Humanists Take on the World

39 H5N1 Bird Flu

• Dustin Williams, Lauren Studley • Episode 39

Share episode

This time we talk about H5N1 Avian Influenza. Currently it's the cause of the high price of eggs, but it could be the next pandemic.

Topic - H5N1 Bird Flu

CDC: H5 Bird Flu: Current Situation
Wikipedia: Influenza pandemic
Sci Show: Bird Flu is Here

Contact information, show notes, and links to Social Media and the like can be found at https://htotw.com

The music in this episode is:

Welcome to the Show by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4614-welcome-to-the-show
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

NewsSting by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4124-newssting
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Ditty Pong by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4676-ditty-pong
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Disco Sting by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3653-disco-sting
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Sweeter Vermouth by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4450-sweeter-vermouth
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Support the show

Humanist Take on the World, episode 39, Bird Flu. Welcome to another episode of Humanist Take on the World. I am Dustin, and joining me is Lauren. Hello. All right, so I'm sure you've all seen the news about bird flu so much lately. Maybe. A lot of people haven't. It's definitely one of those things that when you are paying attention to it, you're seeing it everywhere, and when you're not paying attention to it, you're like, what? Oh, absolutely. And it's... I'm a birder, so I've definitely been following it over the years. Right. Like, we saw this... Yeah, you saw more of it than I did, because 2020, working from home, and you and Kylie going for walks to the park and then seeing all the dead birds in the park. I mean, a few. We were lucky that we didn't see much. But I do follow the people who, like, wait for the snow geese to migrate in, and then thousands of them are washing up on Lake Lowell. Like, that kind of thing was definitely... I was seeing that. Lake Lowell, for those of you that aren't from around here, that's just south of Nampa, Idaho. A little reservoir. And, like, seen stories about, you know, a couple years ago, elephant seal pups in the very southern tip of South America, like, a whole generation of them, a whole year's worth of them all dying of this influenza. We've been seeing stuff in the news lately about... Have you seen the price of eggs? Yeah, man. Yeah. Egg prices way up, egg shortages, plus... And I hear, I thought housing was the thing that was affecting us most, and then they jacked, they went for our eggs, and it's like, no, wait, we actually eat those on a weekly basis. This is far more important than a once-every-30-year purchase. So, my goal here is not to be the be-all, end-all of everything you need to know about it. You've been trying, as a person who lives with him, who has to sit through these conversations on a nearly daily basis. So, there will be, in the show notes, a link to a SciShow video. That is much longer than their normal ones. Like, this thing pushes almost an hour long. They put a lot of work into it with as much detail as possible. There we go. They did all the work for you. Good old Hank. He actually wasn't on it at all. What? No Hank Green on that one. They had a guest epidemiologist. When you're in the, you know, when you're the name's name for science communication, you can get whoever you want on your show. You don't have to be there. Oh, yeah. You got a team. So, I guess it's not just Hank Green's team. It's a SciShow. They're awesome. So, the, I think a good place to start with this is, you know, since we did all go through a pandemic not long ago, what are influenza pandemics? Like, what's the basic history on that? And from what I've read on it, there were five or six prior to the 20th century, depending on who you ask. One of the reasons is the 1890 Russian influenza pandemic is now being thought to be more likely to have been a coronavirus. Potato, potato at this point? The actual cause of the pandemic, I don't think, is nearly as important as the actual... Because the big thing that happens with either one is pneumonia, killing a bunch of people. Yeah. So, the worst of all of... The cause of death is your heart stopping. Therefore, it's a heart attack. It's like, well, no, there's all this other stuff, too. It's like, well, the cause of your pneumonia is... It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's pneumonia. So, of course, we've all heard about 1918 and the Spanish flu, which, depending on... Depending on what sources you're looking at, killed anywhere from 17 to 100 million people. 17 people? 