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Lodi’s Earth Song Farm Not Feeling Negative Effects of Bird Flu
On the inside of a Lodi barn, the owner of Earth Song Farm is going through a vastly different experience than many other farmers in the area as bird flu continues to spread.
Owner of the organic farm, Stephen Andrews, says his chickens are happy, friendly and healthy. “We have had thousands of chickens grow up here and we have rare to see a dead one.”
In the western part of the Ohio nearly 10 million birds mostly chickens have had to be depopulated because of the bird flu since late December. “I don’t understand why the big corporate places are totally enclosed and they never let their chickens outside. Why are they having bird flu issues?” Andrews says his chickens are free range. They are already exposed to many of the ailments that can cause disruption to the supply chain and have built immunity to the wild birds and droppings that are believed to be causing the bird flu.
“I am just baffled myself. How that can be happening when we never have that issue here and we have birds flying around here all the time?” Andrews believes letting his domestic fowls wander the farm might be the right way to fighting off the bird flu. “Flu season always comes in the winter because we don’t have as much vitamin D from being outdoors and the sunshine maybe the same thing is happening with the chickens.”
New Strain of Bird Flu Is Detected in a Nevada Dairy Worker, CDC Says
A dairy worker in Nevada was infected with a new type of bird flu that’s different from the version that has been spreading in U.S. herds since last year, federal health officials said Monday. The illness was considered mild. The person’s main symptom was eye redness and irritation, similar to most bird flu cases associated with dairy cows.
The person wasn’t hospitalized and has recovered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The newer strain had been seen before in more than a dozen people exposed to poultry, but this is the first time an infection was traced to a cow.
The Nevada dairy worker was exposed at a farm in Churchill County, in the west-central part of the state, state health officials said. CDC officials said there is no evidence the virus has spread from this person to any other people. The agency continues to say the virus poses a low risk to the general public.
House Cats With Bird Flu Could Pose a Risk to Public Health
More than 80 domestic cats, among many other types of mammals, have been confirmed to have had bird flu since 2022 — generally barn cats that lived on dairy farms, as well as feral cats and pets that spend time outdoors and likely caught it by hunting diseased rodents or wild birds.
Now, a small but growing number of house cats have gotten sick from H5N1, the bird flu strain driving the current U.S. outbreak, after eating raw food or drinking unpasteurized milk. Some of those cats died.
The strain of bird flu currently circulating has not adapted to efficiently spread among people. And there have been no known cases of cat-to-human transmission during the current outbreak of H5N1. Still, there’s always been the risk that cats, which are arguably only semi-domesticated, could bring home a disease from a midnight prowl.
Stopgap Measures Against H5N1 Bird Flu Can Only Go So Far
The real problem is not the virus — it’s our systems. In the summer of 2023, I connected with an epidemiologist from Kerala. A lush sliver of land along the Indian peninsula’s southwestern edge, it is a place of sleepy backwaters and rolling hills of spices. It is also known for its forests. There, a man from the leafy village of Maruthonkara had died from Nipah virus.
Outbreaks of Nipah virus are alarmingly common: They occur seasonally in parts of Bangladesh and nearly as often in Kerala, where there have been six since 2018. Borne of frugivorous bats — and, on occasion, passed between people who become ill — the virus causes encephalitis, inflaming the brain’s tissues in a process that is fatal in as many as 70% of those who become infected. In a string of WhatsApp messages and voice notes, I was getting this epidemiologist’s perspective on the latest outbreak at the time. And what I took from him surprised me.
It was not simply the belief in a diligent surveillance of the virus’ motions. Rather, it was the paradox of having a system in place to detect outbreak after outbreak, to contain them, all while having little means to prevent them. Which gave rise, recently, to a troubling thought: Will our efforts against H5N1 — or bird flu, as we know it — bind us to a similar Sisyphean-like struggle?
Single Dose of Broadly Neutralizing Antibody Protects Macaques From H5N1 Influenza
National Institutes of Health scientists and their colleagues report that a single dose of a broadly neutralizing antibody (bnAb) administered prior to virus exposure protects macaques from severe H5N1 avian influenza. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 viruses have sporadically spilled over from birds into many other animals, including humans and dairy cows, in recent years.
Although it has not yet acquired the capacity to spread readily between people, H5N1 has pandemic potential, which has spurred efforts to develop effective treatments and other countermeasures. The investigators studied a bnAb called MEDI8852, which was discovered and developed by Medimmune, now part of AstraZeneca. MEDI8852 targets a portion of a key flu protein that is less prone to change than other parts of the virus and thus is capable of conferring protection against a wide range of flu viruses.
In the new study, a group of macaques received an injection of MEDI8852 and were exposed to aerosolized HPAI H5N1 virus three days later. All the pre-treated animals survived and experienced no or very limited signs of disease. In contrast, a group of control macaques developed severe or fatal illness within a short time after virus exposure. Of note, the scientists determined that MEDI8852 remained in the body for a prolonged time after the injection.
According to scientists, protection from severe disease would extend to weeks beyond antibody infusion, providing a realistic preventative window in the face of an H5N1 outbreak.
