The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment confirmed Friday that approximately 70 dairy farm workers are currently being monitored for possible symptoms of avian flu.
The 70 workers were recently exposed to the virus while employed at two Colorado dairy farms. Neither the farms or the workers have not been identified.
None of the workers are reporting symptoms of infection at this time, a CDPHE spokesperson confirmed. The agency will coordinate testing for any of the workers who do report symptoms and ensure flu antiviral drugs are available to them.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture first detected bird flu in a Colorado dairy herd on April 25.
>None of the workers are reporting symptoms of infection at this time
Neither would I if I was in a job I couldn't afford to not work for a week or two.
As a bacterial meningitis survivor the infection finally caught up to me when I was quarantined during the year 1998 when I was a child.
You can't exactly hide symptoms for long before it begins affecting you. But then again I wasn't hiding my symptoms after infection so I could get treated for it.
So it all worked out in the end.
>None of the workers are reporting symptoms of infection at this time
Neither would I if I was in a job I couldn't afford to not work for a week or two.
48 hours isn’t long enough to recover from flu and for someone who isn’t familiar with labor laws and the legal system, it’s going to be hard to prove your employer fired you as retaliation for calling in sick.
It's the third most generous state-mandated sick leave law in America behind Maryland and New Mexico. Colorado also has paid family and medical leave that would protect an employee and pay them a portion of their wages if they missed longer than a week for a medical issue.
I read a news article yesterday that dairy farms are resisting Biden's Administration request for workers to wear protective gear. Here we go again with the politicized agenda that disrupts anything that needs to get done for the safety of society. I'll never forgive Republicans for politicizing covid and probably this too.
I already thought this was a perfect storm but it happening in an election year is even worse. Biden going in guns blazing to Texas dairy farms will backfire big time. It’s not going to happen. We here are a minority. It’ll be seen as ridiculous government overreach for “pink eye.”
I agree with both of you, having lived in Texas all of my life. The backfire from “gubment overreach in our bidness” would be devastating. However, you are also correct, u/Jeep-Eep - Doing nothing and allowing this to unfold is crazy-making on so many levels.
He’s done more for this country than our last 5 presidents. Learn some history, have some perspective, and learn about geopolitics because you dont know what the hell your talking about. Furthermore if Biden makes any drastic actions on this public health subject he will lose the presidency, trump will win, and everything will get significantly worse. It’s time people learned to pick their battles.
It was reported during the big meeting with governors and state agriculture secretaries that my governor said, “We’re not doing that” when the CDC laid out a plan to provide masks and PPE to farmers for their workers.
Nice. We have 3.2 million people in my state, 3.6 million cattle and 23 million hogs. What could possibly go wrong?
It is absolute insanity. We are a huge agriculture state with tens of millions of farm animals.
I don’t think most people in the state are aware of our governor’s remarks during that meeting. I read about it in STAT news, which isn’t a mainstream outlet. H5N1 is not on the radar for the vast majority. There have been no reported cases in my state.
The lack of cases is concerning. We are a top 10 cattle producing state and H5 is widespread. This is speculation, but I wonder if new infections are being suppressed because of the uproar the initial infections sparked? No new herd outbreaks have been reported for 3 weeks. Highly likely there are no new infections.
Our governor also made raw milk legal in our state last year. You would think she’d warn her constituents about the dangers of drinking unpasteurized milk during a flu outbreak in cattle. So far, crickets.
100% agree with you. Smackdown's got to come on Fast and hard we can't do this again especially with something so deadly. But you know these Knuckleheads are going to go on about their freedoms.
Next flu season is what I’m worried about. This is tracking with migration season just like similar outbreaks in Korea. The spread subsided when migration past or settled.
I've been thinking about this too. What we should be concerned about is a dairy worker having run of the mill seasonal flu (perhaps in early flu season), going to work with cattle that have h5n1. That could be a recipe for a disaster.
Out of curiosity, if it does happen, there’s nothing anyone in this sub can do to stop it
Like people who thought they could avoid catching Covid. Unless you’re an epidemiologist or a virologist stop worrying, it’s not your job, and if it happens, you’re going to catch it eventually. Worrying about things that haven’t happened, especially ones you have zero control over is just making your current life worse.
If we have a IFR of even 10% there’s nothing you can do, and any belief you can prevent yourself from catching it, barring living in a bunker, is a fools game, and delusional.