17 million to 100 million people. Syntax is everything. Yes. At that time, there was 1.8 billion people in the world and... 1.8 billion people. Wow. I'm sorry. I just... We just... What? We just approached eight? Yeah. We're over eight now. We're over eight, and it's like, oh my gosh. We're approaching eight, yeah. Three years ago. And there... The infection... It is estimated that anywhere from 33 to more than 56% of the world's population was infected with it, resulting in, again, 17 to 100 million deaths, 17 million to 100 million deaths for a case fatality rate of anywhere from 2 to 10%. Some of that varies based on 33% of the population, it was more like 33% and there are some islands where, yeah, it could be much, much higher. Yes, but this is science we're talking about, so we're only worried about European descended white people. It's the only ones we care about when we're counting numbers like this, right? It was a long time ago, but those numbers are getting updated. We're talking about 1918. Yes. They really did not care about Native Americans. Some would argue they still don't. Like, they found, even the British government found very differing death rates between the British soldiers and Indian soldiers in the British Imperial Army. Because, of course, this all hit during World War I, and it spread like crazy through the trenches. Fun. And went from about 1918 through 1920, 1921 time period before it finally... Was considered over. Wasn't killing people as much. The new normal. It became a normal flu strain because by that point, enough people had some immunity to it. Because, realistically, typical flu season, even now, there's between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths worldwide every year from just normal flu strains. Yeah. Non-pandemic. And what makes it a pandemic strain is when it's a brand new strain that nobody has immunity to. It spreads throughout the world, and typically each strain has very high death rates. And then the death rate of that strain weakens, and then the new wave comes, and that starts it over. Higher death rate, and then that lowers down. New wave starts, just like we saw with COVID. Right. We're familiar with that now. Perhaps it was a lesson our grandparents might have vaguely remembered. The only thing I ever knew about 1918 was the jump rope song. That was the only thing I stuck from all that memory was the little, I had a little bird. Her name was Enza. It opened up the window, and it flew Enza. And it was a jump rope hopscotch song that was sang on school grounds. I was like, oh, so it was so part of the culture that it trickled its way down to the little kids singing songs about it. All right. I always wanted a parakeet named Enza for that, but I'm allergic. So that was the H1N1 first pandemic. Then there was the 1957 to 1958 Asian flu. it was H2N2, and the H's and N's, those are just different protein types that are on the influenza virus. So it's referring to the literal structure. Yes. Okay. Not like waves or new strains or anything. It is the structure of the molecules. Strains are more specific. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Then there was the Hong Kong flu of 1860, or excuse me, 1968 to 1969, H3N2, 1977 Russian flu, and the 2009 swine flu from 2009 to 2010. Each of those had a fatality rate of less than 0.2%. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Like, I vaguely remember swine flu being a thing, mostly like from New Yorker cartoons making fun of it or something. Like, it wasn't, it was a thing, but it wasn't something that was causing people panic. 0.2% death rate, that's just a few old people who were probably on their deathbeds anyway. Swine flu, it wasn't old people, though. Oh, okay. That was the one that was hitting- That was killing kids. Ah. And young adults. Not old people. 0.2%. Uh, but 0.2%. Okay. The reason, actually, that one was less than, that one was 0.01%. Yeah, I kind of, like, I remember it, but not- It's one of the benefits of, this is going to sound horrible, but if a virus is most strongly killing young adults, they are the least likely to die from it. Um, the- Survivability! My hypothesis on that one is that young children did better because their immune systems were less likely to overreact, and older people, who typically are the ones who die the most in a pandemic, are, still had some residual, uh, immunity from the Spanish flu and 1977 H1N1s. Okay. So, now we have H5N1. So far, an H5, as far as we are aware, has never been a human influenza that has been exclusively avian, as far as we are aware. Up till now, dun-dun-dun. H1s, 2s, and 3s cross species lines all the time. Um, the, but the H5 is, has historically been influenza only. Avian only. Or, excuse me, avian only. This particular type, H5N1, has closer-related strains that have infected a few people at various points since 1997. Um, at this point, through 23 different countries per current testing there have been a total of, well, between 2003 and January of 2025, there were 971 cases confirmed and reported to the World Health Organization, and that led to 467 deaths. So, at present, H5N1 has killed half of the people that have been confirmed to have it. Okay. Roughly a 50% fatality rate. The United States, specifically, has had a total of 70 cases. So far, only one death. Okay. That... Why are we talking about it? Because that sounds like, okay, it's just another strain of something that's killed a few people and back to business as usual. But that's not the case. That's not the case. Um, when the, the 70 cases in the U.S. have nearly all been agricultural workers. who know they are at risk and are taking precautions. 