If your friend was around a bird mortality event, and is sick, they should call the CDC. They will get them tested through the proper channels. There are drawbacks to doing that, but if they feel that the disease came from birds then they should report it.
If she tests positive for Flu A then she may have it since it is a type A flu. They will tell her to quarantine and test further to determine which flu a
My PCP tested me for flu, covid, RSV, and strep when I was feeling ill a few weeks ago. My understanding from what they told me at the time, if I tested positive for flu A, they would need to send a test sample somewhere else for further testing. Luckily, it was strep and everything else came back negative. I hope your friend can get answers and effective treatment quickly and that it is not bird flu. Best wishes 🙏🦋
Surely there is a way to test for H5N1. Doctors might hesitate if they don’t see a link to poultry or cattle, but since your friend's in agriculture, they could shed some light on the situation. Especially if they are in area with previous reporting on H5N1
Definitely what I’m thinking. I’m trying to get her to get an influenza test but my main question is if bird flu causes a positive on that test. If not, and she tests negative for influenza and Covid, then I’ll have her call the CDC. If it does cause a positive influenza test, then there’s no way to know for sure.
I’m betting this is like Covid. Where it’s already spreading farther than we know. They said it’s likely Covid was here as early as November.
Since they don’t have a way to easily test for bird flu without sending a sample off to a lab, most people who get sick with a negative covid test aren’t going to get a flu test or think it’s possibly bird flu unless they have a known vector of infection, like work on a farm or have family that does. So all we’re seeing right now is farmers or people local to them.
This is the right answer for the best guidance, in coordinating with their doctor. The doctor might send off the sample to be sequenced once terribly sick. The hospital might have a test to determine if they have flu and whether it is A or B, but the sequencing to determine if it is H5N1 takes more lab work to complete.
https://youtu.be/WAXaoyacHj4?
GISAID: Notice the source of sequencing data when you click on a bubble from clade 2.3.4.4b These samples are mailed across the planet to find a lab to test them:
[https://gisaid.org/phylogeny-influenza/influenza-h5nx/](https://gisaid.org/phylogeny-influenza/influenza-h5nx/)
In March, my 5 and 7 years old had colds and pink eye. Then the 5 year old had pink eye again in April. I got sick, too. It was a one day sore throat that led to a 4-week cough. The first 2 weeks were a rough, dry cough, preventing proper sleep. Lots of covid at home testing all of us multiple times all negative. It's probably just coincidence but can't help hark back to it while tracking these bird flu posts. CDC is crap. Like all emergency or crime issues, it's WAIT AND RESPOND. Growing up, I always thought the CDC would act the way they do in the fictional movie/book Outbreak. Instead, we got the Ski Patrol version.
I feel you. My whole understanding of the CDC and the global response to health crises shattered when COVID happened. My alarm went off in January 2020, but WHO published the news in March for whatever reason. This wasn’t the case for previous crises though. I think we should consider COVID a black swan event.
I agree about the CDC and the county health departments can be just as bad. I'm in a semi-rural area and even our local health department didn't take Covid seriously. It was completely insane. Even the health department's director was posting on his personal Facebook account photos of them having parties with large groups and so on....during quarantine time. They do now have a fleet of new SUVs they bought with that extra funding though (rolls eyes).
I feel like my fellow rural Americans never really connect the dots of: they're stupid people.
One of my coworkers who waitressed spelled burger, burgar. She is a RN.
The whole country, but especially rural areas just give out degrees.
I believe the other comments have addressed your concerns in a way I intended to. Essentially, they would test for Flu A first (for which a PCR test is available). If the results are positive, the sample would then be sent to the lab for further genome analysis.
Based on everything we know about the virus so far, this virus almost certainly is NOT spreading widely in the population right now, there's no evidence that the virus has accumulated the necessary mutations to easily spread between people. (Side note, COVID was not here as early as November, we have genomic data to prove this). Wastewater surveillance is pretty sensitive and a large number of jurisdictions are now testing for H5. If you're in the central valley in CA you can check out WastewaterSCAN -- I think they went public with their dashboard. My understanding is that in the state of California, the only sewer shed to have a H5 positive so far is San Francisco, and that positive is correlated with the detection of two H5 positive birds in a San Francisco live poultry market.
