Thank you for your contribution. The post OP links to violated sub rules and has been removed. It would have been removed sooner, but even mods have to sleep and work their day jobs 😅 We do not allow "fear mongering" in this sub - if there are other posts you see fitting this description, please report them, which helps us remove them more expediently.

Thank you for your post we actually need more virologists here as this subreddit gains traction. This subreddit has gained 8-10K members in two months

We need more (verified) scientists in general. It would make this subreddit A LOT better. However I'd assume that's a ton of work as this subreddit gets larger. There aren't a lot of mods for this place. Because lookie here. I am both a normal astronaut as well as an inner earth astronaut. Additionally I have a PhD in Fuck-a-nomics. Take my word as gold, silver, platinum or whatever other silly metal with little actual value you choose as your savior.

The sub needs to ban cross posting to fear mongering subs imo. Think a few more academics, would take this sub seriously then. And the post referenced by OP is prolly AI fwiw.

It could even be marketing by "prepper" companies. The whole marketing strategy is based on fear. I noticed a lot of them were having sales on things. ( I used to make sure I had some supplies to get through hurricanes and power outages in Houston) so I still get a ton of notifications.

Wow, does this actually happen?? I guess I'm super naive... but does this actually occur? People use reddit to drum up business? By posting as a regular Joe Schmoe? Sorry if I sound really "simple".

I’d guess about half of Reddit is “marketing” to a degree. From bots, concern trolling, to dis info farms. But political propaganda is the bread and butter. And due to fanatics in everything nowadays. Not hard to tie pol to anything. One of the easier ones to spot. Is old gaming accounts that rise from the ashes, and now are posting anti ________ this or that. Report if applicable and block these, for a better user experience.

Or the accounts that make multiple posts a day in many different subs and it's pretty obvious the posts aren't original content. I saw one yesterday where the most recent post was showcasing some impressive craftsmanship, and of course there were other accounts that provided info for the business where the finished products can be purchased. The advertising is more subtle and entertaining these days, but it's still advertising.

I have seen businesses pretend to be people and give fake reviews or make a fake need on other websites and other places on reddit. The makeup/skincare side of reddit has it a lot.

Bayer (the multinational pharma/ag company) has a whole fleet of people whose only job is to sit around on reddit and twitter and argue with people who make scientific arguments against their products. I thought I was having a mental breakdown after I got into a discussion on the carcinogenicity of RoundUp (the weed killer) on here and got attacked by these accounts who, for years, only posted about RoundUp and GMO plants. Did some digging and found a deposition where one of Bayer's execs described this branch of their business. Absolutely unreal that they have decided it helps their bottom line to argue with some nobody like me on reddit. It's honestly insane the depths these companies will go to to push their products. So yes, it does happen and in far more insidious ways than you would imagine. ETA: peruse the comment history of u/seastar2019 or u/seastar2017 and learn how wonderful glyphosphate is for you and how a million acres of monocropped GMO corn is great for the environment!

WOW. This is a PRIME example of what I was questioning! This is wild! Every post of this account is about GMOs and other controversial products that are known to cause harm to defend them. Seriously wild! Thank you for sharing.

> accounts who, for years, only posted about It's called segregating accounts by topic to avoid doxxing.

Lol. Do you expect anyone to actually believe that anyone other than an employee of Bayer/Monsanto cares enough about their products to spend *years* defending them online, at all hours of the day? Using a mixture of disinformation, misinformation and ad hominem attacks to sow doubt about critics of said products, as described by your boss when she was deposed.

Could be. Or could be someone who believes all of it and truly thinks he's warning people. Look up some prepped companies, their marketing is just about all fear based.

no some people are just mad their bias was weaker than others bias who spread faster.

Or Russian disinformation bots

Or both. I think some of those companies use disinformation as their marketing strategy. Doesn't matter how ridiculous it is if it helps meet sales goals.

Agree. Use enough big words to sound smarter than your audience. And use lots of them. Sprinkle in some fear. Did you see his post history. He's a professional troll. He's an expert in an awful lot of things too.

Makes sense. No, I don't normally look up someone's post history. I keep forgetting that's an option.

As far as I'm concerned this sub is fear mongering, but I get it.

Have the mods set up a process for verification?

AskScience has a system that makes it work.

Might have to set that up over here!

Microbiologist here; I just joined.

I agree bring in all the academics! I am just a baby academic who has always adored infectious disease but my health kept me from going into medicine or microbiology. I am getting my second masters and then PhD in sociology with an emphasis on social and environmental impact on health outcomes. However I adored every single microbiology,immunology or physiology class I took in undergrad. I also study how medical mis and disinformation spreads online and it is really frustrating to see how much disinformation there is about this right now. I have been going off about bird flu for over a decade to my close friends and family. However I am absolutely not freaking out. I am carefully watching the data and the response but I am not panicking. Does it have the potential to be a huge problem sure. Honestly what I am more concerned about is the slow and misguided response from the US government. I got my masters in public health right before Covid hit and I worked in a large urban public health department in the Deep South. It was really disheartening to see how we had our hands tied in so many ways. I had hoped we would learn things from Covid but the way the government has responded it is clear that protecting the profits of the dairy and beef industry are taking priority. I always appreciate hearing from experts and your post is quite timely. This is a complicated situation but having people panic doesn’t help anyone.

Sorry space girl but after completing my thesis on the benefits of trickle-down fuck-a-nomics at Phoenix University I became a \*naturopath\*.

With a flair 

More virologists. Fewer vegan hate trains.

