2) this is why we can’t arbitrarily just decide COVID is over and don’t need mitigations anymore. Pandemic doesn’t work like that. A virus will keep doing virus thing if we let it.
4) Let’s take every airborne precaution possible against COVID. It’s too early to drop out guard against COVID. Let’s keep masks for all indoor activities if there is poor ventilation or air disinfection—most places indoors—until cases low.
5) Double masking has benefits over just one mask. But double masking also depends if it’s the exhaling person or inhaling person. See thread 🧵 below.
7) PROTECTION time from different types of masks and how they combine if one or two people wear such masks. From 15 min to 25 hours if both wear KN95/FFP2! elpais.com/sociedad/2022-…
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⚠️Huge—HUMAN RESPIRATORY INFECTION BY BIRD FLU—A third human case of H5 bird flu just diagnosed in a Michigan farm worker. The individual worked on a dairy farm & didn’t wear PPE. ➡️However—“With this case, respiratory symptoms occurred after direct exposure to an infected cow”—including cough and other respiratory symptoms! Thus is the first bird flu case in which an infected individual reported respiratory symptoms. The 2 human cases reported earlier this year experienced only conjunctivitis (pink eye).
💡Why is respiratory illness significant? It means the bird flu virus has somehow evolved to go respiratory. “The significance of respiratory symptoms relates to the possibility of onward spread. In people, influenza transmits via the respiratory route. A person with flu virus in their airways could be more likely to spread the virus — if the virus has the capacity to transmit between humans — than a person with an infection in their eye.”
2) CDC declares: “this is the FIRST HUMAN CASE of the H5 virus in the U.S. to report more typical symptoms of acute respiratory illness associated with influenza virus infection”.
3) This is why CDC has adamantly recommended strict PPE for all dairy and poultry farmworkers and veterinarians. But the word is that farms are resisting PPE use. Hence this mess.
⚠️My god—RAW MILK WITH BIRD FLU CAN SICKEN—Latest raw milk bird flu study found insanely worrying results. Plus pasteurization heating doesn’t neutralize all bird flu virus!
📌Mice who drank raw milk infected with H5N1 got very sick! And starting from day 1.
📌Finally, 72 degree Celsius pasteurization heated milk did not neutralize the bird flu virus in milk—they used the heated milk with the virus to infect cells successfully.
This is EXACTLY the nightmare that me and @RickABright predicted & worried about! nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
2) Furthermore, raw milk with the bird flu virus can survive refrigeration for several weeks!
3) “Heat treatment at 72°C was performed, with the default settings of the PCR thermocycler (i.e., preheated lid at 105°C) or with a metal lid (heated to 72°C) covering the PCR block (see the Supplementary Appendixfor details). After heat treatment, samples were inoculated into embryonated chicken eggs or Madin–Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells for virus detection. Under these conditions, heat treatment for 15 or 20 seconds reduced virus titers by more than 4.5 log units but did not completely inactivate the virus”
HIP FRACTURE DEADLIER THAN CANCER for elderly. A new 🇨🇦 study finds only 1/3 of men & 1/2 of women age>=65 still alive 5 years after a hip fracture. In contrast, 5 year cancer survival higher. But we don’t focus on fracture prevention & nutrition enough. theglobeandmail.com/opinion/articl…
2) By comparison, the five-year survival rate for older adults is 85 per cent for men diagnosed with prostate cancer, 80 per cent for women with breast cancer, and 56 per cent for colon cancer.
3) Broken hips are both the most common and the deadliest (of fractures). Researchers noted that while women have much better survival rates than men after hip fractures, women are also far more likely to break bones in the first place.
“As unnerving as H5N1’s current spread in cows might be, “I would be a whole lot more concerned if this was an event in pigs’… Swine airways are evolutionary playgrounds where viruses can convert—and have converted—into ones that prefer to infect us.” 🧵 theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
2) “A flu virus that jumped from swine to humans, for instance, catalyzed the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. If there’s a list of riskiest animals for an avian flu to infiltrate, “pigs are clearly at the top,” Webby said”
3) “To successfully spread in a new species, a flu virus must infiltrate that creature’s cells, reproduce inside of them, and then make it to the next host. This H5N1 has managed that feat in several animals, but so far, “we’re actually still dealing with a very avian virus,”
⚠️NO RARE BEEF!—@USDA suddenly admits (after Q&A pestering) that 120F cooked beef🥩patties experimentally inoculated with H5N1 virus still had surviving virus.
➡️“Cooking to… 120° F did show that there was virus still in the cooked hamburger patty, although at reduced levels."
2) Initially the @USDA only stated that no virus survived cooking to 160 F and 145 F. But they didn’t volunteer the 120 F rare cooking temperature results! Only after more questioning did they reveal 120 F virus survival. But so many folks eat rare meat! 🥩 DISCLOSURE CRITICAL!