The forgotten pandemic - Avian flu
And its growing threat
A couple of weeks back a subscriber asked me to write a short piece about the avian flu, but often, especially lately, I prefer bigger ones with more information, so I don’t flood inboxes with tons of e-mail. So here is a bigger one.
If you don’t know, besides SARS-CoV-2 I have been following at the same time the two other pandemics we have been growing through, and mostly only the human one got any attention. The attention to the hidden ones came later, one being African Swine Fever and the other Avian Flu. I will now link you to some of the pieces, with the first one being the most meaningful one, I will cover one of the strains here again in any case.
One super short on Colorado. And a major one tracking the twindemic. The one below is also pretty Beyond Mathematical Odds-esque.
For starters let us cover the primary issue since the possible future problems arise from this.
Earlier this year while pressuring the price of poultry and eggs to historical highs, suddenly the avian flu gave producers some well-needed rest, to rebuild their flocks, and adopt better sanitary measures, you know, the usual. That was more than welcome by almost any party involved, including governments. This was rather an abrupt change since the avian flu pandemic had been raging for months without no signs of “cooling off”, leading experts to analyze the data and declare that avian flu had the signs of becoming seasonal.
Later in August, farmers and others alike were anxious that the avian flu would come back, or otherwise was here to stay.
Infections began to fall in May, although some species continued to be afflicted. Black vultures, which pick up H5N1 when they scavenge carcasses, are still dying by the hundreds, says Rebecca Poulson, a wildlife disease researcher with the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia. “It’s still hitting those scavengers pretty hard,” she says. And in June, researchers in New England were surprised when a second wave of infections struck seabirds. “All of a sudden, it was like a switch had been flipped again,” Puryear says.
There H5N1 has already become a fixture in wild birds and has caused bigger and bigger outbreaks over the past 3 years, causing record damages to the poultry industry.
Much remains to be learned. In wild birds, for example, just how H5N1 moves from one individual to another and between species is still a mystery, says Tufts wildlife virologist Kaitlin Sawatzki. “It’s going to be a very complicated story,” she says. “It’s hard to predict, and we’re nervous.”
Earlier this month the Midwest in the US was already experiencing an “earlier avian flu season”.
Bird flu has returned to the Midwest earlier than authorities expected after a lull of several months, with the highly pathogenic disease being detected in a commercial turkey flock in western Minnesota, officials said Wednesday.
The disease was detected after a farm in Meeker County reported an increase in mortality last weekend, the Minnesota Board of Animal Health said. Tests confirmed the disease Tuesday evening. The flock was euthanized to stop the spread.
All the different strains have now reservoirs. The trend was followed elsewhere, France fear avian flu “is here to stay”, England, and many places in the US. The European Commission recently state the same as France. Dutch farmers have culled 3.7 million chickens so far, and complain it feels like it is an all year round thing.
The paper, ‘Avian Influenza Overview – March-June 2022’ said the persistence of the HPAI (H5) virus in wild birds since the 2020-1 epidemic wave indicated that it had become endemic in wild bird populations in Europe, meaning poultry farmers can expect it to be present throughout the year, with the highest risk in autumn and winter months.
Reducing poultry density
The paper adds that medium to long-term strategies for reducing poultry density in high-risk areas should be considered.
Regardless of origin, I find it fascinating that a pandemic that most of the world governments barely paid attention to for two years, now suddenly became a real problem, and the solution aligns precisely were insane green governments and European elites hoped for. The further constrain of the supply of animal protein.
This is already occurring in certain areas of the US, where you can bring back animals you killed from Canada. If you want a further perspective on how wide the bird flu spread is you just need to go on google news and write “avian flu” and hit enter. The politics behind this is not my point here, but at least you are now aware of where most of these events are headed.
My primary concern used to be protein availability, because of the dynamics already at play last year, I knew protein prices and everything else would increase substantially to what people were used to before. But as with everything, the more one tends to change perspective, which you can clearly read in some of my pieces, the human adaptation of different avian flu strains to mammalian hosts.
Different strains of avian flu have been slowly adapting to infect different species of mammals. Foxes earlier this year, among a few other animals, but as a first, we had a porpoise in Sweden recently, and a dolphin in Florida.
From every once in a while, to every month now we have human cases of different strains. Like the following from a child in Hong Kong.
And a recent strain was found, also from Hong Kong.
While this isn’t exactly breaking news, here the authors tracked down exactly from which region certain mutations originated. The “problem” with this novel H3N8 virus is a similar problem as we find in H10N3. It binds to sialic acid receptors. These receptors are commonly used by viruses, especially influenza to infect hosts, the problem lies when the virus adapts to infect a few of the receptors both mammals and avians share. Which now both strains use. H10N3 is of special interest.
Emergence of a novel reassortant avian influenza virus (H10N3) in Eastern China with high pathogenicity and respiratory droplet transmissibility to mammals
The two H10N3 isolates had low pathogenicity in chickens and were transmitted between chickens via direct contact. These viruses were highly pathogenic in mice and could be transmitted between guinea pigs via direct contact and respiratory droplets. More importantly, these viruses can bind to both human-type SAα-2,6-Gal receptors and avian-type SAα-2,3-Gal receptors. Asymptomatic shedding in chickens and good adaptability to mammals of these H10N3 isolates would make it easier to transmit to humans and pose a threat to public health.
If you read one of the pieces I linked above, you are now aware despite not being a problem right now, H10N3 moves fast in the few humans it infected, and it is devastating. All the strains adapting to mammals right now are of high pathogenicity. We find ourselves with a double whammy. The increasing likelihood of a substantial drop in the supply of poultry around the world (turkeys, chickens, eggs, byproducts, and one of them most of you make use as a health supplement btw), and the increasing adaptation and clear reassortment (recombination) between different pathogenic strains of avian flu, adapting to mammals, therefore humans.
The interaction with SA receptor by itself could be bad enough if the virus fully adapt to humans and reach epidemic level, any meaningful epidemic any of the strains mentioned here would entail a pandemic, because of their behavior. The major problem from my perspective is the following.
Before this makes much more sense, and the reader understand the impact of this, I need to finish my protein mimicry piece, and the one about Galectin-3, this is the second time I am hinting at Galectin-3, it will fit the overall puzzle.
SARS-CoV-2 itself already binds to SA receptor, which in turn can affect the outcomes of influenza infection, you can read about it if you search for “SARS-CoV-2 influenza co-infection” or “superinfection”, but as we will see, any meaningful drop in the SA used by H10 will drastically affect many of the long-term outcomes of a severe enough SARS-CoV-2 infection, but especially vaccinated and boosted.
Too much Galectin-3 and no off switch will inevitably lead to chronic disease and autoimmunity. I will publish another piece today, shorter, about IgG4, given some of the new papers published recently.
Than I will work as long as I need (couple days probably) on the protein mimicry, because it will tie a lot of this together.
Big thank you for all my supporters here and those who use KoFi whenever they wish, and everyone who shares it too ! Until later today.
I decided to postpone my IgG4 piece to tomorrow. From a small one to more pieces to the jigsaw puzzle.
OK, this is bad. Thanks for staying on top of this.