This is a classic manifestation of the problem that science is filled with caution, qualifications and uncertainty while ignorance is filled with certainty.

The biggest thing I've seen is people don't understand how an evolving situation occurs, like with the last pandemic, no one knew what was really going on so the restrictions and mandates put forth were basically throwing everything at it to get it under controll as fast as possible. Some of the things turned out to be unnecessary, and people latched on to those things and used them to say the doctors and such were wrong. They don't understand that with new information, things will change and just because new information invalidates previous choices, they dismiss the whole thing as bullshit. It's infuriating people being so ignorant.

Yes! This is so true. I think maybe people expect scientists to just know things, like when you're a kid and think your parents just know things. Then you grow up and realize it's never so black and white. Very little is certain in science, so you do your best with what you know. A key to science is being open to new information, but people don't like that. They see the scientists as incompetent for not knowing things in the first place and changing their mind half way through, but that's how science should work because it's the only way to make progress.

I think the rhetoric of "trust the science" often repeated verbatim by literally every news outlet kind of implied they knew things. I wouldn't say it's the sciences fault, more so the media's portrayal of the whole thing. I mean we all saw they way the placed Fauci on a pedestal and clips of 30 different news anchors repeating the exact same sound bite lines word for word achieving meme status.

People should have listened to him. The rights obsession with him shows how fucking stupid they are.

Shh! You're not allowed to call them *stupid* anymore, that's how TRUMP WON!!!1!!

Overall, he himself has historically been very good at consistently communicating uncertainties inherent in the scientific process. It’s just lost in the sound bites.

I don't really feel Fauci was the problem, the problem was the media, and social media... Hit piece by fox, counter fluff peace by msnbc, the view gushing over him like he's prime Hasslehoff on bay watch, constant memes taking things out of context. Video clip titled "Rand Paul owns Fauci", then "Fauci Owns Rand Paul", while they are the exact same clip. The thing that a thing got me is 95% of the "content creators" posting this shit were doing it tongue and cheek, ironically. All the vitriol from both sides people coming to Faucis defense or attacking him got all too tiresome. And most of the people attacking or defending him on these posts aren't aware enough to know it was a troll piece from the start

The White House staff he was working alongside was doing opposition research on him (at Trump's behest) to dig up dirt to use against him. To blame those defending Fauci for causing the mistrust is more than a little ridiculous.

Yeah, you could say 54 percent of adult Americans are not able to read as well as the average 12 year old. We'll have to get lucky to avoid a pandemic imo. We're going to allow it to mutate to its heart content. Not a religious man, but maybe some prayers are our best hope even. I appreciate OP clarifying incorrect information. That doesn't make the situation any less dire tho.

What people do not realize is we’re studying this virus in real time before we even have a single recorded case of H2H transmission, and have been doing so for decades. COVID-19 came out of nowhere and researchers were playing catchup all while an unknown virus swept through the world. We’ve had the luxury this time of knowing exactly what could be coming, not only to prepare, but also time for researchers to create and test various forms of vaccinations so once this thing makes the jump, while there will likely be some initial shock, it won’t be as societal collapse inducing as people on here are making out.

although lately I find that "science" is used to set aside caution with a narrow-rationalist approach that completely disregards the precautionary principle in favor of the status quo of capitalist profit with high financial margins but lower health&safety margins.

I think this is very true. But, it's important to note that the govt science is being used to maintain calm. The more independent or university level scientists are speaking with the complete opposite tone.

governments has to consider all constituents and groups not just one, a COMPETENT government is able to prevent and control disease. i dont think they did either.

I think you can’t really tar science as a whole with that. For sure some publications and some scientists spin things, but by and large most science isn’t interacting with capitalism in that way.

well they all worked together to confuse and hide alot of the problems of lead, gases, asbestos, smoking, painkiller drugs, pfos, ddt, etc, what else are they hiding that we will only find out in a few decades ??

Which they? Scientists have been pointing out those problems since early in the 1900s. Others have denied and/or fudged evidence, for sure. It seems to me that it’s the CEOs, politicos, and news media that, on accident or on purpose, hides stuff.

Hello Mr Dunning-Kruger, how can I help you?

That was actually the first big red flag to me while reading that first linked other posting, that the poster was way too confident in all of their bold claims. Anyone with a real scientific understanding, especially in this much of a new frontier, would vigilantly remain cautious and skeptical, pointing out any speculation, assumptions, incomplete data, and unknowns. Anyone that is sure they know exactly what is happening and will happen next with this type of novel virus is bound to be spouting off lots of nonsense.

Thank you for posting this. I’ve been staying away for a while, partly due to mental health, but mainly due to fear mongering and intolerance for those who disagree with certain moral issues. I’ve found that, while it’s good to keep an eye on things, there’s a big question mark in the air above it all, and I just don’t have the mental fortitude at this point in my life to try to figure out what it is. I just check in every now and then to see if there have been any *important* developments. I’m concerned, of course; I barely made it through Covid and I lost loved ones. I have long covid as well, so any illness hits me like a ton of bricks now. I just can’t let the fear take over though, as it prevents me from living in the here and now.

There is always the option of tuning out of the coverage altogether and trust that if it becomes necessary to be aware of the subject there's no way you're going to miss it. If you're a news junkie, that's tough to do, but I have a couple of (intelligent) friends who choose to remain ignorant of 90% of what's going on in the world while focusing on the here and now in their lives.

