It Was Airborne The Whole Time

An update on H5N1 bird flu.

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We haven’t heard much about H5N1 bird flu in a few months.

That’s not because it went away.

In fact, a recent piece in Scientific American confirmed something that many of us knew the whole time. While officials assured us over and over again that the virus wasn’t airborne, a new study by Emory scientists found “small aerosol particles in the air on farms affected by bird flu in California.”

As the scientists say, “It’s everywhere.”

They’re specifically talking about dairy farms, which scientists now describe as “ridiculously contaminated environments.”

This study challenged the prevailing assumption that dairy workers were catching bird flu from contaminated milking equipment. The Emory scientists actually sampled the air, which apparently nobody else had done. They figured out that cows do, in fact, exhale the virus. It basically winds up everywhere. So, the workers are catching bird flu from a combination of surface and airborne transmission. As work by aerosol scientists has taught us, that’s how viral infections happen most of the time. Healthcare officials have refused to listen.

In short, spread is happening thanks to “overbombardment of viruses in the environment.” It’s hitting them from everywhere.

Studies have also found that 7 percent of tested farmworkers show antibodies from previous bird flu infections.

So it makes perfect sense for the CDC to officially end its emergency response to bird flu now, citing a drop in cases. Right?

Right???

I mean, we can totally trust the administration that’s yanking vaccines from the market, endorsing raw milk, suggesting that natural immunity to measles can fight cancer, and either lying to us about how deadly viruses spread or just getting it completely wrong. Right????

A research team in India didn’t just run a genetic sequence on a new strain of H5N1 bird flu to discover that it has “undergone genomic mutations that significantly increase the threat of humans getting infected,” presenting a potential outbreak “that could be much more challenging to prevent or manage than the Covid pandemic.” And it hasn’t established a reservoir in foxes. The UK also isn’t seeing “an unusual rise” in H5N1 cases in commercial poultry.

I’m not worried at all.

If you’ve been following H5N1 bird flu for the last few years, you know just how appalling the U.S. response has been. You might remember the Vanity Fair exposé from last year. It documented widespread corruption at the USDA, all the way down to local officials threatening to fire veterinarians for talking about the virus. This was all happening well before Dr. Brainworm stormed in and completely shut down the response, which was already pathetic.

You might also remember Alexander Tin’s notes from phone calls between the CDC, FDA, and USDA last year, when officials straight up refused to expand testing because they didn’t want to alarm the public, and they didn’t want to recommend enhanced pasteurization for milk because it would hurt the flavor. Meanwhile, even Democrats helped legalize the sale of raw milk.

Now, here we are.

There’s only two reasons we’re not in the middle of a bird flu pandemic right now. First, it has to overcome a protein in humans that guards against flu. Second, it has to learn to spread efficiently between humans, not just mammals. So it’s a good thing those researchers in India didn’t find exactly that.

Of course, certain strains of the virus have unlocked those achievements in other parts of the world. They just haven’t taken off yet. Reports say they never spread beyond the farms where they were found.

That we know of…

Histories of the 1918 flu pandemic tell a similar story. The virus took a little while to adapt to humans. A mild version spread around the world. It had the perfect incubator in the trenches of WWI, with soldiers struck down by measles, a virus that can basically erase your immune system’s memory.

Fastforward a hundred years.

It’s just the perfect storm that the current head of public health in the U.S. is out there tactically encouraging measles infections, suggesting it helps train your immune system and even protects you against cancer.

Apparently, nobody in charge learned a thing from the last pandemic. They go around clutching their pearls about misinformation and public distrust, but they never stop to think about what message they sent over the last several years with their constant hedging about N95 masks, their widespread neglect of Long Covid, and their endless chant that “There’s no cause for concern at this time.”

Here’s why some of us are peeved:

We’ve been watching H5N1 bird flu, a virus with a 50 percent mortality rate in humans, spread and evolve for almost four years now. Instead of doing anything, our governments have put the dairy and cattle industry’s profits ahead of public health. They provided H5N1 with the perfect conditions for adapting to humans. They lied to our faces about how the virus spreads. We’re less prepared for another pandemic than ever, at a time when climate change is dramatically increasing the chances for more spillovers from zoonotic diseases.

The public currently believes getting sick is good for your immune system, and that viruses evolve to become milder over time. This kind of misinformation is even worse than anti-vaxxer propaganda, but it has spread like wildfire over mainstream media since 2022, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

Fortunately, you can be prepared.

It starts with a mindset.

Always remember that anti-vaxxers and eugenicists are in charge of public health now. That’s not an exaggeration. If anything, it simply repeats history. Eugenecists were in charge of public health during the 1918 flu as well. Newspapers literally ran stories telling the public that worrying about the flu would make you more vulnerable, so the best thing to do was to wash your hands and chew your food well before swallowing. I wish I were making this up. So, it’s entirely on brand for this government to suppress information.

Many of us already know the drill.

Keep masking. If you don’t know what kind of mask to wear, consult Aaron Collins on YouTube. If someone tries to tell you they don’t work, share this information with them. If you need a refresher on bird flu, here it is. Consider adding a good pair of goggles. If nothing else, just have them ready. Keep a good stock of vitamins and supplements on hand in case you get sick and your doctors blow you off. Keep running those air purifiers. Finally, get your annual flu shot. More and more studies are confirming something we talked about here last year, that exposure to H1N1 could offer decent protection against severe H5N1.

Many of us already know most of this, but it’s still good to hear someone else say it. We need to know we’re not alone.

You live under an authoritarian regime run by fascists who genuinely believe in letting the “weak and vulnerable” die from disease. You can’t trust anything they or their collaborators say. If you want proof, remember all the folks “on your side” who just recently told you bird flu wasn’t airborne on dairy farms, when they had no evidence to make those claims, and they were wrong.

Maybe H5N1 will never cause a pandemic on par with the 1918 flu. But remember, every piece of evidence we’ve had up to this point has told us that a virus with a 50 percent mortality rate in humans has been decimating wild bird populations and quickly adapting to mammals. What did our government do? They told us not to panic, quietly threatened to fire veterinarians, and let it establish a reservoir in dairy cows, while telling us there was nothing to worry about.

How’s that for pandemic preparedness?

You can’t be too careful.