despazito:

kedreeva:

kedreeva:

kedreeva:

homeofhousechickens:

kedreeva:

Ughhhh. HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza) has made it to Michigan backyard flocks. It’s still across the state from me but that won’t last, and it’s been found in backyard flocks in several other states now as well. AI is a flock eradicator; if any of your birds get it, the whole flock must be culled and there’s a wait period before you can start over.

PLEASE bring in your bird feeders for the next few months to discourage birds from gathering together.

Even if you don’t have outdoor birds like me, you can help protect flock birds in your area by removing feeders and bird baths etc from your yard. This will help to slow the spread to flocks like mine.

If you are in the USA and have flock birds

Bring them in if you can. If you only have a couple, set them up indoors if you can. If you’re like me and you can’t, do your best to move food and water sources into the coops where wild birds won’t see them. You can buy bird prevention netting to wrap your run in, and tarp the top of it to prevent falling excrement from reaching your birds as wild birds pass overhead.

It should go without saying, but I’m gonna say it. You should also avoid going to places where others have birds (like auctions, swap meets, visiting farms or friends that have them), or allowing anyone that’s been where there are birds to visit your property. If you must have visitors, a 10% bleach solution in a tub for them to step in is the bare minimum of biosecurity so they don’t track it in on their shoes.

There are tests for Avian Influenza, which can be done without killing the birds. If you are concerned your birds may be showing symptoms of AI (sudden deaths, decrease in egg production, decrease in water intake, or other illness symptoms), you should contact your state agricultural department (in Michigan, MSU ag department and MDARD handles this kind of stuff, not sure for other states) and inquire about what steps to take to have testing done. They will be able to advise you on what to do.

Good luck to those in states where this is moving around widely now. I hope everyone’s flocks stay safe. Please feel free to add resources for your state if you know them. Many states offer free AI testing!

For people wondering YES if you have exotic birds like parrots this is still something to be worried about. And i would follow Kedreeva’s advice

Oh yes, waterfowl and poultry are the most sensitive to this, but it’s avianinfluenza. It’s been found in plenty of songbirds/passerines, as well as the birds of prey that eat them, and there’s zero reason why psittacines are excluded except that most of them live inside houses.

If you do have completely indoor birds already (like parrots or pigeons or finches) then you need to be leaving your shoes at the door (preferably stepping into a bleach footbath with those shoes before removing them), not allowing your birds down onto the floor (and cleaning floors regularly with something to disinfect), and not allowing your birds outside until this passes, which could be months. You also should not be mixing equipment between enclosures, and doing your best to keep equipment clean and sanitized.

This has been steadily progressing across the US as birds migrate. A small farm in upstate NY just had to cull their entire flock of 400. Hundreds of thousands of meat birds at facilities around the US have had to be culled. Turkey farms have had to cull tens of thousands. McMurray Hatchery just lost half their heritage breed flocks to a positive test at one of their larger breeding facilities. There are a half dozen cases in Michigan, getting closer to me. Iowa has begun a blanket cull radius where any flock within 2 miles of an infected flock must be culled, positive or not, to prevent it jumping.

New cases and the major culls that follow in their wake, are being reported daily, and this is still just starting. Migratory season doesn’t end until the middle-end of May. April has barely started. The total death toll so far is upwards of 15 million birds, and that’s going to continue to go up.

Please, please, please. Protect your birds, protect the birds around you. I am begging you to bring your birds in if you can; they will not like it but at least they will be alive to not like it. I posted this originally when I thought we wouldn’t be able to coop everyone, but I have made sacrifices in order to do so since, because this is getting very bad.

Stay safe. My thoughts are with everyone’s feathered kids.

(Current as of April 6th, 2022)

Reblogging to add that there is a current and often-updated map of HPAI case locations in the USA on the USGS site. States that do not currently have cases still need to be wary, particularly the closer you are to states that HAVE had cases.

This is the map as of today, 6 April 2022:

I also want to tack this information on to this main post:

HPAI is transmissible to cats and dogs!