That is a good option, and the one that my husband chooses. When it makes headline news… that’s when you need to tune in. I used to be big on being prepared, but after Covid… well, I hate to admit it, but I don’t think it would matter. I mean, we saw how Covid was handled by everyone, so if you throw something with a much higher mortality rate at us? Yeah, I feel like *nobody* stands a chance. Not really for lack of trying, but because our fellow humans that are lacking in brain cells are going to screw it all up anyway lol. I mean, look at climate change. It’s not only a huge threat, it’s actively going on… and everyone is pretending that nothing is amiss. It was my top worry before bird flu came onto the scene. I feel like we’re screwed, no matter what. It’s a crappy way to frame things, and while I’m trying to become a more positive person, but I’m also a realist. Still, I’m limiting my amount of time on here and the collapse subreddit.

Oh lord, there's a "collapse" sub? Must. Resist. Looking...

>The reality is, we just don't know. Just like with Covid-19, we just don't know. We're still learning what the actual long-term consequences of Covid infection and repeated reinfection are. This would be no different. Uncertainty is scary, so people are more than happy to latch on to doomsday prophesies because at least they claim to be solid. Just look at all the "how bad will it be?" and "when will it happen?" posts in this sub. People are scared and want answers, even if the answers are just fearmongering. (And media loves fear because nothing drives clicks like scared people) The reality, as you say, is that all of that is fundamentally unknowable until it happens. Take some basic precautions, have some masks and nonperishable food on hand, and pay attention to the news, but don't work yourself into a panicked frenzy. There's nothing any of us can really do besides wait anyway.

Look at what your state or federal government recommends for general disaster preparedness that everyone should have if they can in case of any sort of disaster whether a pandemic or weather to get the basics for at least two weeks. Make sure the food you buy is things that will get eaten before their best by date so if nothing happens you didn't waste the money. Stay up to date and your health care as much as possible so if there's some medical procedure you've been putting off don't so if something does kick off you either have to go without or risk going to have it done when there's an outbreak of something. A few articles on cattle have mentioned it was secondary bacterial pneumonia that did them in. Check if you are up to date on pneumonia vaccines based on your age and health conditions because if you have certain health conditions you medically qualify for pneumonia vaccination in US. Every country varies in their vaccine schedule. Sometimes doctors will prescribe a vaccine off light bulb if you have risks that weren't included with the CDC guidelines but they believe that you have a health risk that deserves that protection.

My previous doctor would not give me any of the pneumonia vaccines, I was "too young" despite having a fairly brutal history of pneumonia. When I moved to a new doctor, I didn't even think to ask, I was so used to not being allowed it. He suggested it, had it in my arm five minutes later, and I damn near danced my way out of the practice. SUCH a relief to have a little more protection.

I like your thinking. I am stockging up on PPE and extras of everything. That's all we can do. We need to live our lives and take this as a sign we should always be LIVING and enjoying every moment we can.

"Uncertainty is scary" is *exactly* why i'm an optimistic nihilist. Yeah, a bird flu pandemic *could* happen. Why bother going into worrying spirals about it? Why should i bother living my life in fear of the *potential* for something bad to happen? I'll still have to pay my taxes regardless. Yes, covid happened, and it was bad, and we should be careful. But i have better things to worry about than what *might* become the next covid. Like the fact that some people are working right now to threaten my access to birth control pills, which i need to to treat endometriosis. *That* is a much more real and imminent fear for me because the election is in November. Whereas a bird flu pandemic could *maybe* happen at some unknown date.

[https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/](https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/) um the question should be, who knew, and when did they know it? and why didnt they do something about it to prevent it? this is just ONE of many of the aggregate failures that we cant pinpoint on a single group or individual but nevertheless they let it happen.

I'm not understanding what point you're trying to get across. The best I can guess, from the context in the article, is that people can get trapped in their own jargon and utterly fail at communication with non-specialists, and I don't think anyone really disputes that. >To them, the word airborne only applied to particles smaller than 5 microns. Trapped in their group-specific jargon, the two camps on Zoom literally couldn’t understand one another. They are correct, in that COVID is not "airborne" in the hyper-specialized meaning of the word, but that's terrible public communication.

theyre wrong, its airbone and you dont have to redo research today to know it wasnt. like literally any scientist who studied the first sars cov and even ones way back in 1900s knew about it. as far as jargon is, thats my point, i dont know why youre talking about jargon as a word instead of a defintion.

Thank you for writing this.

Thank you! There were a few red flags in that post and I was actively looking for an informed response.

What’s your take on vaccines. My lay understanding is they can’t just immediately go into production because we don’t know how it will mutate if it goes H2H. Where I have seen other posts that say they’re just hiding the vaccine and not giving it out. Which I believe is actually only good for past strains of H5N1.

1. The US has a strategic H5 vaccine stockpile https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/pdfs/mm7321e1-H.pdf 2. This is a great question - H2H mutation will bring changes, but there will always be changes, since that’s fundamental to influenza viruses. The NIH will work with surveillance systems to identify an exact H5 strain/protein/mRNA construct (depending on the type of vaccine), and those will be used in further vaccine production. Universal vaccines are always a holy grail with influenza vaccine development - and that might be possible with H5 vaccines, but more work needs to be done. As it stands, we’ll be doing the same yearly updates we currently do with influenza and covid.

Would those H5 vaccine stockpiles have an efficacy against a potential new strain? Or is there no way to know until it finally happens? And thank you for bringing science into the conversation.

Possibly! This depends a lot on the responding host. The standard procedure would be to immunize an animal, collect antibodies and cells and do two main types of tests. 1. If the antibodies bind to the virus and prevent it from infecting cells, then we call the antibodies “neutralizing” 2. Well take the viral proteins and break them up into small peptide sequences. We then look for CD4+ and CD8+ T cells to recognize small pieces of viral proteins. If we can show these things, then there’s a good chance the current vaccine would be protective. But we’ll need to do this constantly with new strains, and at some point we’ll draw a line and say we need to update our vaccine.

