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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3087 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 29, 2024

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https://fortune.com/2024/09/26/bird-flu-us-health-officials-h5n1-cdc-information/

This is concerning IMO. Avian flu slowly but surely gets closer to becoming a human pandemic. The CDC and other officals drag their heels and drip-feed information each Friday afternoon. Farmers are reluctant to test their animals. The authorities lack authority to enforce testing.

There has been a human hospital patient with bird flu in Missouri. Why is that interesting? Because he had not been in direct contact with likely animal sources. A household contact of the patient became sick but was not tested. Several of the healthcare workers who cared for the patient have become sick too. It's too soon to declare human to human transmission however. It may be the case that the healthcare workers got covid or something.

The problem as a whole is not taken nearly seriously enough. My only hope is that the vaccines for both animal and human use are developed quickly enough to prevent a pandemic, or to or mitigate it before it starts. It's a race against the clock and the officials don't seem motivated to run.

At this point, the medical establishment and government don’t (or at least, I really, really hope they don’t) have enough credibility left to enforce anti-pandemic measures. Even if avian flu does become a human pandemic and is widely acknowledged as such, it’s probably just going to have to rip through the population like any other transmittable disease. Those who get sick, get sick; those who die, die; and those who survive eventually reach herd immunity.

People in Medicine are really nervous, you are right that public health entities burned through basically all the credibility they had last time, but at current expectations this Avian flu would be be worse than COVID and U.S. healthcare (and likely everywhere else) has basically burned through every ounce of slack it had including things like people's willingness to work and mental health. A lot of COVID-denier types were able to miss just how close we were to total collapse because everyone was locked up at home but this could be really, really bad.

People in Medicine are really nervous,

Can you say more about this? Do you know anything more than what has been in the MSM so far?

The good news: it's pure "oh shit this could kick of." So far. I don't have any particular special information at this time but haven't seen anything more than all the other times it almost happens and then doesn't.

The bad news: all the revision, hysteria, and poor decisions about COVID has resulted in most people forgetting just how bad COVID was, and this will likely be worse. Our healthcare infrastructure may not survive another hit of that magnitude.

I can’t speak to most people, but I remember how bad it was. It was so bad that New York City had to bring in emergency 1,000-bed hospital ships in order to handle the overflow of cases. Of course, those ships sat virtually empty and unused, and their large crew of medical workers basically got to enjoy a free holiday, but still, they had to bring in ships! It was so bad, Covid-positive patients had to be rehoused away from the hospitals and into empty schools nursing homes, for some reason. It was so bad that nurses were so exhausted, they barely had the time and energy to make TikTok videos to help keep people’s spirits up as they were imprisoned in their homes. It was bad.

Well, I guess thank you for appearing on command and making my point for me.

And what is your point? COVID was over-sold. Wildly over-sold, and that's the enduring legacy of the pandemic.

It was never that bad, because it was over-sold so completely that nothing short of civilization-ending pandemic could have been that bad.

It was never that bad, because it was over-sold so completely that nothing short of civilization-ending pandemic could have been that bad.

It was oversold, it was also worse than the people complaining about it being oversold think it was.

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