H5N1 killing California Cattle

Posted on by Thor

The H5N1 virus has been infecting America chickens. Over 90 million chickens have been killed because of the infection. There is some concern that the virus might be in eggs sold at the supermarket. Cooking eggs at a temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit should kill the virus. It is best not to make runny eggs.  Chicken dropping are added to cattle feed and that might be how the virus spread to cows.

In Tulare, County California, cow carcasses are piling up on the roadsides. Farmers and veterinarians are surprised by the high mortality rates from H5N1 infections. Overt 600 cow herds have been infected. There are now 31 confirmed human cases in California. The virus has been found in raw milk which is still being sold cross America.

Since a 1970 outbreak in Hongcong, there have been 970 Human cases of H5N1. Of those cases 470 people died. That is a case fatality rate of about 48%. COVID -19 had a mortality rate of about 0.8% which resulted in well over a million Americans dying. More than 100 million birds have died due to the virus since 2022. It is hard to imagine the human devastation if the numbers are right and it starts spreading between people.

H5N1 has being detected in wastewater across America. It has been detected in Saint Petersburg, Florida. Tests being done on Ferrets are not promising. Ferrets closely resemble humans in the way they react to influenza infections. The virus has causing very severe disease in the lab animals. Media has been reporting mild cases in humans so far, except the teen in Canada who is in intensive care. One of the symptoms is conjunctivitis, or bloody eyes.

COVID -19 had a mortality rate of about 0.8% which resulted in well over a million seven hundred thousand Americans dying. more than 100 million birds have died due to the virus since 2022.

There have been over 55 confirmed cases of H5N1 in humans. Many work in the dairy industry, but there are some cases that are a mystery. A child in Canada is in critical condition and the cause of infection a complete mystery. The virus infecting this child has shown an ability for its binding receptors to infect humans. That fact alone is concerning. The possibility that H5N1 is airborne is a very real possibility.  If the virus starts to spread from human to human the outbreak will ignite.

My biggest concern is that the incoming administration will make all the same mistakes it made with the COVID-19 pandemic. The easiest action for any politician to take in a public health emergency is to deny, deflect and minimize the outcome. The stakes are much higher if H5N1 becomes a pandemic. People have decided that any form of mitigation is an infringement on the or personal freedom. They yearn  to be infected and to infect others.

Class Half Full, Class Half Empty

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On May 19, 2021, an elementary school teacher in Marion County, California took her mask off to read to her class of students under the age of 12 and within days half of her students were infected by the Delta Variant. The school had otherwise been cautious by spacing the desks 6 feet apart and students wore masks. Windows were open on two walls and there was some sort of air filter in the room.

The selfish and irresponsible teacher however was UNVACCINATED. Most of the infected children were in the first two rows closes to the teachers desk. Six children had symptoms and six were asymptomatic. Several children did not get tested.

The teacher tested positive for COVID-19 two days after reading to her students without a mask. At all other times, she tended to wear her mask. The outbreak spread to other classes and student siblings and parents, some who were fully vaccinated.

Tracy Lam-Hine, the epidemiologist for the county said, “Everyone lets their guard down, but the thing is Delta takes advantage of any slippage from any kind of protective measures.”

A computer model found that without masking and testing each student who is infected could infect four other students. More than 75% of susceptible students will become infected within 3 months.

With comprehensive mask wearing each student could still infect two other students. The proportion of students infected drops by about 50%.

Mask wearing combined with twice weekly testing results in 22% of students infected if mask wearing is low, 16% if mask wearing is medium and if all student wore masks the percent infected would drop down to 13% of students infected over the course of a semester.

The report concluded, that without interventions in place the vast majority of students will become infected throughout the semester. Universal masking can reduce the infections by 26% to 78% and biweekly testing can reduce infections by another 50%. To prevent infections in the community, masking and biweekly testing should be implemented especially for students under the age of 12 who are not eligible for the vaccine.

Freedom of Speech

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The Guardian reported, School board meetings have become the front line in the culture war battle over wearing masks to keep children safe. These meeting have the energy of a Trump rally or January 6th insurrection. The few are by far the loudest.

I spend the day as I painted watching videos of school board meeting about the issue of children wearing masks in school. The level of anger and disrespect shown by many parents who do not want their children wearing masks was amazing. Some meetings devolved into out of control shouting matches.

Many meetings have been disrupted or even cancelled. In Bend, Oregon, proceedings had to be put on hold twice in two weeks, as angry parents shouted at school board members and heckled a Spanish-language translator. “School boards are a uniquely vulnerable spot in the culture war landscape, because they’re open to everyone and they’re not really prepared for it,” said Adam Laats, a Binghamton University professor who studies the history of education in the US.