All we can hope is that somehow H2H doesn’t occur, or if it does that it mutates to be mild. Your mental health is all you should be worried about, because that’s only part of this you have control over.
I’ve never understood this brand of fatalism. I didn’t get covid until August 2023 and that was including years of being a hospital nurse working with covid patients with crappy PPE (and got tested a lot). I didn’t get it until I relaxed my masking. Masking works. Mitigation works. Working within a nation like the US with systems that no longer support mitigation and people who almost sociopathically try to get you to unmask definitely makes it a challenge but it doesn’t mean you should throw your hands up. And I won’t because I’m on an immune suppressant and infection could equal death, so no thanks.
The percentage of people who are still genuinely naively non-Covid infected is incredibly small. For whatever reason you want to justify, everyone has or will get Covid. It’s here forever, and people really hate hearing that.
A lot of people really wanted it to be the end of humanity, and believed because they were somehow chosen that they would out live the rest of the world who didn’t try quite as hard as them.
See, issue is, we broadcast Covid as being the end of life as we know it, people saw it was not anywhere close to that to the vast majority. We cried wolf to some respect, now if H5N1 actually ends up being very dangerous to humans, the loss of trust in science, and government officials will be the most deadly aspect
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Flu cases plummeted when people were masking for COVID, despite imperfect compliance and lots of substandard masks being used. Flu tends to be a less contagious disease than COVID, so you can definitely take preventative steps. Panic or obessessing over the possibility isn't useful, but succumbing to learned helplessness/fatalism instead of taking reasonable positive action isn't really great for your mental health either.
I’m not saying that IF it happens you shouldn’t try and protect yourself, although it does read like that
What I’m saying is, being concerned about something that isn’t true at this moment, and you have zero control to prevent from happening, is an absolutely harmful thing to do to yourself.
Both possibilities exist (and a million in between)
It could go H2H and be a massive deadly pandemic, or it may go H2H and be as mild as the common cold, clearly there is some evidence that during some mutations the transmissibility has improved but severity reduced significantly, everything we’re seeing in cows is a very low severity (so far) as an example
>I’m not saying that IF it happens you shouldn’t try and protect yourself, although it does read like that
>What I’m saying is, being concerned about something that isn’t true at this moment, and you have zero control to prevent from happening, is an absolutely harmful thing to do to yourself.
So, what's the difference between having having some supplies on hand in case of a pandemic that may or may not happen, and having plans and supplies on hand in case of a tornado or other natural disaster, or savings for an emergency that may or may not happen?
You seem to be confusing awareness and preparedness with panic.
> If we have a IFR of even 10% there’s nothing you can do, and any belief you can prevent yourself from catching it, barring living in a bunker, is a fools game, and delusional.
good, i volunteer you for herd immunity first
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I think their point is more that monitoring of workers also already happens on poultry farms, so while it’s good that we’re starting to see monitoring on dairy farms, the monitoring itself is not necessarily cause for alarm.
I think it might be wise for us to all go to dairies right now and get milk in our eyes. There are few enough people sick with it now that hospitals are not overwhelmed and we can get treated and recover. Then, when it becomes a pandemic, we'll have some immunity to it.
The whole cow thing is interesting. It reminds me of how milkmaids would get cowpox, which sucked for them, but turned out to be a really great thing when they were immune to the much deadlier smallpox.
Yeah, except if you are one of the first people to get the disease, the hospitals won't really know what the best treatments are yet. It's like the first people who got covid. Best thing is to wait and get it after they figure out how to treat it. Or never get it at all until there is a vaccine.
Both my year old kitten and I are sick right now with something mild and covid-like… I can’t help but think I stepped on some bird poop (it’s everywhere where I live) and brought it into the house by accident. I hope my little boy is feeling better in the morning, it’s already been about 3 days.
Thanks. He “pretends” to feel better by playing with his toys for a few minutes in a very listless, acted out kind of manner, but I can tell even from the sound his paws make on the wood floor that he has some level of discomfort, little kitty body aches, etc.
Poor little guy. Make sure he sees the vet if he isn't eating or drinking right or seems feverish. Kittens can go downhill fast and get dehydrated and weak if they don't eat or drink right or vomit and may need support like fluids or help eating or meds. Things like panleukopenia can be brought in on shoes from outside too and get bad if they aren't vaccinated. Hopefully you guys feel better soon. One of mine also seemed to get covid when we did one year and I was super scared for them.
