasteurization process appears to kill the bird flu.
But authorities are warning that raw milk could contain the virus…
At the moment, scientists are focusing on raw milk as a risk factor for transmission to humans. While H5N1 infections in poultry usually result in respiratory illnesses, in cattle the virus seems to mainly target mammary glands, which might explain the high amount of virus found in raw milk from infected cows.
Until we know more, I think that it would be very wise to avoid drinking any raw milk for the foreseeable future.
You do not want to get this disease.
According to the WHO, since 2003 there have been 888 confirmed human cases.
Of those, 463 have died.
But as long as humans are only catching this virus from other mammals, we probably will not see a major global outbreak.
However, if a strain comes along that can spread easily from human to human, we are going to have a massive problem on our hands and the level of fear that we will witness will be off the charts.
I do not know how this particular story will end, but I am entirely convinced that we have entered an era when great pestilences will be very common.
So let us hope for the best, but let us also get prepared for the worst.
The past several years have demonstrated what fear of a disease can do, and H5N1 has the potential to absolutely dwarf anything that we have experienced up to this point.
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