Summary
A new H5N1 bird flu variant has become “endemic in cows,” with cases detected in Nevada and Arizona, raising concerns about human transmission.
Experts warn that without intervention, the outbreak will continue, but Trump has cut CDC staff and halted flu vaccination campaigns.
The virus’s spread coincides with a severe flu season, increasing the risk of mutation.
The administration has also stopped sharing flu data with the WHO and shifted its containment strategy away from culling infected poultry, raising fears of inadequate response.
Bird flu for the meats, tariffs for everything else (and probably affecting meats as well). I wonder how this will affect our food supply during Great Depression II compared to the dust bowl and tariffs in the first one.
Moo Flu.
Good.
Surely some rich republican ranchers can get Trump’s attention…
I’m back on the carnivore diet because it’s been really the only thing to help with my long-covid that has been on my ass ever since the pandemic started.
And now this is going to make that harder.
The same guy I hold responsible for my long-covid is going to get me fucked up yet again. How’s that for irony?
Eat fish like the Japanese do. They live the longest for a reason.
For sure! In before the bird flu spreads to fish somehow…
The Okinawans, in particular, are known for their longevity. Their traditional diet is largely vegetarian.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/okinawa-diet#the-diet
The traditional Okinawa diet is low in calories and fat while high in carbs. It emphasizes vegetables and soy products alongside occasional — and small — amounts of noodles, rice, pork, and fish.
counter argument: taco rice and spam isn’t actually healthy, but lying about obachan being dead so you can keep pocketing her pension means you can buy more chu-hai.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/530073/scientist-snares-ig-noble-gong-for-work-debunking-blue-zones
I’ve read that the healthiest amount of meat is around one serving a week.
Can you do fish or pork? Those two don’t seem to be effected
Yep! But I add ghee to the fish because it’s too lean.
My complaint is mostly due to the threat of dwindling variety. And beef is my favorite.
Aw shit, here we go again.
Calling it now: we have another pandemic during Trump’s current term.
Conspiracy theorists will go “isn’t it weird there’s always a pandemic while trump is president, must be the Democrats/Jews/Illuminati/“The Regime” controlling everything, Plandemic am a right?”
Couldn’t possibly be Trump removing all safeguards against pandemics…
When it’s in California, it’s “God’s wrath”, when it’s under Trump, it’s “just a thing that happens, nothing to be done.”
I hope it will be called “Trump plague” or something this time around.
“Trump Flu 2” to emphasize this is happening AGAIN
Can this be passed through milk? Maybe the Fascism problem will solve itself if Bobby Brainworm convinces all the fascists to drink more raw milk …
Dairy farmer here, who fought this crap off when we still didnt know what it was.
Bird flu contaminated raw milk in cats, yeah it will kill the shit out of them. Its what helped us figure out what it was in the first place. Nothing confirmed so far as humans being infected from consumption that i am aware of currently, but i personally wouldnt try it.
The dairy workers that got bird flu. It was pinkeye that popped positive for h5. Probably splashback from either milk or fecal. It wasnt really a big deal other than conjunctivitis sucks.
But if you drink raw milk, you are playing russian roulette as patient zero at this point. Dont do it.
Yes it can be and the problem is these idiots are also gonna give that milk to their children. Who don’t deserve to suffer for the sins of their parents.
There are cases of a couple dairy workers getting mild cases of bird flu from getting raw milk splashed in their eye while working, so yes it’s not terribly unlikely.
And cats dying of it after drinking raw milk and eating raw food products.
Government told people to never drink raw milk. The sale and consumption of raw milk went up in ivermectin loving circles. It’s weird reverse psychology with raw milk.
What’s next? Surely these people wouldn’t be dumb enough to drink bleach.
I’m kind of ok with that.
It’d be fine if they were just endangering themselves, but the most likely way we get a more virulent bird flu strain is one of these idiots catching in while they also have the regular flu
And then refusing to isolate or wear a mask. While being unvaccinated.
They’re basically dirty people.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they started refusing to ever wash their hands.
It reminds me a lot of the Herman Cain Awards.
It seems so. I’ve been buying ultra-pasteurized which may be sufficient.
Also was just found to be infecting rats for the first time ever documented.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, there’s a case of two exclusively indoor cats catching it. One prominent theory is that the humans in the household passed it to them.
Think about how many cats aren’t being reported.
Like, if my cat drops dead I’m just burying her. No one would ever know.
If the 5 strays that hang outside my apartment died of it I’d just bury them too. No one would have a clue.
Great point, and H5N1 can kill cats within like 24 hours (not sure if that’s exposure or first symptoms). So, you’re not paying close attention to your cat for even just a matter of hours, it dies, you don’t know why, and just bury it.
Yes, its being tracked in via fecal matter on your shoes.
Raw catfood has infected some cats as well.
RIP NYC
The price of beef is about to go the way of the price of eggs.
Down, right?
Down, right?
See, if you bury your head in the sand, the virus can’t get you
Well, ya know, it’s primarily a respiratory disease among humans. You literally aren’t likely to catch if if your head is buried in sand. And once you suffocate or whatever, you won’t have to worry about the flu.