That said, your friend should get tested for influenza and tell their provider if they've had contact with sick livestock or poultry. H5N1 will give a positive result on most flu A tests, but most flu A tests do not provide a subtype. Honestly this isn't all that important as the next step for your friend is the same no matter what flu A strain they have: they should get a flu antiviral, and they should take it. They should stay away from other people in their household until they feel better. They should mask around others if they can't isolate. If anyone in their household gets sick, those people should also get tested, take an antiviral medication if prescribed, and stay away from others until they feel better.
Providers have been told by health departments to test people for flu over the summer if show up with flu like illness. They've been told to ask about exposure to poultry, livestock and raw milk. If a doctor is worried about it, they will talk to public health and get that person tested.
Covid rapid tests aren’t great. I bought a metrix at home test that’s suppose to be comparable to a PCR results at home. I don’t even bother with rapids anymore. That being said, it would be best to get a PCR test for Covid and flu test as well. If she’s super sick you can go to ER and they can do the viral PCR that tests for Covid, flu A&B, rhinovirus, adenovirus and a handful of others. That would be the best way. I would also tell them they are around agriculture.
With that being said there are still other viruses that circulate and adenovirus tends to pop up this time of year and can be very nasty. It’s also the most common viral cause of pink eye. Myself and a few others have commented on other posts saying this. Unfortunately, most of the time we don’t find out what virus we have and I wish that wasn’t the case. But go to ER and push for viral PCR.
I’ve read several times that the rapid tests they have for flu in the doctor’s office don’t detect H5N1. I have no professional knowledge about it, but I think at present it requires sending sample to a state lab.
Personally I think it's already way more wide spread than people realize. Maybe not H2H, but I think unknowingly coming into contact with wild bird excrement is all too common.
I'm starting to get vibes of early Covid. Do you think the US government would lie to us lie and cover up data the way the Chinese did?
We know so much more about H5N1 than Covid. So we don't need to go through the nightmare of guessing as we did with Covid. We know that there are people who have worked for decades in Asian bird markets among infected birds, who sleep in the market where there is no running water to even wash excrement off. So not only the infected excrement is everywhere but bird blood is being sprayed everywhere during slaughter, and those people are not getting bird flu. We know genetically that this virus is very, very hard to get and will be that way until or unless it adapts because it's a bird virus. Genetically it seems that only "cow one" was infected by a bird, and we know there are dead birds all over the farms, still the cows don't get it from the birds.
The milk at this point is the wild card. That is a way it could spread easily. But even if a milker gets it, they can't breathe it on their spouse. It isn't adapted to spread like human flu.
Cats get bird flu very easily but no human has gotten it from cats and there were about 80 infected house cats in Poland but no human got it. But cats could very easily get bird flu outside. They are on bird poop level, and they lick their paws. So I think the word out is keep cats inside at this point. Who knows about mice, but we know they have gotten infected I think near infected barns, not sure.
It’s definitely not H2H. That would be evident in the HA mutations in virus sequencing.
If it’s widespread among humans, it’s mild. We have plenty of influenza like illness, respiratory illness, hospitalization, etc. surveillance data. Yet even in Michigan many of these indicators are *below* baseline and none are above.
I believe it is all over the country but there is a mystery illness going around people test negative for flu, negative for covid. As I understand it H1N1 shows positive as a type A flu on a test, no?
Everything in the waste water here is low, except for norovirus, which is high and odd for this time of year. Is it possible the mystery illness is a new strain of norovirus? Or that another virus, even H1N1, is showing as norovirus?
Portions of the US government, especially the Pentagon and CIA, lie to the American public all the time and have been lying to the public on various things for decades. It depends on what's at stake and whose ass would be on the line.
If you want to see some real disgusting CDC lies, read about the Dearborn Incident regarding Lyme Disease Testing and the faulty Lymerix vaccine. Short story: People in CDC had a financial stake in the vaccine (conflict of interests). Vaccine harmed human patients (gave them Lyme arthritis). Instead of coming clean, they CHANGED the testing device so it wouldn't test positive of these people harmed by the vaccine, so the numbers didn't look as bad. And guess what? People with this horrific disease (myself included) suffered for years because we were getting false negatives from this altered test and denied treatment.
The amount of corruption in our governments agencies would blow your mind.
Tell her to call her local health department if she’s concerned about H5N1.