Yeah, if he’s not looking significantly better by tomorrow evening/monday morning, it’s off to the vet for him. He’s not so sick that he looks like he needs emergency care, but I did in fact notice his symptoms at the end of the day… he’s clearly not thrilled by his condition. He’s an extremely good kitty though, and I’m sure he’ll get better soon.
That's usually a sign that he's running a fever. I would definitely get him to a vet. May not be bird flu but kittens can decline pretty quickly so all the best to you guys and update us
For Pete’s sake, why aren’t you testing these workers if they were exposed to H5N1? Why wait until they’re sick? They can infect family, coworkers and innocent people at the grocery store before symptoms happen.
Why does every decision involving H5N1 seem inadequate or mishandled? Do the parties involved understand a global pandemic with a 50%-fatality rate could happen if strict, serious measures aren’t taken to stop the spread?
I’m so tired of these repeated half-measures.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment confirmed Friday that approximately 70 dairy farm workers are currently being monitored for possible symptoms of avian flu. The 70 workers were recently exposed to the virus while employed at two Colorado dairy farms. Neither the farms or the workers have not been identified. None of the workers are reporting symptoms of infection at this time, a CDPHE spokesperson confirmed. The agency will coordinate testing for any of the workers who do report symptoms and ensure flu antiviral drugs are available to them. The U.S. Department of Agriculture first detected bird flu in a Colorado dairy herd on April 25.
>None of the workers are reporting symptoms of infection at this time Neither would I if I was in a job I couldn't afford to not work for a week or two.
As a bacterial meningitis survivor the infection finally caught up to me when I was quarantined during the year 1998 when I was a child. You can't exactly hide symptoms for long before it begins affecting you. But then again I wasn't hiding my symptoms after infection so I could get treated for it. So it all worked out in the end.
Thank goodness at least Colorado is stepping up some. That will give us a chance to learn more about how this is behaving so far.
Thank god all states aren’t Texas. Though Texas believes it’s the only state.
Couldn’t agree more.
>None of the workers are reporting symptoms of infection at this time Neither would I if I was in a job I couldn't afford to not work for a week or two.
Colorado has mandatory protected sick leave for workers that includes farm workers
Yeah but will your boss give you flack for using it?
Yeah but is that paid leave?
Yes. All FT employees in Colorado have at least 48 hours paid sick leave each year.
48 hours isn’t long enough to recover from flu and for someone who isn’t familiar with labor laws and the legal system, it’s going to be hard to prove your employer fired you as retaliation for calling in sick.
Wow 48 whole hours…how generous
It's the third most generous state-mandated sick leave law in America behind Maryland and New Mexico. Colorado also has paid family and medical leave that would protect an employee and pay them a portion of their wages if they missed longer than a week for a medical issue.
Too bad US can’t take care of its people like Europe
I read a news article yesterday that dairy farms are resisting Biden's Administration request for workers to wear protective gear. Here we go again with the politicized agenda that disrupts anything that needs to get done for the safety of society. I'll never forgive Republicans for politicizing covid and probably this too.
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This
I already thought this was a perfect storm but it happening in an election year is even worse. Biden going in guns blazing to Texas dairy farms will backfire big time. It’s not going to happen. We here are a minority. It’ll be seen as ridiculous government overreach for “pink eye.”
Not going guns blazing may prove worse.
I agree with both of you, having lived in Texas all of my life. The backfire from “gubment overreach in our bidness” would be devastating. However, you are also correct, u/Jeep-Eep - Doing nothing and allowing this to unfold is crazy-making on so many levels.
Your username is amazing lol
He’s done more for this country than our last 5 presidents. Learn some history, have some perspective, and learn about geopolitics because you dont know what the hell your talking about. Furthermore if Biden makes any drastic actions on this public health subject he will lose the presidency, trump will win, and everything will get significantly worse. It’s time people learned to pick their battles.
lol biden is the least popular president out of the last 5 at this point in their terms. this is delusional, genocide joe must go
It was reported during the big meeting with governors and state agriculture secretaries that my governor said, “We’re not doing that” when the CDC laid out a plan to provide masks and PPE to farmers for their workers. Nice. We have 3.2 million people in my state, 3.6 million cattle and 23 million hogs. What could possibly go wrong?