In Texas, one parent assaulted a teacher by tearing a mask off her face, Eanes Independent School District Superintendent Tom Leonard said in a statement August 24, 2021. “A parent physically assaulted a teacher by ripping a mask off her face, others yelling at a teacher to take off her mask because they could not understand what the teacher was saying while her face was covered,” he said.

A California teacher was hospitalized after a parent physically assaulted her when a discussion about the use of face masks heated up. The teacher suffered “lacerations on his face, some bruising on his a face and a pretty good knot on the back of his head,” KCRA reported.

In a parking lot after a school board meeting in Franklin, Tennessee, parents harassed medical professionals who had spoken in favor of masks in schools. “We know who you are. You can leave freely, but we will find you.”

Eureka Superspreader

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The Eureka Pentecostal Church in Eureka, California has been linked to about 110 cases of COVID-19 in Humboldt County. On April 23, 2021, a mobile testing van from the County Public Health Branch was parked in front of the church. The church’s administration confirmed that members have tested positive. “We had gone over an entire year with no outbreak at the church, but despite our best efforts, the virus was introduced to our congregation,” a statement from the church said.

Members of Eureka the Pentecostal Church recently posted videos shot at a regional youth gathering held April 9 and 10 in Stockton. The videos show singers and musicians on stage at an indoor venue, performing for a crowd of hundreds of people who can be seen dancing, jumping up and down and singing in close proximity to one another. Very few in the audience were wearing masks.

Tyler Sullivan, the youth president of a Pentecostal organization called Western District Youth Division, announced the event, saying, “After almost a year of us not being able to come together, we are finally coming together for an in-person, district-wide youth gathering” at the Christian Life Center in Stockton. Regarding capacity for the event, Sullivan said, “With churches and regulations being at only 25 percent [capacity] as of this moment, we are only going to allow 1,200 registrants in per service.” Videos posted on social media make it clear they met or exceeded the capacity expectations. The audience mostly failed to maintain social distancing and face coverings, as recommended by the CDC and other public health organizations.

On April 23, 2021, the Humboldt County Joint Information Center announced that 20 more county residents have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of cases this week to 130.

 

 

COVID-19 Wildfires

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California is experiencing a wildfire of a COVID-19 crisis surpassing 3 million COVID-19 cases this week. The state reported 694 new Covid-19 related deaths January 20, 2021, its second highest single day toll to date. As of January 20, 2021, California had a total of 3,019,371 confirmed infections. More than 20,800 people hospitalized across the state for Covid-19. Approximately 4,750 of those patients are in intensive care units.

The Los Angeles Times reported that LA County is particularly hard hit. A dozen mobile refrigerated trailers are parked in the county morgue parking lot to handle all the bodies. Each trailer can store 25 bodies. Overwhelmed funeral homes are forced to turn families away.

As the pandemic rages in California, medics are being told to ration oxygen.  At the start of the new year, oxygen and the medical supplies associated with it were hard to come by in parts of Southern California and some hospital administrators worried they would have to choose which patients get these resources during the next COVID-19 surge.

There is hope that the vaccine roll out might help curb the surge in deaths. However the vaccine roll out has been slow, coming in fits and starts. San Francisco’s public health department will run out of covid-19 vaccine January 21, 2021 because the city’s allocation dropped substantially from a week ago and doses that had to be discarded were not replaced. Two thirds of the state is under a regional stay-at-home orders based on ICU capacity. Sleep Train Arena, the former home of the Sacramento Kings north of Sacramento’s downtown has been turned into a COVID-19 treatment facility to ease the strain on southern California hospitals. The arena should be able to handle 244 patients with the proper staffing and resources. Creating more bed space is easy, but finding staff for these facilities is the dilemma.

California health officials and researchers at the state’s universities and hospitals are trying to learn more about another variant of the coronavirus. Only days after the so-called “UK variant” was identified here in the state, a different, separate variant has now been traced to outbreaks in Santa Clara County. The UK variant spreads more easily being more infectious. Researchers are trying to find out if the the California variant is also more infectious.

Los Angeles International Airport is now offering COVID-19 test results in as little as 30 minutes with the addition of rapid antigen tests at the airport’s on-site laboratory. The nasal-swab antigen tests are available only at the Terminal 6 lab location and cost $80. California officials are pinning their hopes on the newly inaugurated President Joe Biden as they struggle to obtain coronavirus vaccines to curb the surge that has packed hospitals and morgues in the state.

