Ohio wants kids to get bogus covid treatments ⚠️ Don't feed cats raw meat or raw milk 🐱 Nonsense term "immunity debt" is still meaningless.
It’s hard to convince people, but they can be nudged.
Veterinarians, cat tragedies, and avian influenza.
There is no benefit to raw milk or raw meat. Pasteurization and cooking exists.
CIDRAP Los Angeles County confirms avian flu in cat deaths as more cases suspected Lisa Schnirring December 19, 2024 The three cats with suspected infections don't have any known exposure to raw milk, and investigators are examining other potential sources of the virus, including raw meat. People exposed to the three cats are under symptom monitoring and have been offered antiviral prophylaxis.
I stopped letting my cats get raw chicken about 2 years ago because of concerns. Now I just bake the bits trimmed off separately for the cats. Wearing a mask and gloves tending to a bird feeder is a good idea. As a precaution about a year or so ago I moved the bird feeders several feet further from the window with the cat tree where cats sit to watch the birds at the bird feeder.
There is no benefit to drinking raw milk - pasteurization exists for a reason. I would avoid dairy that’s not pasteurized even without bird flu. And it appears that when cats drink raw milk contaminated with H5n1 it’s fatal and absolutely not worth the risk.
Someone sent me a link to a tiktok video by a veterinarian in Michigan who says that there’s not a whole lot of guidance around cats and avian flu, and mentions how it’s pretty out there that most veterinary offices are not masking regularly, while this is a risk as well as covid and the rest of it. So veterinary offices could be a risk, when people take their infected cats there with nobody masked or maybe not even with a plan for infection control. I ask the veterinarian and the techs to mask during our visits. I wish they were regularly masked, for our safety and their own.
There is no benefit to raw when the risk is proven to be so serious.
The Oregonian - House cat in Washington County died after contracting bird flu from raw frozen pet food - Dec. 24, 2024 The food tested positive for an H5N1 strain of the avian influenza virus, and tests showed a genetic match between the virus in the raw and frozen pet food and the infected cat, according to Scholz.
🗞️ In the news
Rand Corporation - Getting Ahead of H5N1: Declare a Public Health Emergency, Expand Wastewater Testing, and Increase Vaccine Research and Availability—Sooner Rather Than Later - commentary - Dec 23, 2024 Without immediate nationwide livestock testing and isolation, expanded wastewater surveillance, and rapid vaccine distribution to at-risk populations, the virus risks mutating into a form capable of sustained human transmission—repeating the catastrophic delays of COVID-19. With the news of the first severe H5N1 case requiring hospitalization in Louisiana, concern for U.S. response has escalated. California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on December 18th, in response to more than 300 herds testing positive in the last month. Time is running out to contain this threat before it spirals out of control. On January 31st, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic crossed a procedurally important threshold when it was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization (WHO), and a Public Health Emergency (PHE) by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. These declarations triggered critical international and national mechanisms, enabling the allocation of emergency funding, the mobilization of resources, and the coordination of a global response to the emerging threat. Despite these declarations, the speed of government response was consistently behind that of disease transmission, highlighting a trend prominent throughout the pandemic. Despite these lessons, the ongoing H5N1 outbreak among U.S. dairy farms is proving to be a painful indicator of ever-present failures in response, coordination, and prioritization.
FORTUNE - Americans aren’t living as long as other high-income countries for a surprising reason. 5 major initiatives could help BY Alexa Mikhail December 3, 2024 at 1:09 PM EST Researchers explain that preventable causes, including cardiovascular disease, drug overdose, firearm-related homicide and suicide, and car accidents, have contributed to this widening gap in the U.S. and led to more younger people dying. COVID-19 and cancer deaths are also a contributing factor, per the report.
CIDRAP - Three nations report more polio cases; UK notes wastewater detections News brief December 13, 2024 Lisa Schnirring In its report, the GPEI also reported six more positive environmental samples in Gaza, an area that reported a human case this summer, which prompted a vaccine drive in the area.
Ohio wants to force doctors to give quack cure to kids with covid.
The Hill - Ohio Senate passes measure forcing hospitals to administer ivermectin, other patient-requested treatments by Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech - 12/12/24 3:28 PM ET Multiple high-profile conservatives — including President-elect Trump — touted both drugs as alternative treatments for COVID-19. However, research shows that the drugs are ineffective in treating the disease and preventing hospitalizations. Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug used to deworm animals, and hydroxychloroquine is a medication used to treat malaria. Under the bill, a prescriber can write a prescription for off-label use of a drug as long as they have the patient’s permission, anyone holding a patient’s power of attorney or in the case of minors, their parent’s or guardian’s permission.