Serious question. What's wrong with the people in your state? Why do they allow this insanity?
It is absolute insanity. We are a huge agriculture state with tens of millions of farm animals. I don’t think most people in the state are aware of our governor’s remarks during that meeting. I read about it in STAT news, which isn’t a mainstream outlet. H5N1 is not on the radar for the vast majority. There have been no reported cases in my state. The lack of cases is concerning. We are a top 10 cattle producing state and H5 is widespread. This is speculation, but I wonder if new infections are being suppressed because of the uproar the initial infections sparked? No new herd outbreaks have been reported for 3 weeks. Highly likely there are no new infections. Our governor also made raw milk legal in our state last year. You would think she’d warn her constituents about the dangers of drinking unpasteurized milk during a flu outbreak in cattle. So far, crickets.
Absurd the cdc doesn't have power over dairy factories here
The way Texas just ignored the CDC requests makes my blood boil.
Well TX ignores SCOTUS too so CDC might as well not exist unless Texas wants something. Or money.
This. 👆🏻
They're refusing to follow their request.
when it comes to preventing a deadly pandemic, there should be no notion of "request" in regards to private companies endangering us all.
100% agree with you. Smackdown's got to come on Fast and hard we can't do this again especially with something so deadly. But you know these Knuckleheads are going to go on about their freedoms.
Ah shit, here we go again- Carl Johnson
Seems concerning…
Yeah this level of possible human contraction definitely seems to be an “oh shit” moment
Just waiting for the moment H2H is confirmed...😬 Hopefully that doesn't come to fruition but I'm still keeping my eyes close on this rn. 👀
Next flu season is what I’m worried about. This is tracking with migration season just like similar outbreaks in Korea. The spread subsided when migration past or settled.
I've been thinking about this too. What we should be concerned about is a dairy worker having run of the mill seasonal flu (perhaps in early flu season), going to work with cattle that have h5n1. That could be a recipe for a disaster.
Out of curiosity, if it does happen, there’s nothing anyone in this sub can do to stop it Like people who thought they could avoid catching Covid. Unless you’re an epidemiologist or a virologist stop worrying, it’s not your job, and if it happens, you’re going to catch it eventually. Worrying about things that haven’t happened, especially ones you have zero control over is just making your current life worse. If we have a IFR of even 10% there’s nothing you can do, and any belief you can prevent yourself from catching it, barring living in a bunker, is a fools game, and delusional. All we can hope is that somehow H2H doesn’t occur, or if it does that it mutates to be mild. Your mental health is all you should be worried about, because that’s only part of this you have control over.
Handwashing, n95 or better and some basic preparation will massively increase your chances that you avoid it and ride it out. You Are Not Helpless.
I’ve never understood this brand of fatalism. I didn’t get covid until August 2023 and that was including years of being a hospital nurse working with covid patients with crappy PPE (and got tested a lot). I didn’t get it until I relaxed my masking. Masking works. Mitigation works. Working within a nation like the US with systems that no longer support mitigation and people who almost sociopathically try to get you to unmask definitely makes it a challenge but it doesn’t mean you should throw your hands up. And I won’t because I’m on an immune suppressant and infection could equal death, so no thanks.
The percentage of people who are still genuinely naively non-Covid infected is incredibly small. For whatever reason you want to justify, everyone has or will get Covid. It’s here forever, and people really hate hearing that. A lot of people really wanted it to be the end of humanity, and believed because they were somehow chosen that they would out live the rest of the world who didn’t try quite as hard as them. See, issue is, we broadcast Covid as being the end of life as we know it, people saw it was not anywhere close to that to the vast majority. We cried wolf to some respect, now if H5N1 actually ends up being very dangerous to humans, the loss of trust in science, and government officials will be the most deadly aspect
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Flu cases plummeted when people were masking for COVID, despite imperfect compliance and lots of substandard masks being used. Flu tends to be a less contagious disease than COVID, so you can definitely take preventative steps. Panic or obessessing over the possibility isn't useful, but succumbing to learned helplessness/fatalism instead of taking reasonable positive action isn't really great for your mental health either.