Disneyland Super Vaccination Site

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Disneyland in Anaheim, Orange County (O.C.), California is being used as a vaccination super site. Tents have been sett up in one of the iconic theme park parking lots and cars began lining up a 5AM on January 13, 2021. Appointments must be made before hand and many drivers were disappointed to find this out as they waited in line. 10,000 people signed up on the evening of January 12, 2021 for appointments. The website crashing shortly after going live. Across the country people have been having trouble getting signed up for a vaccination.

O.C. firefighters and paramedics  vaccinated 3,000 patients at the super site on the first day. The goal is to be able to do two and a half times that many people next week, if vaccine doses are available. Disneyland will be one of five O.C. vaccine super sites. Dr. Clayton Chau announced that anyone age 65 or older will now be eligible to get vaccinated in O.C. That’s in addition to healthcare workers, emergency responders and residents of skilled nursing and assisted living facilities.

Projected ICU capacity remains below 15% in the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions which remain under the Regional Stay at Home Order. The following areas remain under the stay at home order…

  • Southern California: Remains under order; four-week ICU capacity projections do not meet criteria to exit order.
  • Bay Area: Remains under order; four-week ICU capacity projections do not meet criteria to exit order.

Due to high rates of COVID-19 hospitalizations impacting the health care system, California is also under a Limited Stay at Home Order.

  • California has 2,900,246 confirmed cases to date. Numbers may not represent true day-over-day change as reporting of test results can be delayed.
  • There were 40,622 newly recorded confirmed cases January 15, 2021.
  • The 7-day positivity rate is 11.4% and the 14-day positivity rate is 12.6%.
  • There have been 37,802,255 tests conducted in California. This represents an increase of 352,719 during the prior 24-hour reporting period.
  • As case numbers continue to rise in California, the total number of individuals who will have serious outcomes will also increase. There have been 32,960 COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
  • As of January 15, 2021 providers have reported administering a total of 1,188,703 vaccine doses statewide. Numbers do not represent true day-to-day change as reporting may be delayed. As of January 15, 2021 a total of 3,144,575 vaccine doses, which includes the first and second dose, have been shipped to local health departments and health care systems that have facilities in multiple counties.

Days Apart

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A Douglas County, Colorado couple in their 70s died within days of each other from COVID-19.

An Oklahoma couple married 45 years, died days apart. They texted each other “I love you” before going into coma.

In Jacksonville, Florida a mother and daughter died 19 days apart from COVID-19.

A Wisconsin couple married for six decades died from COVID-19 just 2 days apart.

A California couple married 35 years died from COVID-19, 11 days apart.

The wife and husband behind Seattle’s Kona Kitchen died from COVID-19 just days apart.

A South Carolina couple married for 66 years died days apart from COVID-19.

A Louisiana woman lost both of her parents days apart due to COVID-19.

An Atlanta, Georgia couple married for 49 years died days apart from COVID-19.

Three members of a Freehold Township, New Jersey family died days apart after contracting COVID-19.

Just as the United States is rolling out COVID-19 vaccines, the numbers have become gloomier than ever: Over 3,000 Americans died in a single day, more than on D-Day or 9/11. One million new cases in the span of five days. More than 106,000 people in the hospital. The U.S. recorded 3,124 deaths Wednesday, December 9, 2020 the highest one-day total yet, according to Johns Hopkins University. Up until last week, the peak was 2,603 deaths on April 15, when New York City was the epicenter of the nation’s outbreak.

 

The Goat Herd

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In California, a large herd of goats escaped into the suburbs. They of course have no concept of what social distancing might mean as they bumped shoulders and ate flowers from people’s front years. Watching the hilarious video it is easy to see that herding goats is much like herding cats. They go wherever they want. This is America after all.

Disney Springs will be opening May 20, 2020 in phases. I should imaging that people who have been couped up inside for months will of course want to go there to shop and try the restaurants. Someone on twitter made the analogy that the herd of goats reminded him of a herd of tourists being unleashed into Disney Springs. Re-opening has its complications because it’s not simply a matter of reopening the doors and greeting guests once again. Many venues laid off employees, who are possibly now collecting unemployment if they made their way through the difficult to navigate online and phone system. Restaurants will need to scramble for supplies, and work on implementing whatever safety changes are necessary. Many will probably take a wait and see approach, keeping a close watch on other restaurants to see how things go. Only select third parties are reopening during the initial phase.

