Over the Hedge by T Lewis and Michael Fry for February 11, 2025

It’s okay. We pulled out of the world health organization then gutted the CDC’s web page in preparation.

Seriously tho, the 1918 influenza was a bird flu. It killed upwards of 100 million people worldwide. If this current strain mutates and can spread between humans, its current fatality rate on humans is about 50%.

I’m an atheist and even I was imagining god going “DID YOU NOT LEARN THE FIRST TIME?!”

George Santayana’s statement, amended for current times: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, but doubly bad this time around.

With tens of thousands of proposed layoffs and tens of billions of dollars cut to the healthcare system, nothing is going to be “ironed out” if this goes viral (pardon the pun).

Funny how the incompetent administration during the 1st one is back and somehow more incompetent and crueler and more deliberately ignorant than last time!

We’re still spending money on a bigger military than most others combined, while the most likely threat is biological. While many enemies won’t use it because it bounces back, nature occasionally tries to kill us all. It’s always space aliens; they cause extinction events on planets that seem likely to come out shooting, until we learn some manners.

Don’t worry, dt will fix it. (rolls eyes).

Viruses can travel faster than the speed of light.

Don’t like the reports about bird flu? Shut down the CDC. No more reports!

Obama had established a pandemic response plan. Trump scrapped it. Then Covid came. Ivermectin, anyone? Now Trump is back. He scrapped the CDC, NIH, and defunded research. Of course, with their tax cuts to come, the One Percent can afford to isolate in luxury when the next pandemic hits. The rest of us, however, we are on our own.

Apparently covid didn’t wipe out enough vaccine deniers. Perhaps bird flu will help out with that.

And measles and TB are also the rise, god help us.

Between trump, musk and rfk we are so totally screwed!

This is a list of U.S. mammals and mammals in U.S. zoos infected (and often killed) by Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza. These diseases have been moved pretty much everywhere by migration. Even Antarctica is dealing with it. Additional mammals have been sickened or died elsewhere including some wildlife which were already rare, and other domestic animals like donkeys in Egypt and horses in Tibet. Yes, and dogs. Ferrets have been used in testing so can contract it, too. The disease is especially deadly (and horribly so) in felines and in seals and their relatives.

Cats, bottlenose dolphins, red foxes, Eastern gray squirrels, harbor seals, servals, house mice, deer mice, mountain lions, ermines, bobcats, Tigers, African lions, savannah cats, Eurasian lynx, Geoffroy’s cats, hybrid foxes, hybrid tigers, Canadian lynx, raccoons, Amur tigers, coyotes, polar bears, striped skunks, prairie voles, desert cottontails, Virginia opossums, American minks, Abert’s squirrels, fishers, American black bears, American martens, North American river otters, Kodiak bears, Grizzly bears, skunks of unidentified types, Amur leopards, Gray seals.

I also recall reports of a family’s hogs infected in the NW, and a goat kid which died from infection passed by nursing because the mother was infected.

There are influenza experts who would like testing of white tailed deer to be done.

It is not contagious person to person at this point. In the U.S. HPAIs including H5N1 have so far been caught by people with some resistance from previous influenzas and their vaccines, so only one death so far, but worldwide the deaths for H5N1, the most common HPAI in the U.S., are about 50% with most being 15 years old and younger, most toddlers and preschoolers. Obviously, targeted vaccines are needed, though older avian influenza vaccines may help.

Sorry, RJ, Hammy, and a number of your friends. Take precautions.

A lot of people deny that covid ever existed. I wish it didn’t, perhaps my mother-in-law would still be alive.

Baby, you have way too much trust in human abilities. Viruses are constantly evolving and changing. So yes, viruses are going to jump from species to species. And when you have large populations in a small area, (chicken and duck factories), your going to have sickness outbreaks. But people want cheap food, so what cha’ going to do?

The problem is the public…

In the meantime, update your will and keep up your life insurance payments.

I’m sure the current administration will deal with avian flu just like they dealt with COVID — deny it even exists until people start dropping dead in the streets.

Meanwhile, President Musk and his assistant Trump are gutting funding for health research.