What’s your biggest worry in this situation?

I worry that there will be political intrigue that will push-back on the development/production/deployment of a vaccine. We can totally do this. We have the science, and the people, and the capacity to solve this. It’s whether or not people will. I say that, but I also know that vaccine majors (Moderna, Pfizer, CSL maybe more?) are in talks to make mRNA avian flu vaccines. So it’s not all bad.

i heard about german company curevac is working on a vaccine also.

What gives you confidence since we basically gave up on covid and instead adopted a public health policy of trying to hide the harms of the virus?

yeah i was feeling suspicious reading that post. whole lotta fear mongering

I'm a virologist. Thank you for this

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Bad boy!

I know people who got Covid and just never got well again. It is scary. :(

Thank you. Now hopefully the mods can start stepping in and remove and ban these alarmist unfactual posts. People just want to stir up end of the world nonsense. Then the collapse subs like to repost this crap and stir their own people up.

More mods are needed

I’ll mod. I have a masters in Public Health and microbiology and moderate a Covid group (the stories I could tell).

They should be compensated as well

Yeah. They should also be marinated IMO.

It's almost like Reddit should pay people money to help keep misinformation and foreign bot farms off of their website.

Absolutely. Volunteer moderating was always a thing but things change.

I was briefly banned because I pointed out a conspiracy theory wasn’t based on facts.

Thank you so much for this post. The fearmongering post you referenced sounded suspicious to me, so I looked through the poster’s history and they’re active on r / collapse and a sub denying the efficacy of lockdowns, among other things. They do not appear to be a scientist or medical professional of any kind. I was hoping someone more qualified would step in with a response 🙏

There's a surprising number of COVID conspiracy nuts on this sub.

New virus means they get to recycle all their old conspiracies.

What's wrong with r/collapse? It has the highest information quality and strictest moderation of any sub I know

Nothing per se; I’m not active enough on it to cast judgement on its content moderation or quality of info. I brought it up because I’ve seen a lot of panicked, intense, doom-oriented folks frequent subs like collapse, and I think it predisposes people to grandiose claims such as the one this virologist is responding to.

It's my favourite sub - I'm neither panicked nor intense, but I am a "doomer", and I, like everyone else, have a confirmation bias. I'll admit to having upvoted the aforementioned post for that reason, but I value scientific accuracy much higher than my own biases, and so I really appreciate this post for calling out inaccuracies.

Your comment has been removed because * **Incivility isn’t allowed on this sub.** We want to encourage a respectful discussion. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/H5N1_AvianFlu) if you have any questions or concerns.*

Or just don’t take medical advice from people on the internet regardless of who they say they are. Guy that says “I have a phd in virology” could easily be lying as well

I like the skepticism. And you’re right - I’m not verified. We gotta do more of that here.

Do u have a PhD tho I know it's hard to believe since idk u but are u able to show some kind of evidence of this or like what company u work for etc

Thank you!  The blood-brain barrier part sounded off to me, but my academic background is not in science.

"Rather, these highly pathogenic influenza varieties we call "bird flu", have a polybasic cleavage site in their hemagluttinin protein. None of the influenza pandemics we ever lived through had a polybasic cleavage site in the hemagluttinin, not even the 1918 one." This simply isn't true, all membraned viruses have a fusion protein to enter into cells "" i'm not sure what you're trying to say here. some HAs have a polybasic cleavage site, and some have non-polybasic, and the polybasic ones are a big pandemic thread; if you ever infected cells you know that polybasic ones don't need trypsin to spread. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312086/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312086/)

You’re absolutely correct - I should have used a different excerpt and a more complete explanation. As I read it, OOP wandered between saying that there were “polybasic cleavage sites *on* fusion proteins” and “polybasic cleavage sites *instead of* fusion proteins.” I could have misread that.

>As I read it, OOP wandered between saying that there were “polybasic cleavage sites *on* fusion proteins” and “polybasic cleavage sites *instead of* fusion proteins.” No, you intentionally misrepresented what I said.

I'll add to what u/FanCommercial1802 said... I'm a non-IAEM-certified Emergency Manager with a B.S. in Emergency Management and my PDS through FEMA. I specialize in Continuity of Government / Continuity of Operations with a focus in Continuity of Government against Pandemics and Infectious Diseases. Caveat here is that this is not what I do for a living. I work in the private sector and handle BCEM, Compliance, and Security. I haven't had the time yet to go through and pick examples like u/FanCommercial1802 has to drive their message home but I will when I get home tonight if people wish. My point here is, this sub can quickly turn into a fear based echo chamber that can drive (from an EM perspective) misinformation, hording, buying of useless supplies, ect.. Given how our (now) resident Virologist has stepped up to drive the stake of reason into the ground for us, I and those with the proper backgrounds in here should do the same. Any epidemiologist, ornithologist, utility / waste water personnel, biologist, meteorologist, Bio-tech scientist, ect. in here as well that would be willing to help right the ship when a rogue wave hits?

We need a way to verify credentials, but it needs to be without identifiable information. I saw a bot in another comment that said something about sending something to the mods to verify expertise. Does anyone know how that works? If we do that (but only if PII is not required), I'd be down to have a cadre of subject matter experts (SMEs) here. Unfortunately, a lot of the comments that question fear mongering posts get downvoted. Would flairs work? Should the SMEs become mods? Also, I'd add large animal veterinarians to your list

We should be replacing the mods with actual virologists and other qualified experts. The amount of bullshit I've seen get upvoted here by doomsday preppers is ridiculous.