Venues opening include, 4 Rivers Cantina Food Truck, Polite Pig, STK, Wine Bar George, Wolfgang Puck Bar and Grill, Chicken Guy, Blaze Pizza, Erin McKenna’s Bakery, Frontera Cocina, Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream Kiosk, Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company, Sunshine Churros, YeSake Kiosk.

I saw pictures of Shanghai Disney‘s opening day and large bowed were painted on pavement in the lines. The boxes showed a pair of feet surrounded with a red circle with a line through the feet. This was clearly and attempt to maintain some social distancing. However many stood IN the boxes, right behind the people in front of them. Everyone was required to wear face masks. In the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic, not wearing a mask was illegal. That pandemic killed over 250,000 people in America. More died from the virus than in WWI. Yet today, the POTUS refuses to wear a mask himself. I choose to wear one when I go out, because I care about the people around me.

2 Guys + 1 played at the American Legion.

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On our last evening in San Diego, California, Terry’s mom and her boyfriend took us to the American Legion 282 in La Mesa for dinner and dancing. The musicians of 2 Guys + 1 stood at a small staging area by the bar. I was the only one who actually ordered dinner and it was quite good.

The room was rather dark so sketching was a challenge. Marcy seemed proud to show off her daughter. The cover tunes were fine but I never felt the itch to dance. Terry seemed satisfied to watch. A woman pulled Macy’s boyfriend aside and suggested he dance with a woman who was recently widowed. He is light on his feet and was happy to comply. I’m not so sure Marcy was happy with having her dance partner loaned out.

My sister Pat frequents an American Legion Lodge in Florida and they all have the same atmosphere. There is palpable pride in those that served and the food is cheap and tasty. Who could ask for more? There is also a scent of stale beer and cigarettes that has seeped into the buildings woodwork. The Lodge in San Diego was in the basement giving the impression that you were walking down the steps to a speakeasy. I wonder how many American Legions there are in this country. There must be more than 282 of them. That means there are at least 5 Legions per state.

A ride along with the San Diego Police.

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Debbie and Paul Andreen‘s son, Kevin has joined the San Diego Police Department. He was kind enough to suggest I join him for a ride along as he cruised the neighborhoods just North of Mission Beach. When I first got in the police cruiser, he said I should seek cover and immediately use the cruiser radio to call the dispatch if shot were fired. He also wanted me to exit the cruiser any time he did. Much of the morning went by without incident. He pointed out several homeless men that he knew by name. Several weeks ago, a homeless man had died from an injury. He would have lived if any of his buddy’s had thought to bring him to an ER.

After a long time of driving without incident, Kevin parked the cruiser near an intersection that had stop signs. He explained that the road, heading towards the beach had a stop sign at every intersection. By the time drivers got this far they started rolling through the stops.  The law is that you have to come to a complete stop behind the white line. Within minutes, a woman approached the intersection and rolled past the line. He quickly followed and pulled her over a block away. He approached her drivers side door to get her license and write up the ticket. I waited outside the cruiser. The ticketing process took longer than I expected, I probably could have done a small sketch. Kevin wrote down some notes after the traffic stop, because months from now he would have to appear in court. Without documentation it would be hard to recall the details of every traffic stop. He returned to the intersection to check that the stop sign wasn’t obstructed or the line worn away.

Twice the dispatch sent Kevin to homes to check on people. Relatives had tried to contact the people living in the homes and they were concerned that they couldn’t get in touch. While waiting outside the first home, I felt uneasy. A friend had recently committed suicide and this must have been what it was like when police first arrived on the scene and found the body. In both cases, the person was home and in fine condition. Kevin would diplomatically ask questions to make sure the person was safe. It was a bit odd to follow the police into peoples homes. At one point I kicked over a cat toy by mistake. The resident asked who I was since I wasn’t in uniform, and Kevin would explain that I was a ride along. She had a history of depression and Kevin needed to confirm that she was taking her medications.

One call was from an angry woman who was sure that construction workers who were jack hammering up a driveway, had dented her car. The construction workers denied damaging the car. Kevin just wanted to get their contact information.  We looked at the car and I didn’t notice any damage. When talking to the woman in her yard, Kevin explained that this wasn’t a police matter but an issue for insurance companies. He gave her the construction company’s information and told her to contact her insurance company. She seemed relieved just to be able to air her grievances. Before being a police officer, Kevin had been a teacher and that must have given him experience in being diplomatic. The beat puts him in contact with a wide variety of people, from beach bums to the ultra rich. Interacting with so many people certainly makes police work interesting.