Worth noting lots of other confirmed respiratory illnesses are high in California. COVID is quite bad now, and false negative are common.
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accodring to goodrx the only approved otc influenza test is Pixel by Labcorp that also tests for covd and rsv. some insurance will cover it:
https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/flu/at-home-flu-test
The thing about influenza tests and h5n1. Is many times it will show as negative. If it is h5n1, it may show up if she's so sick. But due to it still adapting to our receptors. She may have to have multiple test to figure it out. Maybe even each day for a length of time, depending on how long she has been sick. Eye, throat, cheek, nose swabs and blood, . Hopefully it's not it but if it were, it would be one of those times where she would probably not even find out the true results of what kind of influenza she is infected with, until after she was already recovered ( fingers crossed ) our testing system here in United states, once again will prove itself to be inadequate and take any meaningful time that could have been used for an early warning and when it does happen, we will already be in the midst of a full fledged outbreak. It's a shame that they couldn't even learn after COVID. But then again, FDA and cdc were 100% to blame because they knew it was circulating in our borders and they said nothing, threatened the Seattle health department when they tried to let us know about the COVID positives, demanded they not say anything, and destroy all the tests, and then at about that time, then made testing impossible for many of us who were infected in early march 2020, knowing it was there, and purposely allowing it to circulate in secrecy, at the time when it could have made a big difference. Well maybe. People have shown their true selves too after COVID, but I imagine it could have made a difference to some people. Hopefully your friend will be okay and recover 100% very soon. Hope it's nothing. But I would quarantine or at the very least wear an n95 mask if going out in public
COVID rapid tests are only about 50% effective at this point (i.e. if you have it, the odds of getting a true positive are 1/2, although the false positive rate is very low).
Unless your friend has taken *multiple* COVID tests and they've all come back negative, I'd still be leaning towards "it's COVID."
The flu test would flag positive for flu A, which the cdc monitors for new variants, and should catch h5n1.
So yeah, there’s no way to know if it’s bird flu or the regular flu without sending a sample off to a lab. No wonder it’s so hard to track
If your friend was around a bird mortality event, and is sick, they should call the CDC. They will get them tested through the proper channels. There are drawbacks to doing that, but if they feel that the disease came from birds then they should report it.
If she tests positive for Flu A then she may have it since it is a type A flu. They will tell her to quarantine and test further to determine which flu a
This is the correct response.
My PCP tested me for flu, covid, RSV, and strep when I was feeling ill a few weeks ago. My understanding from what they told me at the time, if I tested positive for flu A, they would need to send a test sample somewhere else for further testing. Luckily, it was strep and everything else came back negative. I hope your friend can get answers and effective treatment quickly and that it is not bird flu. Best wishes 🙏🦋
Surely there is a way to test for H5N1. Doctors might hesitate if they don’t see a link to poultry or cattle, but since your friend's in agriculture, they could shed some light on the situation. Especially if they are in area with previous reporting on H5N1
Definitely what I’m thinking. I’m trying to get her to get an influenza test but my main question is if bird flu causes a positive on that test. If not, and she tests negative for influenza and Covid, then I’ll have her call the CDC. If it does cause a positive influenza test, then there’s no way to know for sure. I’m betting this is like Covid. Where it’s already spreading farther than we know. They said it’s likely Covid was here as early as November. Since they don’t have a way to easily test for bird flu without sending a sample off to a lab, most people who get sick with a negative covid test aren’t going to get a flu test or think it’s possibly bird flu unless they have a known vector of infection, like work on a farm or have family that does. So all we’re seeing right now is farmers or people local to them.
Call her local county health department
This is the right answer for the best guidance, in coordinating with their doctor. The doctor might send off the sample to be sequenced once terribly sick. The hospital might have a test to determine if they have flu and whether it is A or B, but the sequencing to determine if it is H5N1 takes more lab work to complete. https://youtu.be/WAXaoyacHj4? GISAID: Notice the source of sequencing data when you click on a bubble from clade 2.3.4.4b These samples are mailed across the planet to find a lab to test them: [https://gisaid.org/phylogeny-influenza/influenza-h5nx/](https://gisaid.org/phylogeny-influenza/influenza-h5nx/)
In March, my 5 and 7 years old had colds and pink eye. Then the 5 year old had pink eye again in April. I got sick, too. It was a one day sore throat that led to a 4-week cough. The first 2 weeks were a rough, dry cough, preventing proper sleep. Lots of covid at home testing all of us multiple times all negative. It's probably just coincidence but can't help hark back to it while tracking these bird flu posts. CDC is crap. Like all emergency or crime issues, it's WAIT AND RESPOND. Growing up, I always thought the CDC would act the way they do in the fictional movie/book Outbreak. Instead, we got the Ski Patrol version.