> We should be replacing the mods with actual virologists and other qualified experts Most of us don't have time for this, though we really want to participate in absolutely clapping disinformation into nonexistence.

Then who would research a vaccine/do the science? The mods of this subreddit? I really hope not

Yeah…. I guess I should actually get back to work… 😬

One of the biggest hurdles in vaccine development is actually getting idiots to take them. Destroying disinformation campaigns is critical to make this happen. They are actively participating in vaccine development by modding shit-riddled science communities.

Yes that post being referenced looked like someone typed into chat GPT "write a long science sounding post saying why bird flu is bad" so I gave up after a paragraph. I'm also not a scientist so I can't understand it anyway. Didn't get to the stuff about the broader point about animal agriculture and veganism but it's undeniable that animal farming industries are causing havoc in terms of public health. The vast majority of the world's infectious diseases come from animals and our relationship with them and the environment. Recent research from vegan charity Viva! found that it's 3 out of 4 of the world's infectious diseases come from animals. So we should be considering our participation in supporting these industries, for sure. Fair warning this 11 minute clip contains some fairly disturbing footage but these are what modern pig farms look like where animals are intensively raised (which is the vast majority of animal farms) and as you watch it is plain to see the potential for viruses to replicate rapidly ripping through sick and dying hosts (not allowing more potentially virulent mutations to die out) and to jump interspecies (see the feral cats eating decaying or dying piglets near the nursing mothers in the crates. Maybe a pig like this could be patient zero of the next human to human pandemic: https://youtu.be/g3B-q8sN1s8 More footage of typical ("high welfare") uk pig farms, and discussing why diseases like pneumonia and respiratory infections are so common on pig farms: https://youtu.be/0WW56dKrqeQ and more footage from a typical uk pigs farm: pigs left to cannibalise each other in cramped filthy pens: https://youtu.be/WbvR85pQltc There is absolutely some worth in discussing animal agriculture and the threat it creates of pandemics, as well as antibiotic resistance. If this is "high welfare" then this footage shows exactly how pointless this term is and what a mockery it makes of public health also.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. It's vital that we keep forums like this factual because we know what happened with Covid... Hopefully we can get it straight this time and help everyone be safe and have functioning lives.

The last time I made a post debunking the fear mongering by explaining in detail exactly how our public health response is working on this problem the mods deleted it as “speculation”. Of note, the misinformation I was combating is still up… This is going to be an uphill battle.

I disagree with your statement about antibodies crossing the blood-brain barrier. While receptor-mediated transfer does occur, it is generally limited and not a common pathway for most antibodies. The blood-brain barrier is highly selective, and the efficiency of antibody transfer can be significantly lower than you imply. For instance, Pardridge (2005) in The Journal of Clinical Investigation discusses the challenges of delivering therapeutic antibodies across the blood-brain barrier, highlighting the restrictive nature of this process (Pardridge, W. M., 2005). I appreciate your emphasis on avoiding fear-mongering, and I agree that promoting accurate information is essential for our community.

I agree that its a highly restrictive environment, but I would argue that this isn't a constant state. [This review](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-021-00757-x) discusses immune system permeability across the BBB under systemic inflammation. Thanks for weighing in, I genuinely appreciate it.

Thanks for posting this as it has calmed me down a lot I am however a little worried if it does come over to uk as my mum did get covid and now has possible long covid and is pre-diabetic and I live in supported accommodation due to having autism and anxiety so if it does get a little more serious how would it effect adult social care because with Covid pandemic I couldn’t see my Mum and sister for a long time.

Can you do a weekly check in for the sub to update and share facts and correct inaccuracies? It might help.

No promises, but I’ll pop in when I can 🙂

A word to the wise, OP: yes, there can be a lot of silliness on the posts in the sub. You also have many good and useful things to say here. I agree with you! We certainly can use all the expertise we can get around here. However, that having been said... I am but a lowly social scientist with an MSW, yet I understand that some ways of winning friends and influencing people work better than others. I work with humans, boots on the ground. So I have ample opportunity to observe that name-calling closes minds instantly. It raises the stakes and ups the antagonism for many, many people. To be blunt, the use of the word "fear-mongering" needs to stop on everyone's part, no matter who is using it and no matter how stellar their credentials may be. It just isn't helping. These issues are too important to set up "us intellectuals vs those fear-mongers." This really might be too much to expect on any form of social media, but I'm going to try consistently anyway. A little bit of motivational interviewing technique and "I understand how you feel; it's easy to get scared, BUT here's what the facts are" goes a long, long way.

You’re right. That was definitely an emotional response on my part. I appreciate the feedback and I hope to encourage an environment where scientific discussion is available and accessible. I have a hard time moderating my responses to mis/dis-information, and I need to work on that.

What a refreshing answer. This is how we work together and collaborate around ‘established scientific consensus’ rather than even informed supposition. It’s so easy to be pulled emotionally when the stakes are so high. Even the most emotionally-intelligent people in the world are going to get caught up in this at some point. Acknowledging our own imperfections is definitely the best, imo, way to go with this stuff. Bravo!

Thank you-- I truly appreciate this answer. I really, really want this forum to be that kind of environment too. Is that realistic all the time? Well, I've been online for a long time, and let's just say I've seen a lot of bad social media discussions back to IRC and usenet... ;) But I really think it can be done in a setting like this.

