Rising #Covid and #Flu cases are straining #SouthCarolina hospitals as winter approaches, while a #Measles #Outbreak poses a significant contagion threat.
Whether or not you are vaccinated...
Whether you wash your hands or not...
Whether or not you are careful when handling food...
And can stay in the air HOURS after the infected person has left!
#MaskUP & Stay Safe 😷🫶
Ottawa Public Health, riddled with COVID, Flu, and other respiratory outbreaks in their hospitals and care homes, and where three children have died from from the flu already - puts out a statement about how to protect yourself and your children.
You may have already guessed but they want you to make sure you get vaccinated, wash your hands and sneeze into your elbow. Oh and *consider* wearing a mask of some variety if that's ok with you.
__
"In addition to getting vaccinated, taking additional preventive steps can help further protect others:
-Wash your hands often
-Avoid touching your face with
unwashed hands
-Cover coughs and sneezes with your sleeve or a tissue
-Stay home if you are sick
-Avoid visiting people in long term care or retirement homes and hospitals of you are ill
-If you are sick, or at higher risk of severe illness, consider wearing a mask in crowded or indoor public spaces."
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https://ottawa.ca/en/city-hall/city-news/newsroom/statement-regional-medical-officers-health-sharp-rise-serious-flu-cases-children
#Ottawa #PublicHealth #Flu #COVID #FluIsAirborne #CovidIsAirborne #RsvIsAirborne #MeaslesIsAirborne
#COVID cases and deaths continue to drop in #NYC the week ending December 6, but #flu and #RSV cases continue to rise.
The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene doesn't publish absolute numbers of hospitalizations for #influenza and the #RSVirus, only the percentage of emergency room visits. That doesn't really help me decide whether to host in-person karaoke!
#COVIDIsNotOver and the #FluIsAirborne #RSVIsAirborne so I #WearAMask in elevators, trains, buses, doctors' offices, and markets!
So H5N1 
really must be airborne?! 💨
Were the birds not at other risk?
👉 These chickens are kept at "the highest biosecurity standards." ⛓️🔒⛓️ [1]
Ok but maybe humans broke the rules?
👉 there was a "complete absence of any interaction between the companies, even through third parties involved in feed replenishment, waste disposal or the transport of carcasses to rendering plants. All farms used their own well water supplies. In addition, the employees were not allowed to keep their own poultry. Therefore, in view of the biosecurity measures in place, the possibility of human-associated secondary spread [...] can be excluded." [1]
Wouldn't different caged birds 🐔 have different exposures to outside air though?
👉 "It is noteworthy that in the affected houses, the infection and subsequent mortality started in the areas closest to the air inlets" [1]
8km long transmission though? Wouldn't that require the wind to line up just right?
👉 temperatures were 🌡️ warm and stable, keeping between 6°C and 11 °C, and "conditions were remarkable [...] with continuous wind from the west or southwest (250-300 degrees), [...] at the highest wind speeds [...] enabling the virus to reach [downstream birds] within 13-22 min" [1]
Was it even really the same disease, for sure?
👉 "genetic identity ✔️ between the H5N1 strains in the donor and recipient farms" [1]
Maybe it got in sooooome other way?
👉 "all possible alternative routes of infection during this period were excluded by our 🕵️ field investigation." [1]
but another result found no influenza in the air!
👉 "the failure to detect IAV particles away from infected farms must not be taken as evidence of the infeasibility of windborne spread. Indeed, when sampling was correlated with careful estimation of wind direction, IAV particles were detected in air collected up to 1.5 and 2.1 km from affected farms, indicating true wind-mediated dispersal."
5/5 🧵about [1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.12.637829v1.full.pdf
#H5N1 #birdFlu #influenza #fluIsAirborne #influenzaIsAirborne #windborne #windborneTransmission
Could H5N1 be spread for multiple kilometres by air?
"some reports have proposed that windborne spread plays a significant role in IAV [Influenza A Virus] transmission over longer distances under suitable weather conditions.
➡️ In studies of the severe H7N7 HPAI [Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza] outbreak in the Netherlands in 2003, one study claimed that wind spread accounted for 18% and another 24% of transmission events up to 25 km.
➡️ Similarly, during the 2007 equine H3N8 influenza outbreak in Australia, 81% of infections within a cluster of 437 horse farms were attributed to windborne spread over a distance of 1-2 km.
➡️ Around the same time, the serological screening of turkeys in Minnesota in 2007-08 revealed that turkey premises within a 1.9 km radius of swine farms were most likely to test seropositive for H3N2 and H1N1 IAVs, thereby suggesting windborne transmission.
➡️ And during the 2014-15 multistate H5N2 HPAI outbreak in the USA, it was estimated that up to 39% of farms in Iowa alone could have experienced windborne infection within a radius of 8.5 km"
1/🧵from this preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.12.637829v1.full.pdf
h/t @JoePajak
#H5N1 #birdFlu #influenza #fluIsAirborne #influenzaIsAirborne #respiratoryDiseasesAreAirborne #pandemic #publicHealth #health #disease
"An additional experiment performed in a full-scale house shows that 46.8% of [fluorescent particles] formerly seeded on clothing resuspended from clothing and dispersed around the house during the 1-h period of light walking at a speed of 60 steps/min."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360132321009720
#PublicHealth #ResuspendedAerosols #CovidIsAirborne #FluIsAirborne
"Rapid spread of H5N1 bird flu through California dairy herds suggests unknown paths of transmission. Experts are skeptical that USDA's theory of viral spread is telling the whole story.
[...] A USDA spokesperson told STAT in an email that all the research to date suggests that transmission of H5N1 between cattle is largely believed to be due to fomites — that is, objects that come into contact with cattle that carry the virus on them, for example milking equipment and people’s clothing" [1].
The USDA is still bending over backwards to avoid the overwhelming likelihood that bird flu is spreading between cows through the air, based on -- from what I can tell -- evidence from *ferrets,* who were infected with bovine-isolated H5N1 and did not shed much of it into the air [2]. The USDA's Agricultural Research Service could go into barns with air samplers and settle this for good, but won't 🫠
1. https://www.statnews.com/2024/12/20/california-h5n1-bird-flu-emergency-declaration-avian-flu-spread-dairy-cattle/
2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-024-01885-6
"Here we use air-sampling devices to continuously sample infectious influenza viruses expelled by experimentally infected ferrets. The resulting quantitative virus shedding kinetics data resembled ferret-to-ferret transmission studies and indicated that the absence of transmission observed for earlier A(H5N1) viruses was due to a lack of infectious virus shedding in the air, rather than the absence of necessary mammalian adaptation mutations."
Spillover of avian A(H5N1) influenza virus to mammals may favour adaptation to these new hosts. Air sampling of infected ferrets shows that recent A(H5N1) strains, including one from a human case linked to the US cattle outbreak, are efficiently expelled into the air.
Just Your Luck, You'll Survive
Neil
Angus Andrea Grieve-Smith
Ⓥ🏴☠️
Lauralee Dukeshire HAS MOVED
datum (n=1)