Avian Flu is Scary: It still causes pink eye. However we urge vaccinations with regular flu shots and are buying millions more doses of dangerous bird flu vaccines.
We have a love affair with emergency vaccines. You get all the risk and our buds get ungodly profits. 20 human US cases, not even 1 hospitalized. So go get your vax.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-10112024.html
Since April 2024, 20 human cases of avian influenza A(H5) virus infection have been reported in the United States; 21 in total since 2022. Ten of these cases were associated with exposure to H5N1 bird flu-infected poultry and nine were associated with exposure to sick or infected dairy cows 12. This includes six cases in California, two of which were confirmed by CDC on Thursday, October 3, two on Wednesday, October 9, and two on Thursday, October 10. All California cases occurred in dairy workers on affected farms. All of the California cases are from different farms, except for one case reported this week, which was from a farm that had a case reported previously. The two cases from the same affected farm worked on different parts of the farm and are not close contacts of each other. The epidemiology of the situation continues to suggest sporadic instances of animal-to-human spread. All six California cases are reported to have experienced mild symptoms, including eye redness or discharge (conjunctivitis), and none were hospitalized.
While a seasonal flu vaccine does not protect against H5 bird flu, expanding access to seasonal flu vaccines among farm workers can prevent severe illness and help reduce the strain of the flu season on rural health care systems. Reducing the prevalence of seasonal flu also can help public health agencies better detect cases of H5 bird flu, should they occur. And fewer people infected with seasonal flu means fewer opportunities for the very rare possibility of co-infection with both a human seasonal virus and an avian virus.
Last week the USG ordered a lot more of 3 old bird flu vaxes that are unlikely to work and seemed dangerous in their original trials, which I wrote about previously.