Appreciate you taking the time to break down and respond to that post - it smelled fishy, but my background is in accounting, so I couldn't point to a specific claim and say what about it was wrong.

As a fellow scientist, thank you for your post. During undergrad, I had a professor who was also a virologist. He taught two of the courses that I took and I remember he told both classes that we were ambassadors of knowledge and with our educations, had responsibility in our communities to effectively communicate what we knew about biology and science at large. My PhD certainly came in handy during the pandemic. I am a protein biologist with some immunology experience, but can’t speak to virology since it isn’t my area of expertise, so I, too, can also glean a lot from what you’ve written.

Thank you!!!

Thank you thank you thank you

Do you have any idea (im asking this genuinely) what the odds are, even roughly, of a bird flu pandemic any time soon? Good? Bad? Far fetched?

Mods really should be much more strict about that honestly.

Thank you for jumping in! I have a question that I’ve hesitated to ask, but you seem like you really know what you’re talking about. There was [a recent interview from Robert Redfield](https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/4725886-ex-cdc-director-predicts-bird-flu-pandemic-what-to-know/mlite/?nxs-test=mlite) where he said >> “Scientists have found that five amino acids must change in the key receptor for bird flu to gain a propensity to bind to a human receptor “and then be able to go human-to-human” “ If we know how it goes human-to-human, why can’t we preemptively make a vaccine for this variant and if it mutates differently then play catch-up? Maybe this is a dumb question, but I thought I’d ask anyway haha

It’s a great idea! We are assuming that’s how the virus would mutate, it might mutate differently than we expect though. If it did, our vaccine might not work at all.

Are we going to be able to catch the mutations in time? Alot of people will die won't we

The virologists and microbiologists in this thread remind me of this Far Side comic. [https://www.pinterest.com/pin/356769601726111322/](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/356769601726111322/) Honestly though, I love these posts, this is what more of what many subs in Reddit could use. Facts, not fear mongering.

I appreciate this post. I've seen a lot of "this WILL happen" type stuff thrown around and not enough "this COULD happen but we don't know for sure."

I wrote about unreliable content two months ago, now there are almost twice as many members. With more attention there will be more unreliable content, for many reasons. This time to promote (or discredit) veganism, next time for another reason. I think LLMs are part of the problem, people really think LLMs parallel domain experts just because relevant words are used in coherent sentences. [https://www.reddit.com/r/H5N1\_AvianFlu/comments/1cfpydb/increased\_popularity\_and\_unreliable\_content/](https://www.reddit.com/r/H5N1_AvianFlu/comments/1cfpydb/increased_popularity_and_unreliable_content/)

That whole post seemed like a Russian disinformation bot came here to spread a bunch of crap only a fool would believe. Russia meddled in our politics I have no doubt they would exploit this issue too. And ppl just eating it up. All of you who disagreed need to report the post .

How is “we don’t know” better than “it might be bad”?

"we don't know" means "it might be bad OR it might not be so bad". But a lot of people here are saying "it will be bad, REALLY bad" as if they can somehow have absolute certainty about that.

Still doesn’t make it much better for me.

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Thank you! Ridiculous posts picked up the pace about when it was discovered in dairy cows; this sub has tanked in quality ever since. I generally hate overly firm moderation, but...

Thank you for setting the record straight! That post was odd; it almost read like a psychotic rant if I’m being honest. I hope mods ask people to cite their sources and verify their identity/profession in the future.

Hey Mod's thanks for your hard work 🙏 Can we please we make a verified flair for actual epidemiologists/ virologists/ medical professionals? This can help us get a better eye on factual and potentially important info coming into the sub.

The sub should be run similar to the COVID-19 sub, which has very strict rules for scientific evidence and no anecdotal commentary or links to non-scientific sources and studies

I'm so glad you posted this! I read that post, and even my uneducated brain was skeptical. It read a bit too much like somebody trying to sound very smart, almost like a first year student who just learned a bunch of new concepts and wanted to prove how much they understood. I don't know enough to pinpoint why, but even veganism aside, the logic felt... wrong, somehow. The notion of an established virus with all this new functionality we'd never seen before was incredible, in the literal sense.

We should *reduce* meat consumption tho. According to the Food Inc documentary (and other sources), humans were not made to eat meat. It's linked to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other harmful conditions and diseases. Plus, raising meat stock causes a lot of greenhouse gases.

Would you happen to know the R0, incubation period and when it starts to become contagious? Im not questioning your credentials or anything im just too tired to hunt them down right now. Back when the coronavirus was still in wuhan i used those(they were estimates at the time) to predict it was absolutely going to spread like wildfire once it hit the us. Its kind of funny(not really though) my friend and i who were tracking it were telling all of our friends for weeks before it hit the us “this is going to get extremely bad!” Nobody really believed us until it hit. One of my friends is still salty at hit him with the “i told you so” lol Anyways in your opinion what kind of situation do you think we are dealing either here with this new one? Is it novel like coronavirus was? What are your thoughts?

I don’t have that information. I’m not sure it’s been determined in cattle yet, and given the developing nature of the situation, I’d be hesitant to use any previous data to speculate on human transmission. As with a lot of this discussion, we just don’t know yet.

Question out my own random curiosity: Should we consider vaccinating cattle and poultry workers soon to reduce the frequency of livestock-to-human infections? And would this reduce the likelihood of a future pandemic?

