Yep, they're still trying to make H5N1 a thing

...and squandering what's left of their credibility along the way. The H5N1 story is only interesting for one reason (one they don't get) - it shows how unlikely Covid is to have natural origins.

H5N1, we can’t quit you!

Yes, with Covid firmly in the rearview mirror, Team Apocalypse has gone back to its old standby, the granddaddy of ‘em all, influenza.

Covid needed a refresh. Even long Covid is now a punchline. And from Team Apocalypse’s point of view, the flu has the great virtue of occasionally taking out someone who isn’t already terminally ill, 400 pounds, or 85 years old.

The problem in hyping the influenza threat is that those cases are quite rare, at least since the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-19. The strains that have circulated ever since have either been far milder, or essentially unable to transmit between humans.

Still, the public health bureaucrats are trying. For months now, they have talked up the H5N1 “bird flu” strain (the numbers refer to the shapes of two crucial proteins on the influenza virus).

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(Fool me once, I must not have been reading Unreported Truths. Join Team Reality - for 20 cents a day!)

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The warnings have been coming for months. They picked up again two weeks ago, when (harmless) bits of the virus were found in milk. Just last week, the Financial Times wrote:

Bird flu outbreak in US cattle sparks fears over next global health crisis

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Unfortunately for Team Apocalypse, neither the virus nor the public is cooperating. Millions of cattle have apparently been infected, but scientists have found one - yes, one - human case, in a farm worker.

In other words, humans apparently can barely be infected with H5N1 - much less spread it.

Humans can also barely be infected with H5N1 panic. Covid has apparently produced population-level immunity to media and public health nonsense. Aside from the same blue-staters who stayed in their apartments until 2022 and still wear masks now, no one is likely to take these warnings seriously until they see evidence that the threat is real for themselves.

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(As noted epidemiologist Bret Easton Ellis famously explained a while back, Less Than Zero:)

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The only interesting part of the H5N1 affair is the way epidemiologists and virologists are able to track in real time the different variants of the virus, and the trouble it is having adapting to humans, even with a massive reservoir of animal hosts.

It is almost as if respiratory viruses in the wild can have a difficult time crossing host species - and may not be well-adapted to further onward transmission in a new host when they do.

It is almost as if they leave telltale clues to their evolution that scientists are able to track in near-real-time. It is almost as if they don’t ever just explode from animal hosts into human populations so perfectly adapted that they barely mutate for a year - while spreading worldwide.

Yes, H5N1 is what viral evolution looks like when the virus hasn’t escaped from a Chinese lab where it’s been juiced with foolish and dangerous research. It is an object lesson on real zoonosis.

For that reason - if no other - let’s hope the virologists keep tracking it.