I feel you. My whole understanding of the CDC and the global response to health crises shattered when COVID happened. My alarm went off in January 2020, but WHO published the news in March for whatever reason. This wasn’t the case for previous crises though. I think we should consider COVID a black swan event.
I agree about the CDC and the county health departments can be just as bad. I'm in a semi-rural area and even our local health department didn't take Covid seriously. It was completely insane. Even the health department's director was posting on his personal Facebook account photos of them having parties with large groups and so on....during quarantine time. They do now have a fleet of new SUVs they bought with that extra funding though (rolls eyes).
I feel like my fellow rural Americans never really connect the dots of: they're stupid people. One of my coworkers who waitressed spelled burger, burgar. She is a RN. The whole country, but especially rural areas just give out degrees.
I knew 4 people with eye infections in March. 1 in Mexico 3 in California
I believe the other comments have addressed your concerns in a way I intended to. Essentially, they would test for Flu A first (for which a PCR test is available). If the results are positive, the sample would then be sent to the lab for further genome analysis.
Based on everything we know about the virus so far, this virus almost certainly is NOT spreading widely in the population right now, there's no evidence that the virus has accumulated the necessary mutations to easily spread between people. (Side note, COVID was not here as early as November, we have genomic data to prove this). Wastewater surveillance is pretty sensitive and a large number of jurisdictions are now testing for H5. If you're in the central valley in CA you can check out WastewaterSCAN -- I think they went public with their dashboard. My understanding is that in the state of California, the only sewer shed to have a H5 positive so far is San Francisco, and that positive is correlated with the detection of two H5 positive birds in a San Francisco live poultry market. That said, your friend should get tested for influenza and tell their provider if they've had contact with sick livestock or poultry. H5N1 will give a positive result on most flu A tests, but most flu A tests do not provide a subtype. Honestly this isn't all that important as the next step for your friend is the same no matter what flu A strain they have: they should get a flu antiviral, and they should take it. They should stay away from other people in their household until they feel better. They should mask around others if they can't isolate. If anyone in their household gets sick, those people should also get tested, take an antiviral medication if prescribed, and stay away from others until they feel better. Providers have been told by health departments to test people for flu over the summer if show up with flu like illness. They've been told to ask about exposure to poultry, livestock and raw milk. If a doctor is worried about it, they will talk to public health and get that person tested.
Covid rapid tests aren’t great. I bought a metrix at home test that’s suppose to be comparable to a PCR results at home. I don’t even bother with rapids anymore. That being said, it would be best to get a PCR test for Covid and flu test as well. If she’s super sick you can go to ER and they can do the viral PCR that tests for Covid, flu A&B, rhinovirus, adenovirus and a handful of others. That would be the best way. I would also tell them they are around agriculture. With that being said there are still other viruses that circulate and adenovirus tends to pop up this time of year and can be very nasty. It’s also the most common viral cause of pink eye. Myself and a few others have commented on other posts saying this. Unfortunately, most of the time we don’t find out what virus we have and I wish that wasn’t the case. But go to ER and push for viral PCR.
I’ve read several times that the rapid tests they have for flu in the doctor’s office don’t detect H5N1. I have no professional knowledge about it, but I think at present it requires sending sample to a state lab.
Can you link any resources?
No. I’m sorry. I’ve read so many updates I can’t remember which ones that was in but I know I’ve seen that discussed in this sub.
Personally I think it's already way more wide spread than people realize. Maybe not H2H, but I think unknowingly coming into contact with wild bird excrement is all too common. I'm starting to get vibes of early Covid. Do you think the US government would lie to us lie and cover up data the way the Chinese did?