41 of those 70 cases were milk splashed in, the milk from an infected cow splashing into a dairy worker's eye causing pink eye. Gross! Sorry, that's just gross. Pink eye, not respiratory infections. So... just under half of the infections in the U.S. have not been birds, bird-related. Correct. It's from the cows. Which are mammals. Yes. Okay, so we're still calling it avian. It's avian because that is the species it was first identified in. Just like the 2009 was called swine flu because it was first identified in pigs. Okay. That doesn't seem like a smart way of identifying viruses. Just saying maybe with some influences......team needs to workshop this. With influences, they specific... to keep track of the literally thousands upon thousands of strains, they have to keep track of what species was it found in and in what location. Okay. And then what genotyping and molecular analysis have they been able to do to identify it as specifically as possible? Because then they can track which one actually makes human-to-human transmission. So far, there has been no confirmed one possible human-to-human transmission of H5N1. sense that isn't routine. That is when it gets scary is when it gets good at crossing human-to-human. As a general rule, like a principle of disease risk, don't eat from your own order. Definitely don't eat from your own species, but don't eat from your own order. because the disease risk is too high. Makes sense. Don't eat monkeys. Don't eat other primates. Chances of if they have something, you getting sick is quite high. The reason why mice and rats are really good disease vectors is because we are more closely related to them than we are to dogs and cats and cows. Those sneaky cows. but it's infecting seals. It's infecting cows. It is making its way towards who don't wear eye protection. They wear eye protection over everything else. I bet that changes this year if we don't deregulate every industry. they were wearing basically asthmat PPE except for eyes. So guess what guys? You're going to have to wear the glasses now too because you're getting pink eye and guess what? It's not just pink eye. It's freaking bird flu and you're spreading it around or could anyway. So out of yeah, so two cases have been backyard flocks wild birds or other mammals. Three cases are unknown as to where it came from. Okay. So is this an argument to not have raw milk? Absolutely. Ew, right? Apparently that's quite the Midwestern thing and elsewhere is to the raw unpasteurized milk. It's natural. Well, guess what? It's got influenza. So maybe pass on the raw milk for a while, guys. It might have influenza. It might. Most herds are not infected. But enough are. There's a reason why we pasteurize our dairy, though. And pasteurized milk and dairy products are of zero risk for influenza. they have thoroughly tested this and confirmed that H5N1 positive milk, the virus is all inactivated in the pasteurization process. There you go. So, that is completely safe. Eggs, the general rule I've heard is if you are getting commercially produced eggs and you cook them sufficiently and wash your hands thoroughly after handling them. Which you should be doing anyway. you should be fine. Okay. If you are taking standard salmonella precaution, you'll be fine. The biggest concern here is actually starting to fade, at least in the U.S. right now. And that, at least for this year, and that is somebody with an active other type of influenza infection picking up an H5N1 infection, and that allowing gene recombination to create a new strain of influenza that's an H5N1 that has the mutations needed for human-to-human transmission. Or, that needed mutation because they've identified, in particular, it's the ones that it's the form of the virus that has infected cows, that needs only one more mutation to be able to easily infect humans. Well, I'm willing to bet there's going to be some bad news here in a few weeks, because we're still in the tail end of flu season, and people are not being safe anymore. What we assumed was going to be the new normal after COVID backfired terribly, and now people are not doing even basic hygiene. there's no new normal, it went back to old normal. It went further back than that. I swear people are not washing their hands just to spite. Old normal was nobody washed their hands. So far, the CDC is watching this closely, the World Health Organization is watching this closely. Looking at the CDC website, and by the time you look at this, the numbers will probably be different, if you follow the link, because we are recording this on Sunday, March 9, and they update this daily, Monday through Friday. Yeah, so it will definitely be different. They have since February 25, 2024, so more than a year now, they have tested over 150,000 