This isn’t the first time cats have been susceptible to death after being infected with bird flu. Last year, over half of a cluster of cats that sporadically died in Poland were infected with the H5N1 bird flu.
It’s bridging species across the globe even. This shit is inevitable. All it will take is one blind spot.
Just in time for Vice President Trump to try and get another high score on the Assholes Who Killed Millions of Their Own People list. Hitler, Mao and Stalin would be so proud.
Vance is VP. We need a new term for Trump now that Musk is the real President. Maybe Junior President?
Transcription: political cartoon style in a single pane:
Three men in a car, the front holds JD Vance in the passenger’s seat and Elon Musk in the driver’s seat. A strap around the front seat secures a child’s toy steering wheel, which faces into the back. Trump sits in back seat, clutching the wheel.
Text on image: “So cute! He thinks he’s steering!..”
Credit given to: Michael E Luckovich; The Atlanta Journal- Constitution
Oh yeah. I had completely forgotten about JD Vance. I don’t have a couch in my house so he’s usually out of context.
Assistant president or assistant to the president.
President-consort.
Well.
Maybe we need to rethink the whole structure.
Putin is Pres. Musk is VP…? Turmp is Co-Chief of Staff, along with Vance?
You do realize that Biden just oversaw 4 years of conditions that led to explosion of bird flu, right?
Bird flu has been brewing for years. Biden has been president.
Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/24/health/america-bird-flu-next-pandemic-kff-health-news/index.html
Stop trying to slyly pin this upcoming pandemic on Donald Trump. The upcoming pandemic is a result of decades of regulatory capture and a for-profit Healthcare system that both Democrats and Republicans oversaw at the behest of their billionaire handlers. The issue is not Donald Trump; it is liberal capitalism.
Dude, stop trying to pin this worldwide avian flu outbreak on the United States. There have been animal to human transmitted cases in the US, Australia, Canada, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq, Indonesia, and more, and widespread infections are occuring in mammal and bird populations worldwide. New diseases decimating eukaryotic biota predates capitalism by billions of years and viruses have been coevolving with animals that entire time. The US healthcare system has absolutely nothing to do with even the 60ish cases of avian flu that have been detected in the US in humans, though with 60ish cases and zero deaths, all sign point to this not being a very serious illness for humans with access to western medicine.
Did you even read the article?
To understand how the bird flu got out of hand, KFF Health News interviewed nearly 70 government officials, farmers and farmworkers, and researchers with expertise in virology, pandemics, veterinary medicine, and more.
Together with emails obtained from local health departments through public records requests, this investigation revealed key problems, including deference to the farm industry, eroded public health budgets, neglect for the safety of agriculture workers, and the sluggish pace of federal interventions.
I have provided you with a plethora of experts who explain that this avian fku outbreak is directly linked to American officials dropping the ball, but those silly scientists and experts must have forgotten that viruses predate capitalism… what does that even mean?
You’ve provided nothing that indicates this avian flu outbreak is directly linked to American officials directly dropping the ball, only that the situation within the United States is worse than it otherwise might be due to the factors identified in the article. This outbreak has been ongoing worldwide for four years and has hit other countries much harder than the US, such as China, Egypt, Thailand, and Indonesia. This has shit all to do with capitalism my dude
God, I thought it was from exposure from being outdoors. It’s from raw milk?! Adult cats aren’t actually supposed to drink cow’s milk in the first place.
It’s from birds they kill.
Read the article: they were indoor only cats
Ah, so idiot owners feeding their cats raw milk is the only other option.
So everyone guzzle down that raw milk! HHS Secretary Kennedy says have at it, and no one will bother you about any pesky masks or social distancing and definitely not vaccines.
Keep that apple-flavoured horse paste on hand though.
Ugg, I am not looking forward to the cost to deworm our horses tripling again.
It’s the worm talking. He controls Kennedy now.
The worm died in his brain. I assume because his thoughts are poison.
That’s what they want you to think. Maybe it took over!!! ;)
Do they call him Dr. Worm?
They really should. All hail Taenia solium!
Mr. Mind
Still annoyed that he barely had any presence in the Shazam movies.
I’m pretty sure it’s just Plankton.
Raw milk … Raw meat
I mean I’m not an expert, but generally “raw” anything is not something you want to consume.
Hell, cats don’t eat raw meat in the wild - they eat fresh meat. Fresh meat has far less pathogens than raw. Still not as good as cooked, but better. Fresh meat means it had an active immune system prior to ingestion.
Edit: … Yes I know it’s a virus. This does not change my statement. I said pathogens.
Freshly killed birds carry bird flu. Cats can catch it this way and the current strain, H5N1 is 67% fatal to cats. It’s a horrific death too. Cats should be kept inside where they belong.
This is likely airborne, huh? Any idea what the incubation period is for cats? I’m seeing mixed information, but read that symptoms seem to progress very quickly. My cats are indoor only, but we usually have some fosters around, and I’m worried that we may need to put that on pause.
Full disclosure: I am not an expert.
This study suggests that this strain is capable of spreading via airborne water droplets. Right now there have been, to my knowledge, no cases of human to human infection confirmed, but that same study also suggests that it appears to be possible. As for cat to cat or human to cat transmission, nobody seems to know yet.
The influenza virus is capable of rapid mutation, though. That’s why we need a different vaccine for it every year. Plus, the more infections there are in a given population, be it people, cattle, or poultry, the more chances there are that the virus could mutate into a form that can spread more easily to other species. Right now, there is a massive outbreak in dairy and poultry farms in parts of the USA which means the virus is getting lots of chances to do that.
Thanks! In terms of fostering, my primary concern is cat to cat, although I probably should worry about cat to human also. My resident cats are otherwise healthy and I keep them up to date on their vaccinations, but at least so far, it doesn’t sound like that’s good enough.
The researchers next housed uninfected ferrets in cages next to infected ones to test whether the virus could spread through the air via respiratory droplets. They performed four separate experiments using ferrets infected with varying doses of the virus. Between 1 in 6 and 1 in 3 infected ferrets transmitted the virus to uninfected neighbors. Five of the six ferrets who became infected in this way died.
In my case, they would effectively be housed in separate cages (rooms of my home) for an initial quarantine period, but I would be going back and forth between those rooms without changing my clothes.
Not how that works at all. Virus =/= as bacteria.
I’m pretty sure the viral count in meat isn’t going to increase after death. That only applies to bacteria.
Raw milk recall? Shit, raw milk shouldn’t even be legal in the first place.
cheesemaker turns around
Feeding dangerous food to cats, and they die. That’s animal cruelty.
They’d eat raw meat in the wild.
I mean, they’re gonna be better off with processed food, sure, but I’d have a hard time setting the bar for cruelty below what they’d normally get.
EDIT: Oh, there are two cases, one with raw meat, the other raw milk:
The agency is also investigating a separate case, also in LA County, concerning a cat that has “tested presumptive positive for H5 bird flu after consuming two different brands of raw pet food composed of raw poultry and raw beef.”
They don’t eat raw meat. They eat fresh meat.
Raw meat implies that it’s been harvested and not prepared. Fresh meat means it was still in an immune system controlled environment prior to ingestion.
Still not as good as prepared meat but less pathogens than raw as time matters a lot.
I would LOVE to see this prosecuted, not because I want people who are hurting from the loss of a pet to be hurt more, but because not enough people consider raw milk dangerous and they really should. Even if the punishment was super small (because these people obviously didn’t understand what they were doing) it would hopefully help prevent future incidents.
Feeding a human baby raw milk would land someone in jail. (Or, I hope…)