This is the kind of outside the box thinking that makes this nation great.
Well, inside the sand thinking.
Thanks Mr. President, mission accomplished (you can golf now we got this)
Maybe it will get people to start drinking plant based milk if the price of course milk skyrockets like it has with eggs. All the IGF-1 in dairy isn’t good for you and could even be part of the reason for the rise in colorectal cancer (the amount of dairy we consume nowadays in nuts).
Pumpkin seed milk is so good. Too bad it’s hard to come by. Harder still for zero sugar versions.
Colour me intrigued, have never come across it before…
…and brand recommendations for the zero-sugar variety?
I got it once at Walmart. That was a few years ago. Haven’t seen it since.
As for zero sugar version, I doubt it exists unless you make it yourself. But I’m too lazy.
I usually have a little milk around the house for cooking sauces and things. Something like soy or almond milk don’t make good substitutes. I can’t remember the last time I just drank a glass of milk.
Have you tried powdered milk? I like it because it’s shelf stable. We use plant milk for most drinks and cereal, powdered milk for cooking.
I haven’t had cows milk in years. Somehow all my sauces and things are still turning out delicious! Lots of plant milk is flavored or sweetened. Buying regular/unsweetened almond or oat milk will work for most cases. I am extremely partial to oat milk and I would honestly drink a glass of it
I wish oat milk didn’t tear my guts up, because it’s easily the best plant milk I’ve had.
I’ve heard that pea milk tastes pretty neutral
I’ll have to give it a try if I ever see some, I think all I’ve ever seen here are soy, almond, rice, and oat.
It drives me fucking nuts that in the US sweetened soy/almond milk is the default. Sometimes the unsweetened even costs a few cents more.
Haha corn subsidies go brrrrrrrr
They’d probably raise the price of alternative milk as well to match, just to price gauge people
The price of alternative bean juices is pre-gouged. It does not take $8/gallon to blend oats. It does not take $8/gallon to blend soybeans. It costs far far far more than $4/gallon to raise a cow, keep the female cows pregnant, destroy the male calves that result, and feed the cows sufficiently to both raise another living cow (50% of which are immediately trashed) and produce viable milk.
It only costs $4/gal right now because we are paying for you with our tax dollars.
Don’t cows eat oats as well? That would be able to be turned into just oat milk.
Just do this:
- stop testing,
- stick a lightbulb up their rear
- put some horse paste in their feed
- disinfectant in their water
- ???
- Profit
How about we… i dunno… not farm animals? It’s bad for health, it’s bad for the animals, it’s bad for the environment. Every pandemic we’ve ever had has been caused by animal ag. That’s COVID, SARS, MERS, AIDS, etc.
I agree with your first two sentences.
But at least with COVID and AIDS, neither of those are attributed to animal agriculture. They crossed into humans through exposure to animals, but in the case of AIDS that was non-human primates most likely. And in the case of COVID it was most likely bats. But in neither of those instances were those animals part of an agricultural system. In other words they weren’t being farmed
Swine flu, yes absolutely. Aids and COVID? Not so much.
deleted by creator
Nope.
Agriculture is the raising of food. Rather that’s vegetables or animals.
Hunting animals and selling them in a market isn’t agriculture.
And if you had argued that killing animals and eating their meat is the source of diseases, well again that’s not how AIDS started. And folks are catching bird flu from their cats bringing it in the house.
So animal agriculture certainly is one vector of transmission. And factory farming especially is a big issue, because animals are often in confinement where disease spreads easily, and then transfers into people.
But no, all pandemics did not come from animal agriculture. Or even eating meat.
And if you had argued that killing animals and eating their meat is the source of diseases, well again that’s not how AIDS started
I was under the impression primate bush meat consumption was believed to be the origin of HIV, is that not the case anymore?
According to (The National Institute of Health Library of Medicine)[https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3234451/] you are possibly correct. It most likely jumped to people from hunting bush meat, but it’s possible it could also have made the jump to people in a livestock setting where someone was raising monkeys for sale as pets or lab animals. Getting bit by an infected animal could be enough to transmit the virus.
How humans acquired the ape precursors of HIV-1 groups M, N, O, and P is not known; however, based on the biology of these viruses, transmission must have occurred through cutaneous or mucous membrane exposure to infected ape blood and/or body fluids. Such exposures occur most commonly in the context of bushmeat hunting (Peeters et al. 2002).
Curious about your diet, and where you get your food? Also curious how that scales to 350 million people (to feed the US)?
I’m not remotely implying what we’re doing, as a society, is right or sustainable but it’s super easy to just say “Just stop doing bad things”.
Solutions, at scale are quite complicated and nuanced. Private companies that grow our food at scale now will only participate if it’s profitable.
Also, if you’re not sustainably growing your own food, are you not just like the rest of us (Part of the problem)? I know I don’t have the land, or time to grow my own food.
Sticking our head in the sand (current administration) is definitely not gonna turn out well, so I’m guessing there’s some fun times ahead! <sigh>
You think scaling plant based food is harder than scaling a meat industry? I’m a meat eater but come on… It is not hard to get to place mentally that humans could easily live on plant based foods. People choose to eat meat because it’s what they believe to be is delicious and what their parents raised them on.
