Post Reply - A new pandemic

Virology

   DJ, There is a seperate item on measles in 2025 on latest news...NL, Vietnam, Morocco, Romania etc. also in high numbers...NL in the first three months of 2025 has already had more cases of measles then in all of 2024-wich in itself was also an active year...
TB also increasing in NL...like in many other places...

H5 (etc) in cattle https://afludiary.blogspot.com/2025/03/virology-detection-of-antibodies.html or https://afludiary.blogspot.com/2025/03/virology-detection-of-antibodies.html ;

Since then, HPAI H5 has turned up in hundreds of cattle herds, along with sporadic spillovers into goats, alpacas, pigs, and most recently a sheep in the UK.  Quite frankly, the more we look, the more we find that H5 in livestock is more common than we knew. 
All of which brings us to a new study, published this week in Virology, which looks for IAV antibodies in United States cattle in the year prior to the discovery of H5N1 in dairy cows.  And once again, we find that evidence of (non-H5) IAV infection was common across a wide sampling of serum samples taken in 2023 and early 2024. 
Of particular note, this study found that IAV infection isn't limited to lactating dairy cows.  Male cattle (bulls and steers) were just as likely to carry antibodies to IAV as cows and heifers.

DJ, all types of flu may spread more widely then humans...
These findings indicate that co-infection with IAVs might occur in some individual cattle. Considering that the H5N1 HPAIV is circulating in dairy cattle herds (8) and cattle can be infected with human and swine IAVs, reassortment of IAVs from different species might happen in cattle (10), generating novel genotypes of H5Nx virus with pandemic potential or at least with increased ability for zoonotic transmission.

DJ, "One Health" realizing often animal and human health issues do mix however is costly...Ignoring it may -at the end- cost more...

While this new information should inspire a paradigm shift in the way we deal with IAV in livestock, we have a long history of denying potential health threats and of maintaining the status quo when facts are either inconvenient, expensive, or difficult to deal with. 
But at least with the help of this kind of research, we'll know why we failed.

DJ, NL has over 100 million farm animals-most poultry...we have millions of pets...Realizing the health risks may result in decreasing meat consumption increase of meat/food prices...oat-milk may soon become the better option...

We have to change the system-what we eat...But just like with climate changing habbits seems to be asking to much...Learning the hard way...