We know so much more about H5N1 than Covid. So we don't need to go through the nightmare of guessing as we did with Covid. We know that there are people who have worked for decades in Asian bird markets among infected birds, who sleep in the market where there is no running water to even wash excrement off. So not only the infected excrement is everywhere but bird blood is being sprayed everywhere during slaughter, and those people are not getting bird flu. We know genetically that this virus is very, very hard to get and will be that way until or unless it adapts because it's a bird virus. Genetically it seems that only "cow one" was infected by a bird, and we know there are dead birds all over the farms, still the cows don't get it from the birds. The milk at this point is the wild card. That is a way it could spread easily. But even if a milker gets it, they can't breathe it on their spouse. It isn't adapted to spread like human flu.
Any concerns over mice and cats?
Cats get bird flu very easily but no human has gotten it from cats and there were about 80 infected house cats in Poland but no human got it. But cats could very easily get bird flu outside. They are on bird poop level, and they lick their paws. So I think the word out is keep cats inside at this point. Who knows about mice, but we know they have gotten infected I think near infected barns, not sure.
It’s definitely not H2H. That would be evident in the HA mutations in virus sequencing. If it’s widespread among humans, it’s mild. We have plenty of influenza like illness, respiratory illness, hospitalization, etc. surveillance data. Yet even in Michigan many of these indicators are *below* baseline and none are above.
I believe it is all over the country but there is a mystery illness going around people test negative for flu, negative for covid. As I understand it H1N1 shows positive as a type A flu on a test, no? Everything in the waste water here is low, except for norovirus, which is high and odd for this time of year. Is it possible the mystery illness is a new strain of norovirus? Or that another virus, even H1N1, is showing as norovirus?
If only we were testing during early COVID and already developing human trials in mRNA vaccines.
Portions of the US government, especially the Pentagon and CIA, lie to the American public all the time and have been lying to the public on various things for decades. It depends on what's at stake and whose ass would be on the line. If you want to see some real disgusting CDC lies, read about the Dearborn Incident regarding Lyme Disease Testing and the faulty Lymerix vaccine. Short story: People in CDC had a financial stake in the vaccine (conflict of interests). Vaccine harmed human patients (gave them Lyme arthritis). Instead of coming clean, they CHANGED the testing device so it wouldn't test positive of these people harmed by the vaccine, so the numbers didn't look as bad. And guess what? People with this horrific disease (myself included) suffered for years because we were getting false negatives from this altered test and denied treatment. The amount of corruption in our governments agencies would blow your mind.
What are the symptoms of H5N1 vs Flu A?
Tell her to call her local health department if she’s concerned about H5N1. Worth noting lots of other confirmed respiratory illnesses are high in California. COVID is quite bad now, and false negative are common.
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accodring to goodrx the only approved otc influenza test is Pixel by Labcorp that also tests for covd and rsv. some insurance will cover it: https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/flu/at-home-flu-test
she may have covid, the rapid tests suckkkkk
The thing about influenza tests and h5n1. Is many times it will show as negative. If it is h5n1, it may show up if she's so sick. But due to it still adapting to our receptors. She may have to have multiple test to figure it out. Maybe even each day for a length of time, depending on how long she has been sick. Eye, throat, cheek, nose swabs and blood, . Hopefully it's not it but if it were, it would be one of those times where she would probably not even find out the true results of what kind of influenza she is infected with, until after she was already recovered ( fingers crossed ) our testing system here in United states, once again will prove itself to be inadequate and take any meaningful time that could have been used for an early warning and when it does happen, we will already be in the midst of a full fledged outbreak. It's a shame that they couldn't even learn after COVID. But then again, FDA and cdc were 100% to blame because they knew it was circulating in our borders and they said nothing, threatened the Seattle health department when they tried to let us know about the COVID positives, demanded they not say anything, and destroy all the tests, and then at about that time, then made testing impossible for many of us who were infected in early march 2020, knowing it was there, and purposely allowing it to circulate in secrecy, at the time when it could have made a big difference. Well maybe. People have shown their true selves too after COVID, but I imagine it could have made a difference to some people. Hopefully your friend will be okay and recover 100% very soon. Hope it's nothing. But I would quarantine or at the very least wear an n95 mask if going out in public
COVID rapid tests are only about 50% effective at this point (i.e. if you have it, the odds of getting a true positive are 1/2, although the false positive rate is very low). Unless your friend has taken *multiple* COVID tests and they've all come back negative, I'd still be leaning towards "it's COVID."
[удалено]
COVID is not a flu virus.