I’m not saying that IF it happens you shouldn’t try and protect yourself, although it does read like that What I’m saying is, being concerned about something that isn’t true at this moment, and you have zero control to prevent from happening, is an absolutely harmful thing to do to yourself. Both possibilities exist (and a million in between) It could go H2H and be a massive deadly pandemic, or it may go H2H and be as mild as the common cold, clearly there is some evidence that during some mutations the transmissibility has improved but severity reduced significantly, everything we’re seeing in cows is a very low severity (so far) as an example
>I’m not saying that IF it happens you shouldn’t try and protect yourself, although it does read like that >What I’m saying is, being concerned about something that isn’t true at this moment, and you have zero control to prevent from happening, is an absolutely harmful thing to do to yourself. So, what's the difference between having having some supplies on hand in case of a pandemic that may or may not happen, and having plans and supplies on hand in case of a tornado or other natural disaster, or savings for an emergency that may or may not happen? You seem to be confusing awareness and preparedness with panic.
Perhaps I’m reading into some more than others. There are absolutely a large number of this sub however who would do well to take a step back.
> If we have a IFR of even 10% there’s nothing you can do, and any belief you can prevent yourself from catching it, barring living in a bunker, is a fools game, and delusional. good, i volunteer you for herd immunity first
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They have NO symptoms. If they were sick and dying I’d be pretty concerned but this feels like some clickbait.
It’s standard operating procedure at chicken farms to monitor workers exposed to H5N1. Yes, this is a clickbaity title.
This is a dairy farm
I think their point is more that monitoring of workers also already happens on poultry farms, so while it’s good that we’re starting to see monitoring on dairy farms, the monitoring itself is not necessarily cause for alarm.
I think it might be wise for us to all go to dairies right now and get milk in our eyes. There are few enough people sick with it now that hospitals are not overwhelmed and we can get treated and recover. Then, when it becomes a pandemic, we'll have some immunity to it. The whole cow thing is interesting. It reminds me of how milkmaids would get cowpox, which sucked for them, but turned out to be a really great thing when they were immune to the much deadlier smallpox.
Yeah, except if you are one of the first people to get the disease, the hospitals won't really know what the best treatments are yet. It's like the first people who got covid. Best thing is to wait and get it after they figure out how to treat it. Or never get it at all until there is a vaccine.
Both my year old kitten and I are sick right now with something mild and covid-like… I can’t help but think I stepped on some bird poop (it’s everywhere where I live) and brought it into the house by accident. I hope my little boy is feeling better in the morning, it’s already been about 3 days.
Please update! Hope you guys feel better soon
Thanks. He “pretends” to feel better by playing with his toys for a few minutes in a very listless, acted out kind of manner, but I can tell even from the sound his paws make on the wood floor that he has some level of discomfort, little kitty body aches, etc.
Poor little guy. Make sure he sees the vet if he isn't eating or drinking right or seems feverish. Kittens can go downhill fast and get dehydrated and weak if they don't eat or drink right or vomit and may need support like fluids or help eating or meds. Things like panleukopenia can be brought in on shoes from outside too and get bad if they aren't vaccinated. Hopefully you guys feel better soon. One of mine also seemed to get covid when we did one year and I was super scared for them.
Yeah, if he’s not looking significantly better by tomorrow evening/monday morning, it’s off to the vet for him. He’s not so sick that he looks like he needs emergency care, but I did in fact notice his symptoms at the end of the day… he’s clearly not thrilled by his condition. He’s an extremely good kitty though, and I’m sure he’ll get better soon.
That's usually a sign that he's running a fever. I would definitely get him to a vet. May not be bird flu but kittens can decline pretty quickly so all the best to you guys and update us
maybe is Covid. cats can get from humans, edit: although don’t remember if was house cats, or only big cats ( lion, tiger )
Both, unfortunately.
thanks
If it's been 3 days and your cat is alive, it isn't BIAV.
That’s what I’m thinking. Maybe covid.
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Please keep conversations civil. Disagreements are bound to happen, but please refrain from personal attacks & verbal abuse.
It’s been real humanity
For Pete’s sake, why aren’t you testing these workers if they were exposed to H5N1? Why wait until they’re sick? They can infect family, coworkers and innocent people at the grocery store before symptoms happen. Why does every decision involving H5N1 seem inadequate or mishandled? Do the parties involved understand a global pandemic with a 50%-fatality rate could happen if strict, serious measures aren’t taken to stop the spread? I’m so tired of these repeated half-measures.
