[nordsieck]

From the article:

> Ferrets are a common model for studying how influenza viruses that primarily affect birds are able to adapt to mammals, a topic that Kawaoka and his colleagues at UW–Madison’s Influenza Research Institute investigate since such a jump could trigger an influenza pandemic.

[tptacek]

the dairy worker experienced mild symptoms and fully recovered

[freen]

If it’s communicable, that means they probably infected many others.

Several million similar infections can easily mutate into something worse.

What is bad is its novelty to our immune system, not necessarily its initial mortality rate.

[lolinder]

But this headline is getting clicks because of the initial mortality rate number, which is in ferrets and obviously not applicable to humans since the human who got it had only mild symptoms.

It was a series of overreactions in the media to studies like this one that led me to be skeptical of the news reporting about COVID in its early days. I came around, but a lot of others didn't. Overblown health scare headlines cause real harm for science communication.

[noduerme]

Dosage and location of infection matter. The ferrets were given a high dose of virus and went on to pass it to others through the air. The farmworkers so far have gotten small droplets in the eye, and still this shows that the virus has mutated at least somewhat in humans since the bovine iteration, as only the human-mediated version was able to effectively attack mammalian lung cells. We are the pigs in this scenario. If you read the article, you'll see that was the point of testing on ferrets, not to see whether ferrets would die from it, nor to perform any kind of gain-of-function research.

What this shows is that the virus is able to jump the barrier to mammalian lung cells with a few iterations, and already has by way of some human exposure. There is no particular reason to think that a lung infection in humans wouldn't be 100% lethal as it is in ferrets or sea lions. So far, the only infections in humans in the US that we know of have been essentially relegated to the eyes. But it appears that the virus is primed for more than that now.

I'm not suggesting that the media go crazy causing a panic, or that the media do anything at all, since they only seem to inflame every situation. But looking at the data from this report, I think it is reasonable to assess that we're on a tragectory toward a highly lethal airborne H5 virus, and take appropriate steps to shore up vaccines and antiviral stocks.

[superkuh]

Just a note: those mild symptoms included eye bleeding (the conjunctivitis they mentioned casually). And this symptom in humans is not isolated to this case of H5N1, it's relatively common in cases as of late. Reference: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2405371 (warning, nsfw photos of the persons' eyes bleeding)

[tptacek]

The bleeding here is subconjunctival hemorrhage, which by itself is not all that rare or serious. You can get it from sneezing too hard. It's happened to me a bunch of times.

I take your point, that the suggestion in that case study is that the virus caused it directly (RTPCR from the conjunctiva tested positive for the virus). He did have a full-blown case of conjunctivitis, though.