My first thought when I saw the headline, “A new flu is spilling over from cows to people in the US. How worried should we be?” was ‘ if we find the flu spilling over from horses, will you encourage people to take Ivermectin?
My second thought, which was tripping over the first for the chance to be first, was so what? Zoonosis and seasonal flu go hand and hoof, paw, claw, or whatever.
Other thoughts challenging the first two for primacy included “we are ‘animal’ reservoirs” and “why would we trust anything that anyone claiming expert knowledge had to say about it or from the media filter (in this case NPR) through which it had been broadcast?”
My brain was a busy place in the microseconds after reading a headline about how the cow flu might jump over to people. But if the SARS CoV2 WIV (Wuhan virus) debacle has taught us anything, it is that the Public Health Industrial Complex does not consider public health its priority. Fear, power, and money trip over each other to be first, and somewhere downstream, there is an asterisked footnote about people and how they help achieve the other three.
Given those sobering observations, the World Health Organization, and if you can’t trust the WHO, WHO can you trust (/sarcasm), says,
There are four types of influenza viruses: types A, B, C and D:
Influenza A viruses infect humans and many different animals. The emergence of a new and very different influenza A virus with the ability infect people and have sustained human to human transmission, can cause an influenza pandemic.
Influenza B viruses circulates among humans and cause seasonal epidemics. Recent data showed seals also can be infected.
Influenza C viruses can infect both humans and pigs but infections are generally mild and are rarely reported.
Influenza D viruses primarily affect cattle and are not known to infect or cause illness in people.
The apparent genesis of fearmongering (like killer bees, death hornets, or another Trump Presidency) is that Influenza D is not known to infect or cause illness in people. But what if it did?
The NPR piece is concerned about cow flu crossing between animals and maybe to us, and guess what? More than half the US cattle population has antibodies for Influenza D. OMG! Could it be because it is cattle flu, and they’ve had it? It’s not a head-scratcher. Nor is evidence of it in other mammals, including cattle workers, who also have shown evidence of antibodies to this strain. Again, so what?
Please repeat the words “not known to … cause illness in people.” I’m no immunologist, and thank God because most of them appear to be terrified of getting infected (at least with COVID), but there are gazillions of things our immune systems have adapted to address between heartbeats however many years you believe Homo Sapiens (heh – he said Homo) have been meandering across the surface of the earth. Most of them barely register (like COVID for many), and no one spasmodically tests for it because there’s no responsible medical reason. But a headline that reads “People get influenza D from cattle, and so what?” doesn’t captivate much like “there’s been no measurable sea level rise on the New Hampshire coast for twelve years.” That fescue doesn’t feed the right narrative cows. But the fear of a crossover flu pandemic does, and if you have the constitution to wade through NPRs 1500+ words to get to the end, you are rewarded with this.
“The USDA, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in emails that, at this point, there isn’t any evidence that Influenza D is causing significant harm to livestock, so there aren’t currently any surveillance systems in place for livestock or workers.” BUT! “… officials and scientists had a similar view of coronaviruses for a long time – that they weren’t a major concern because they only caused a cold.”
For a super-majority of the planet, that was all COVID ever was. And if the experts had encouraged doctors to prescribe the widely available and inexpensive human drugs Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, there would have been no WIV SARS pandemic or any of the policies it fomented.
It would have been like any other flu season from forever until today, as might Cow Flu EVEN IF someone at NIH is funding gain of function research in a “leaky” foreign bio-lab on Influencez D. And if they are, can we get it released in Anus, France or Weiner, Arkansas? Bitch Mountian, New York? Dickshooter Idaho? Boogerhole, West Virginia?
Anus Flu? Who doesn’t want to call out for work and tell their boss they tested positive for that?