Maybe DOGE should cut all the subsidies the meat industry gets, upwards of $40 billion and we can see what the real price of meat should cost.
Lol they aren’t trying to actually reduce expenses. If they did there’s clear places to go (we don’t seem to want to use our military, why do we spend 1/3 of our national budget on it?).
The goal is to inject confusion and uncertainty into everyone’s lives and to pwn the libs who think government is capable of doing good.
That’s not at all what I said. The meat Industry already exists and is scaled profitable, even if it’s terrible for our planet.
I said to get any scale of another version, it’s going to have to be as equally profitable or corporations are not going to go for it.
Sustainable, scalable and profitable.
Ah sorry for the misunderstanding. Profits over everything sigh :(
The unfortunate world we live in
Mostly beans, wheat, and oats, in different form factors. More salads.
Your body only requires a tiny amount of protein and that’s also the easiest thing to replace.
I try to buy local fruit and veg only. Fun fact: if we all went vegan, we could free up 70-80% of the land currently being used for animal ag. We could rewild that land and still have excess food. We currently grow enough plants to feed 15B people, but we feed that to the animals instead.
We currently grow enough plants to feed 15B people, but we feed that to the animals instead.
a lot of the plant matter fed to animals is parts of plants we can’t or won’t eat.
and a lot of the land used isn’t crop land, but grazing land
and they’re is no reason to believe the land would ever be rewilded.
It’s mostly corn.
Granted, it’s not processed in a way to be fit for human consumption.
But still, most of it is corn. Some of it is corn cobs and stalks but most of it is kernels.
Outside of that, other grains are very common. Oats for example.
So, they are right. Raising plants to feed animals so we can eat the animals is less efficient than raising plants for us to eat. Especially in regards to cattle. Which is one of the most inefficient things in the US food system. The only reason it’s so cheap is because of subsidation, both of the cattle and the corn that’s grown to feed them.
And countries much larger than our own survive on rice and beans just fine. As queerminest eluded to in her comment.
As far as local food, I have a co-op. So I buy local vegetables and fruits when I can.
Raising plants to feed animals so we can eat the animals is less efficient than raising plants for us to eat.
if that were the situation, you might be right. but since we actually feed livestock mostly crop seconds and byproducts, it’s actually a conservation of resources in a lot of situations, with minimal competition with human food sources
beef cattle spend most of their life grazing.
it’s not mostly kernels. livestock are fed the entire plant, and the kernels are a slim minority of the weight.
Weight matters not even a little compared to the caloric content. If cows got more calories out of corn stalks than corn kernels, then they wouldn’t even finish growing the corn and would just feed them stalks. The fact you have to grow a corn stalk that weighs hundreds of times more than the kernels doesn’t mean the kernels aren’t what the farmers are after for livestock feed purposes. The stalk just gets tossed in for efficiency’s sake because the cows can also digest it.
The stalk just gets tossed in for efficiency’s sake because the cows can also digest it.
you literally don’t know anything about feeding cows. just stop.
. If cows got more calories out of corn stalks than corn kernels, then they wouldn’t even finish growing the corn and would just feed them stalks.
I don’t think so. they may get more calories from silage, but they prefer the kernels, which would help the feed go down easier.
Even just replacing 25-50% meat with plants in the US would have incredible outcomes for the people. I guarantee we would be a far healthier population. The cheap meat being served up to Americans is not good.
Maybe this is bias from 20ish years of not eating meat, but most of the time it just smells foul to me, like an overly sour smell that only goes away if you spice the fuck out of it. Beef and chicken are the main offenders for this for me.
My point is, you try to… I try to also, but in the dead of winter there’s no a local fruit and veggies. I’m also not vegan/vegetarian, I eat meat. Fish, and chicken primarily but I don’t raise either, so I have to rely on someone else to do that for me.
We do actually get probably half our eggs from someone at my wife’s work, and some. fruits and vegetables at the farmers market down the street in the summer. But they’re closed now and have been most of winter.
It’s harder than just saying “just stop” was my point. I’d love to be part of the solution where I can but there’s zero chance of me not eating meat if it’s available.
Vegan here. Sticking to the two questions you asked before you got lost in scope creep and logical fallacy: I get my food from the supermarket, mostly. And it scales way better than animal ag because farming plants requires radically less resources per calorie than farming animals.
Just like most other positive decisions in the world, it’s not revolutionary on it’s own. Nor is it aiming to be, nor does it need to be.
I don’t disagree with your general sentiment, but what I see as responses here are often empty responses… Just the obvious “we should stop being terrible arbiters of our planet”. Like no shit, but it’s hard and MOST humans are not gonna ever be vegan/vegetarian unless forced.
MOST humans are not gonna ever be vegan/vegetarian unless forced.
Maybe. What about you, though?
I am 100% in that category. I have some aspirations to be in a lifestyle where I catch a lot of my own fish but zero desire to move off animal protein to a vegetarian lifestyle.
What a strange thought. How would you define the driving factor behind any food consumption other than forced?