The knock on effects of this would probably be many and very problematic.
It’s hard to convince people, but they can be nudged.
CIDRAP - More people, especially those with heart disease, get flu vaccine when heart-health benefits are underscored - Mary Van Beusekom, MS - Nov 18, 2024 A pooled analysis of three randomized controlled trials in Denmark shows that adult influenza vaccine uptake improved with electronic reminders emphasizing the vaccine’s cardiovascular benefits—particularly among those with a history of heart attack who weren’t vaccinated the previous year. A team led by Kaiser Permanente San Francisco researchers, which published the findings yesterday in JAMA Cardiology, said the low-cost, scalable intervention should be used to drive up flu vaccination in high-risk patients, such as those with cardiovascular disease (CVD).
Letter to Reps:
We need regulatory incentives for doctors to explain the benefits of vaccination to patients.
Feel free to copy for your own letters to reps.
Peer pressure to unmask - where is it coming from?
I’ve heard people tell stories where they go somewhere and are wearing a N95 respirator mask, and are prompted by others to take it off by people who say: “I want to see your face.” Sometimes by friends or family, or other times by complete strangers which is bizarre. If someone really wants to see your face that bad, then I have to assume that they’re asking you to facetime or zoom, right? Do they do that?
I’ve noticed in most of these situations it’s strange how it’s often the case that the people asking to see someone’s face, is not someone making serious attempts at maintaining a relationship. Sometimes these aren’t even people who are sending Christmas cards, let alone picking up the phone, and never mind zoom. Of course demanding to see someone’s face, especially when it means putting someone high risk in a lot of danger just to “see a face”, seems like a really bizarrely uneven relationship dynamic if you think about it, so it kind of makes sense. If I care about someone, I want them to be healthy and take care of themselves, whatever that means - I don’t prioritize my desire to see their face because… that’s just weird.
I suspect that maybe a little more is going on here in some of these social situations that is not really about the mask.
Anti-mandate IS anti-vax, once more, this time with feeling.
And, in fact, being against public health mitigation efforts at all is actually anti-vax because NPIs (Non-pharmaceutical Interventions) are actually needed to support the vaccines. And vaccination itself is a community level intervention, not an individualistic solution.
I’m getting a little tired seeing people cherry-picking stuff that they think doesn’t sound 100% anti-vax from some Trump cabinet picks. One must remember that anti-mandate IS anti-vax, as vaccine efficacy requires HIGH UPTAKE. That’s the way vaccines and public health works! Also, covid contrarianism itself is anti-vax, as it undermines the regard for the seriousness for the disease, and makes people think they don’t need vaccines when in fact they are needed.
Doing a “if you wanna” or trying to restrict vaccines to just the elderly (kind of eugenicsy!), or making vaccines hard to access if uninsured, or instructing public health workers to keep vaccines a secret - that’s all undermining vaccines, so it’s all anti-vax. There needs to be proactive vaccine campaigns or people, even those at high risk, just won’t get the message. And our safety depends on social contracts like vaccine mandates for high risk professions particularly. We really don’t want doctors and nurses all over the place that refuse to get vaccinated for stuff circulating, often among patients in the hospitals! People in jobs or living in congregate settings like schools or nursing homes need to be vaccinated for measles, covid, flu, and whatever else is circulating.
Think about how in our modern society with so much more travel, so much more consolidation of schools, healthcare facilities, and companies… This all happened after Johnson's Great Society public health programs and the introduction of vaccines. The idea of having these big consolidated schools, big hospitals and nursing homes, huge senior high rise apartments, large arenas full of people, big airports, and people traveling all over, but with the lack of public health provisions of a century ago… I don’t see how that’s going to work.
Don’t fall for the nonsense term “immunity debt” - it’s not real.
This term that was made up in 2021 needs to go because it has no meaning except for disinformation.
Quote:
“Immunity boosting” has become a very sensational, attractive term, especially for people who are struggling with recurrent infections and autoimmune disease. But scientifically it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Mechanistically, when you say “boosting the immune system” to an immunologist, we think “Well, that’s not ideal.” - Samira Jeimy - HealthyDebate - Mar 13, 2024