#fluisairborne — Public Fediverse posts

#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 :virus: really must be airborne?! 💨

:questionbox: Were the birds not at other risk?
👉 These chickens are kept at "the highest biosecurity standards." ⛓️🔒⛓️ [1]

:questionbox: 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]

:questionbox: 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]

:questionbox: 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]

:questionbox: Was it even really the same disease, for sure?
👉 "genetic identity ✔️ between the H5N1 strains in the donor and recipient farms" [1]

:questionbox: Maybe it got in sooooome other way?
👉 "all possible alternative routes of infection during this period were excluded by our 🕵️ field investigation." [1]

:questionbox: 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

@major

Well, we now know how to stop #airborne #pandemics.

(#CovidIsAirborne; #FluIsAirborne)

We stop it with #HEPA filters, #CorsiRosenthalBoxes. And with #N95 / #N99 / #P100 #elastomeric #respirator #masks.

But right now DOCTORS are blithely mass-infecting patients -- and of course nowhere else is doing anything either -- so our society is basically doing nothing and helping the virus spread.

We should try doing something.

I prepared a handout for doctors. https://nerode.org/clean-air