Studies done in 2015/16 and since have found that cats and dogs can pick up this virus from infected meat (as in when they eat wild birds they have caught) as well as through respiratory transmission. Cats and dogs are not generally susceptible to LPAI, the normal strain in north america, but both were found to be susceptible to HPAI.

So, in addition to removing bird feeders and keeping any pet birds on lockdown as much as possible, folks with cats and dogs need to be aware of the dangers to their animals as well. Cat owners should keep their cats indoors or allow them out in covered catios only (you’ll have to read up and decide if leash time is safe, I haven’t looked into it) until migratory season ends. Folks with dogs should not allow dogs off-leash outdoors where they might be able to catch birds or touch bird carcasses. While HPAI mainly causes death in waterfowl and land fowl, songbirds are a reservoir species and can transmit it to mammals interacting with them or their carcasses or feces.

Please be careful out there. This is going to get worse before it gets better.

It is very important not to let any of your domestic fowl near wild fowl. dont let your ducks share a pond with wild waterfowl.

futureevilscientist:

semiramis-audron:

toomanywebcomics:

toomanywebcomics:

tiktoks-for-tired-tots:

There’s like. A ton of personifications. Including but not limited to the above:

Quarantine Man

The Taiwan CDC with a Disinfectant Gun

Hepatitis but a Boy Band

Syphilis with Gender (女) and other Bio Information

Varicella (chicken pox) and Herpes Zoster (shingles) as Children

The Plague, but Hot Lady (also with bio information)

Fuckboy Influenza

Measles, but Hot Guy

Lyme Disease with a Mech????

And, of course, COVID-19 in all their gender neutral glory.

There’s more but I hit the image limit. I’ve got a couple articles about them, too:

Taiwan CDC’s personified disease illustrations go viral in US | Taiwan News | 2020-10-24 09:10:00

Taiwan’s CDC illustrates Covid-19 and other diseases as gorgeous anime characters

Let’s make this post even longer because I have even more images saved. Next up, we got:

Tsutsumagushi Disease

Chikungunya Fever!

MERS

Pertussis (whooping cough) with a horrifying (almost body horror) headpiece and flute

Dengue Fever, the image of which literally made me stop breathing for a moment when I first saw it

Japanese Encephalitis (as… idols, maybe?)

And Zika Virus (so pretty! and for what???)

And some higher res images of the ones from the video (Legionnaires’ Disease, Viral Gastroenteritis, and Rubella). Unfortunately, I could not fit Rabies because of the image limit.

The lime disease mech is definitely supposed to be a tick

Also Rabies

if disease bad, why sexy

@captaincurnow​

unforth:

qillermeme:

Reason number umpteen I will absolutelycontinue to wear my mask after all this is done.

thefoxirving:

wizardstan:

feministism:

During the 2019 flu season in Canada, 46k people were diagnosed with influenza. That’s not people who “felt sick”, that’s people who went to their doctor or emergency, had a test done, and were told “yup, that’s the flu”.

Of those 46k, 2000 had symptoms severe enough to be hospitalized so they could be monitored.

Of those 2000, 600 ended up in ICU, connected to machines to breath for them.

Of those 600, 200 died.

2019 had a fairly average flu season.

During the 2020 flu season, that was 69. Total. Zero hospitalization. Zero ICU. Zero deaths.

The 2021 flu season is almost over and since people were “more comfortable” this year not wearing masks where they should have been the numbers are higher, but still only in the hundreds of cases, with zero deaths to date.

If anyone tries to tell you masks don’t work, there are statistically at least 400 people who did not die of the flu who prove otherwise.

Uh no, all those influenza cases got counted as covid instead. Think about it, why would masks nearly eliminated the flu but do very little to the spread of covid? They’re both respiratory viruses.

In June 2021, the cdc recalled their rapid covid tests for giving inaccurate results.

“CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses. Such assays can facilitate continued testing for both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 and can save both time and resources as we head into influenza season”. The implication being that the test could not tell the difference between covid and the flu.

