Ask HN: Any rising concerns about H5N1?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40146719

by ottaborra • 2 years ago

2 3 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Not sure if this is paranoia, or the flames of a conspiracy, it does seem like the concerns are growing at a pace akin to early covid. What do you folks think?

stop50• 2 years ago

My country learned from BSE, no no concerns.

JSDevOps• 2 years ago

It's been around for a lot longer than Covid and it's not really caught on so to speak.

noduerme• 2 years ago

If you mean that the virus is outpacing the surveillance and the public health announcements, then yes, it feels similar to Covid in January/February of 2020. The difference being that its not human-to-human yet. The fact that it's jumped to mammals hasn't produced the appropriate level of concern, and unfortunately if it jumps to humans we're going to be behind the curve again. I wasn't the only person making arrangements in Feb. 2020, and I suspect I'm not the only person now. Thankfully I'm more prepared now, mentally and materially, for what a pandemic lockdown looks like. But H5N1 could be a very different beast, if the CFR is as high as 50% and the virus is in the food supply. At that point you have to worry about not just the virus, but the total breakdown of society. Forget understaffed hospitals, who's going to staff the water treatment plants and the nuclear plants? In Covid we were more or less able to keep food from running out. A virus with such a high mortality rate as H5N1 might burn itself out rather quickly. I'm more concerned about the state of anarchy that would erupt and possibly last for a long time. I'm prepared to isolate or mask or live on canned food for a few months until there's a vaccine. I'm prepared to defend my home from the odd intruder. But I'm not prepared to defend it against pillaging hordes of looters.

So, concern, yes. This is a ticking time bomb. Let's hope that if/when it jumps to humans, it's either 98% less deadly than what's been seen in opportunistic crossover H5N1 infections, or else that it's geographically contained until vaccine production can be ramped up.

The vaccine stockpile of ~5M doses should be used to create fences around any suspected cases and all of their contacts. That's the only real hope.

Ask HN: Any rising concerns about H5N1?

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