Bird flu has jumped to mammals, infecting dairy cows, killing cats

Um.. Just caught this, and am wondering, are we seeing our next pandemic on the horizon?  From SDSU Extension:

Beginning in 2022, an H5N1 subtype of highly pathogenic avian influenza (abbreviated as HPAI) virus caused death losses in domestic turkeys and chickens in South Dakota and elsewhere in the United States, an outbreak that continues. The HPAI virus causes respiratory and multiple organ failure in affected birds, typically appearing as increased numbers of dead birds in large commercial operations, as well as smaller backyard flocks. Deaths in wild birds, typically migrating waterfowl but also other bird species, have been observed at the same time, as well as spillover of the virus into mammals, such as raccoons, foxes, skunks, and other species.

and..

Since that time, three cases of substantial death losses in groups of outdoor domestic cats in South Dakota have been described. In each of these cases, there has been no apparent link to dairy cows, other livestock, or domestic poultry.

and..

Human cases of HPAI have resulted from contact with infected dairy cows and poultry. While such infections have not yet been implicated from contact with HPAI-infected cats, people should take precautions when dealing with symptomatic or dead cats.

Read the entire article here.

7 thoughts on “Bird flu has jumped to mammals, infecting dairy cows, killing cats”

  1. OHHHH, So THAT is what China had in those balloons. Good people are DYING left and right and we don’t know better. First thing Trump should do for the good of humanity is drop a warhead on Jinping.

  2. Nope. Nothing burger. The election is over and the dumocrats can’t use it to manipulate election law. So, it will amount to nothing.

    1. It already has though. The price of eggs that everyone’s freaking out about? Partially the result in a few million layers being culled due to the bird flu. It’s also not like a virus mutating the point of interspecies transmission is ever been a problem. No sir, just ignore Ebola, Marburg, Covid, etc.

      1. we were told early on that only birds could get the bird flu by the smart guys mother nature had other ideas

        1. NOBODY ever said only birds can get the bird flu.
          Influenza has always mutated in avian populations which have spread it to swine in China, because fowl and swine are on the same farms and sold live in markets there. But people out here talking about the flu pandemic of 1918, said many farmers noted the pigs got sick first..My kid did a history project on the subject in 1998. The virus hops from birds to mammals quite easily.
          As for cats, my cats and I had Swine Flu together in 1976. I still remember being in bed, feeling awful, looking over at my equally sick cat who was trying to get off the bed and was obviously in pain, and telling him “I know just how you feel.”

  3. I already got into this with somebody on facebook, who insisted that it is Trump, who isn’t even in office yet, who is deliberately spreading avian influenza into bovine herds in Texas and California. When I responded with “you must be a special kind of stupid to believe that,” Meta suspended me.
    The information, it seems, is true, according to Meta, and I was the bully.

    I realized this is a dandy conspiracy theory: Trump is spreading the virus, contaminating cat food, and making cats sick. Trump is targeting both crazy cat ladies and Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.

    And there you have it.

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