Lab Alert: Changes to CDC RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 Testing

The flu didn’t disappear, it was recategorized.

Ok, so first things first I need you to understand that absolutely no one owes you anything.  You come here spouting easily disproven nonsense and I would be happy to let you be wrong except that somewhere out there is someone who will believe you.  You are a lost cause, I am not trying to change your mind about anything, I’m responding only for the people out there looking for information and overwhelmed by bullshit like what you’re spreading.

Second, I explicitly said “Canada”.  The CDC has absolutely nothing to do with Canada.  The fact that you mentioned the CDC is red flag #1 that you didn’t actually bother to understand anything you said, but we’ll keep going.  The Public Health Agency of Canada is the government agency responsible for tracking communicable diseases across Canada.  They put out weekly, monthly, and yearly reports about flu cases during the typical flu season.  You will note in this report that it is a major talking point about how low the case number was.  Impressively low.  These are real numbers.  We know this because the 2021 cases are higher, we’re still seeing laboratory tests for influenza being done.

Now, I will not discount that COVID probably reduced the number of cases being tested for, but even if total cases are 2, 3, even 10 times higher, that’s still a far cry from 46000, and there is one number I can guarantee we can trust is absolutely accurate: deaths.  We take death seriously, we take counting deaths seriously, and if someone is dying of COVID or influenza I guarantee the doctors know the difference, the treatments are similar but not identical, the expectations are similar but not identical, the symptoms are similar but not identical.  If someone is in ICU the doctors and nurses know whether that person has COVID or influenza, for it to be otherwise would be dangerous.  And in 2020 those numbers were 0.  Even if actual cases were higher than 69, the important takeaway from the report is that no one DIED OF THE FLU.  Typically this is 200 or so, but in 2020 that was zero.  According to the most recent weekly report, as of March 12th there have been 5 people in ICU with influenza and still, zero deaths.

Third, let’s go with that CDC report you’ve linked: I’ve read it and there is nothing anywhere in the brief or the any of the linked articles to suggest it’s being recalled because it gave false positives on influenza.  In fact, the CDC explicitly recommends switching to a test which can detect both, since flu season was coming up anyway.  Why don’t you think about it?  If the test was inaccurate by yielding false positives due to influenza, why would they get rid of it while recommending using something else which does exactly that?  The assay being recalled was only ever for emergency use only anyway, labs and hospitals had had much more accurate tests long before this recommendation.

Fourth, the report was released in June 2021 talking about those recommendations, recommendations which were not yet implemented, specifically the report is giving plenty of time for labs to make the changes. The 2020 influenza season was from August 2020 to August 2021: the season was almost over when the recommendation to start using combined tests was made.  Assuming everyone started getting hybrid tests the day after the recommendation came out, how do you explain the first 10 months?  Do you think it’s normal to have almost no cases and then suddenly 46000 cases in June and July?  Because summer isn’t typically when people catch the flu, it’s usually more November-February.

Fifth and finally, and this is the big one: we know masks work.  We are currently watching in real-time in Ontario, 2 weeks after mask mandates were lifted, as cases begin to skyrocket again.  Studies have been done, we’ve known for almost two years that masks are excellent at preventing the spread because the restrict your breath to a smaller bubble.  If you’re currently infectious masks are the second best way to protect other people from catching what you’ve got.  The best way is to stay home, but given the fact that most people are asymptomatic for several days before they start feeling sick (especially if you’ve been fully vaccinated, you could be a carrier for a week or longer and feel absolutely nothing) realistically the best thing you can do is just always wear a mask out of respect for those around you.  Knowing that we know masks work, knowing that we know masks were hugely beneficial in halting the progress of influenza two years running, I ask YOU, if masks can reduce flu deaths from 200 down to zero, how quickly, how powerfully would COVID have spread if we hadn’t worn them?  Like I said, we’re watching exactly that happen in real time.  I bet you flu cases are going to start spiking as well.