[Havoc]

Last I spoke to a nurse about this she explained something interesting to me - in selecting the next flu shot they actually watch the opposite hemisphere to predict most likely strain to vax.

So despite US shenanigans rest of world may still be OK

[_heimdall]

Both hemispheres do this if I'm not mistaken. They look to the other hemisphere's winter and expect that 6 month delay will still help predict what's coming.

[seanmcdirmid]

Flu strains usually originate from Asia (usually China), where flu is more likely to jump from chicken to human. But that was in the past, it is completely possible that the USA could move backwards in health and become the new spot where flu jumps to humans (eg by not culling flocks where infections are found because of rising egg prices). Trump could do a lot of damage in four years, we might end up completely flipped from where were a decade ago by the end of it (China as the preeminent respected world power, the USA as a big nation of unvaxed people where bird flu jumps to humans, Fujian Type N flu is replaced with Tenesee type M flu)

[_heimdall]

You're making a lot of assumptions here.

China has seemed to play a larger role in novel viruses with zoological origins. The average flu season isn't driven by novel viruses, if they were every year would progress more similarly to CoV2.

I've never seen a study comparing the relative efficacy of culling vs. not culling chicken flocks. Unless you have sources for that, you're assuming culling is always best. One consideration there is that culling entire flocks ensures that we are never able to select breeding animals based on those with natural immunity. Maybe that is the right choice, but I don't think we have ever studied that.

Egg prices haven't yet seemed to play an impact in flock culling rates. We have murdered 166 million birds based on a recent article [1] - extremely few of those were ever tested, they just happened to be in a house with a bird either confirmed or suspected of infection. At least based on that article, culling hasn't helped contain the outbreak.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-02-26/poultry...

[seanmcdirmid]

The CDC/FDA assumed culling was better, I’m not an expert. And the point has always been to prevent a human outbreak, not reduce egg prices.

Trump is coming in and saying culling isn’t needed, and he is finding experts that agree with his opinion to back it up. Whatever policy choice coming up, it will be one where science is abused to justify a pre-determined decision rather than using science to come up with the right decision.

[_heimdall]

> The CDC/FDA assumed culling was better, I’m not an expert.

You are taking an agency's assumption as a fact though, its functionally yours at that point. It doesn't matter if someone else says it, it matters if you agree with the logic of how they got there.

> And the point has always been to prevent a human outbreak, not reduce egg prices.

Human transmission has yet to be proven. Culling hundreds of millions of birds to avoid human transmission when we don't even know if that's possible seems idiotic at best, sadistic at worst.

[seanmcdirmid]

> Human transmission has yet to be proven.

Only the quacks say that, the science is firmly in the corner that not only is bird (or bat) to human transmission is possible, it has already happened a few times this season.

This is where having someone like Trump as president isn’t just annoying, but downright deadly.