specimens that would have detected an H5 influenza infection. Of those, six were positive. Separately, since March 24, 2024, so almost a year, they have been monitoring over 15,000 people who are at high risk of exposure to infected animals. They have tested more than 850 people who have been exposed to infected animals, and found 64 of those to be positive. Okay. So, right now, animal to human transmission is not effective. Human to human is not likely. If that mutation changes, those numbers are going to change very, very fast. which is why you've been watching this. Yes. I follow it because I see news about the birds dying. That's what I, it's just part of, you know, some of the stuff I follow. And what was crazy was that there's all this stuff going on right now, right? we've got dozens of fires to put out in regards to stress. And then you keep harping on this bird flu. And I was like, dude, there's like serious problems going on in the world. Why are you worried about bird flu? And these numbers seem to support my end of the argument of this isn't something to worry about until you take into consideration that as soon as that crossover does happen, we're right in the middle of a brand new pandemic. Yep. And eggs will be the least of our problems. We have the benefit of seeing this one coming. And that's fascinating. That is fascinating. There is people whose jobs it is to study this stuff and they've been seeing this stuff coming and they can't share the information. or if they do, nobody cares anyway. There are senior scientists, epidemiologists who have been monitoring the H5 human infections for 25 years. Watching and waiting for this to make the jump. One of the reasons I keep bringing it up is I keep seeing news stories about it. You know, the person who died. That was the big one. Callings of herds. There was one out of a big cat sanctuary in Washington state that had a bunch of infections. Yeah. They had infections and they had to dispose of a bunch of their feed because they suspected it came in through feed and had to try to source new feed and were running on a shoestring budget and not sure how they were going to pull that off. Just release them. It's fine. It'll give those Bigfoot searchers something to keep their eyes open for. Didn't find Bigfoot but you did find a Puma. So realistically though at this point H5N1 bird flu whatever you want to call it it's not worth losing sleep over but this is something worth following and talking about with your wife every evening has new articles keep coming out about not every day especially not since I cut way back on how much news I'm looking at yeah and when cutting back on news we finally got a podcast out yeah I mean I'm I think there's something to be said there with the so far observed 50% fatality rate on H5N1 that is not likely to be how lethal it will be if it breaks out into the general population no it's never because the numbers are never that bad they'll guess 30% and then it'll actually be 12 like that's the human immune system we have a lot of benefit there I've seen estimates that they're probably undercounting because they're only testing people a lot of the testing has only been of people who have been very sick you know at the point of hospitalized and that makes fatality rates look much worse like with COVID very early on when they were only testing people admitted to the ICU with a respiratory infection that were negative for anything else that could have possibly caused the pneumonia only then would they test at that point it was like 20 or 30 percent were dying yeah because you're only testing people who were probably going to die already circling the drain if we were to assume the U.S. agricultural worker numbers are more generalizable of they're testing everybody who is getting it and one out of 70 dying that puts it closer to the lethality level of COVID-19 and less lethal than the 1918 Spanish flu realistically this will be somewhere between when it does make the jump and it is almost definitely a win not an if it's going to be ugly yeah yeah these always are fortunately as a world we've just gotten some good practice at what works and what doesn't and I'm sure most of our governments are going to just completely ignore all of that yes it's going to be up to individuals doing what is right to protect themselves and protect others um won't go into it more than that because I will start yelling I don't feel like yelling right now yep so uh humanity gotta keep it gotta keep it up if you want way more detail uh check out the scishow video it is really worth it um if you just don't want to worry about it then that's totally fine too you don't need to right now yeah there's lots of other things to worry about that we aren't talking about because they are way worse they are way worse in the next next pandemic you are getting pretty good at solitaire though so find your escape so uh if you want to contact us the information's in the show notes and on the web page you want to support the show likewise and until next time remember not all those who wander are lost you