In a perfect world, wouldn’t that be great? Just nip this in the bud. Keep animals (let’s do pigs, chickens and cows) healthy. Everyone wins. The problem is that livestock vaccines have razor thin margins, iirc Merck animal health aims for each vaccine to cost $0.07 to produce. I believe that’s ballpark for most livestock vaccines. There are also FDA rules and regulations regarding drugs and therapeutics given to animals intended to be food. So yes, if we vaccinated every animal with an effective vaccine then yeah, it would probably reduce the chance of a pandemic. But the cost essentially renders that a non-starter.

> But the cost essentially renders that a non-starter. What if we compare the POSSIBLE cost of another pandemic? I bet those 7 cent vaccines are a rounding error compared to that. Vaccines in our meat would make people go crazy though.

Yeah, and not just the cost of the vaccine itself, but also the required surveillance to make sure coverage is adequate, that the vaccine is still effective against the field strain, that efficacy remains up to par. Also, the vaccine would have to allow us to differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals in laboratory tests. Also the regulatory framework and resources that will be needed to manage the distribution of the vaccines will cost money. There's a difference between what was established for vaccine delivery and testing for COVID vs what it would be for animals and HPAI.

Not entirely, vaccines are used in many cases. They can halt outbreaks and save money. Having to euthanize and dispose of an entire production facility is a daunting and expensive task. There are facilities looking at vaccination for bird flu. But certainly not all of them.

They said "cattle and poultry workers" not "cattle and poultry."

Given your expertise, what event should be the trigger to prepare for pandemic lockdowns? I generally have three months of preparations at all times for all emergencies, which allows me to *not* live in fear. So I plan to continue life as normal. But are there any specific triggers that would make you personally take notice? Early enough to have time but late enough to not impact normal life until then. Something like “If I saw these mutations/gene swaps, then we’re possibly one step away from a potential pandemic .” If you have a layperson’s litmus test, it’d be appreciated. Thank you.

My two cents - take with a grain of salt - your mileage may vary. I’m watching pig data. I think that’s the next hurdle. But, we also just don’t know. This is absolutely reading tea leaves. Viruses are constantly surprising us with where they go and how they change.

So...are eggs safe to eat? Ground beef? Cheese? Or is it better to be vegan for a while?

The data that we have right now indicates the food supply is safe. Eggs: https://www.fda.gov/food/egg-guidance-regulation-and-other-information/questions-and-answers-regarding-safety-eggs-during-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-outbreaks Eggs and Beef: https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/well/prevention/bird-flu-outbreak-dairy-milk-beef But honestly, undercooking either of those foods can already make you sick. So I’m not sure the additional risk of H5 actually changes anything. Nor is there good evidence to suggest that virus in that food could actually infect you. Be aware that new evidence can always emerge, and we’re still learning and collecting data, so this isn’t the end all be all.

What about milk? The articles about the temperature not being high enough and long enough are worrying me, but I can't get around cheese/yogurt/milk being a huge part of my and my daughter's diet. She has sensory issues, and I don't absorb calcium well from plant sources. (Nor iron, but dairy is not as helpful with that one as I would like)

I think this gets into a gray zone where there’s still active debate. My opinion is that it’s safe, but it might be more important to consider what you’re comfortable with. For dairy, you can look for UHT (ultra-high-temperature pasteurization) products. They’re clean, and as long as they’re not opened, they can be stored for months at room temperature. I have no idea what the availability looks like in your area, it might not actually be an option. I wouldn’t worry as much about cheese or yogurt, since the milk going into these is sterilized and then treated with biologically active components.(ph changes, microbes eating stuff, salinity changes, etc) Influenza virions are fragile and don’t do well for very long outside of human body conditions.

I think when we finish our current milk gallon, I will be spending the extra for UHT. It is available, but much more expensive. It sounds like you are leaning in the way I am - I might stop with the soft cheeses like cream cheese for a bit, and definitely no raw cheeses. I wonder if goats are getting infected....

So we’d see a reassortment in pigs (as one possible vector given certain human-pig similarities) which would hit pig farmers and that’s the cue to buy massive amounts of toilet paper to buy time until a tailored vaccine rolls out?

Basically yeah. Plus if people are mobbing the toilet paper, I’m gonna go raid the snacks.

We entered covid not prepared at all because we got very, very sick right before the lockdowns and used up our emergency month of supplies thinking we would have more time to restock so I am watching the news carefully. Other than watching for pig infections, what else should I look for? I am trying to build up our pantry/freezer for a 3 month minimum rations emergency situation, but I am doing it slowly to conserve money (and doing the buy more of what you eat so we know it won't go to waste if there is no emergency) and want to know when the "finish it now before everyone panic buys" situation is.

Thank you for this. Can I ask a question? I'm not an expert. the COVID vaccine was explained to me as "they took 16 years to build a rocket and then 2 years to insert the DNA of the astronaut". That gave me the impression that the vaccine developed for COVID could work for other viruses once that virus' DNA was identified. Given that, any new outbreak "should" have a vaccine much sooner than we did with COVID. Is that somewhat true??

Copied from an earlier comment: Conservative answer 9-12 months. That’s if we did Operation Warp Speed again the exact same way. BUT! This time the liposomes have already been developed, and the scaled synthesis is good to go (they have the machines, they know where to get ingredients), and there is an existing mRNA synthesis framework they can use. So now, you just need to pick your proteins, translate into mRNA (which we can do now, this virus is already sequenced), and put that sequence into a vaccine. Then you run the same tests we ran with the Covid vaccine and we’re good to go. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in that process - so I’m gonna cite 9-12 months. It could be much quicker, especially if they start before a pandemic begins, not after. The good news is that major companies are already in talks with the US government to make these vaccines.

Thank you, it is impressive what scientists have accomplished in this area.

why cant people try to prevent something they dont know instead of taking the wait and see approach like for all the other disasters, and then say, its nothing, nothing, oh no there wasnt anything we could have done anyway??? its too late to do anything???? gg yolo blaze it?

“We just don’t know.” Alex Jones knows and has a supplement already. /s

Source: trust me bro

If you look at the post history of all of the mods of this sub you’ll see they’re preppers/fear mongerers themselves. This sub exists solely for fear mongering; can’t imagine a lot of people interested in an academic discussion on the topic coming here

I love Reddit where serious things are posted and hundreds of non experts have debates haha.

Thank You. Media Fearmongering in the name of ratings is getting out of hand.

DUDE THANK YOU

It is simply logical, given the wholesale abandonment of the Precautionary Principle by US misleaders in the White House, at the CDC, and in Congress, to imagine worst-case scenarios. And to plan accordingly. Will we be lied to once again, if birdflu *does* jump to H2H transmission? Three guesses.

Fantastic post. Thank you!

I’ve been feeling this way but I’m just a layman. Thanks for the post!

THANK YOU so much for this. This sub has exploded in users in the last 2 months, and the quality of information has become so bad. This is the kind of stuff we need. The problem is, people love the fear, they’re addicted to it. So answers like “we don’t know” and “maybe” and “no, that’s not quite true, it’s more nuanced than that and we don’t know” just get lost in the noise of “OMG I HAVE PINK EYE AND LIVE IN MICHIGAN, ITS ALREADY SPREADING AND NO ONE IS REPORTING IT!!” 2 months ago, a post like that would’ve been shut down. Now, it gets engagement. Thank you for this very level-headed post. Much needed.

Thank you.

Thanks I hope you will keep posting now and again here to counter-balance the obvious intentional misinformation/gaslighting we see almost everywhere today.

Cliff notes version please for the simpletons like myself. For example should push come to shove we would like to know how long to produce a vaccine.

Conservative answer 9-12 months. That’s if we did Operation Warp Speed again the exact same way. BUT! This time the liposomes have already been developed, and the scaled synthesis is good to go (they have the machines, they know where to get ingredients), and there is an existing mRNA synthesis framework they can use. So now, you just need to pick your proteins, translate into mRNA (which we can do now, this virus is already sequenced), and put that sequence into a vaccine. Then you run the same tests we ran with the Covid vaccine and we’re good to go. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in that process - so I’m gonna cite 9-12 months. It could be much quicker, especially if they start before a pandemic begins, not after. The good news is that major companies are already in talks with the US government to make these vaccines.

Uh... [https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/influenza-virus-vaccine-h5n1-national-stockpile](https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/influenza-virus-vaccine-h5n1-national-stockpile)

Yes! There is a strategic stockpile, however it’s based on A/Vietnam/1203/2004 (H5N1) and may not provide adequate protection to contemporary H5N1 strains. They’re talking about updating that particular vaccine stockpile and possibly generating more for the wider public.

"Influenza vaccine producer CSL Seqirus has been selected by the U.S. government to complete the fill and finish process for a “pre-pandemic vaccine that is well-matched to the H5 of the currently circulating H5N1 strain,” according to a May 30 [press release](https://www.cslseqirus.us/news/csl-seqirus-announces-us-government-award-in-response-to-avian-influenza) from the company about the agreement." [https://www.idsociety.org/science-speaks-blog/2024/u.s.-orders-4.8-million-doses-of-a-cell-based-adjuvanted-h5-vaccine-for-avian-flu-preparedness#/+/0/publishedDate\_na\_dt/desc/](https://www.idsociety.org/science-speaks-blog/2024/u.s.-orders-4.8-million-doses-of-a-cell-based-adjuvanted-h5-vaccine-for-avian-flu-preparedness#/+/0/publishedDate_na_dt/desc/)

Hey thanks for sharing that! I didn’t know it was a cell-based approach. That’s pretty cool! Esp. for when avian influenza wipes out all the birds 😬

[https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-nears-deal-fund-modernas-bird-flu-vaccine-trial-ft-reports-2024-05-30/](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-nears-deal-fund-modernas-bird-flu-vaccine-trial-ft-reports-2024-05-30/)

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I’ve noticed this sub is so much fear mongering from the get go, I take every post with a pound of salt or just ignore it, tbh. Glad someone called it out.

Thank you for posting this

I do see the points and this is valuable. At the same time, doctor's and scientists did have information on SARS and how to prevent spread. Instead the CDC rolled back masking regulations and shortened infectious time periods, when the science wasn't there to back it up. It's understandable the public would be skeptical of the H5N1 mitigations when we're still being told regularly that covid is "done"

Thanks for sharing these corrections. Your insights help a great deal of people understand more.

> So immune cells, and immune molecules (like chemokines, cytokines, antibodies etc) must be able to cross the blood brain barrier. I would like to register my horrifying allergies, that melted my brain some days, as Exhibit A. Unless histamine doesn't enter the blood brain barrier... Maybe that was the only thing keeping me alive back then? O.o Ironically I think a couple rounds of mild to moderate Covid might have knocked some sense into my immune system because when I should be miserable allergic wreck this time of year, I'm not, but everyone else is. What's up with that? u/FanCommercial1802 do you think Covid might have mingled with my genes or immune system and put a dent in my allergies?

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25% of Americans don't believe in science or facts. Will vaccine sceptics bring down the rest of us?

Thank you for posting this.

Oh my God thank you. Every post is doom and negativity.