"It has been determined" that infected dairy herd serology can be disclosed

https://hogvet51.substack.com/p/one-year-later-it-has-been-determined

by ctoth • 1 year ago

61 33 1 year ago

hogvet51.substack.com

ggm2• 1 year ago

The fact that indicators of decision-making have to be indirect, speaks to the risk environment of public health officials. Post Fauci, it's huge.

Is this problem also a function of both devolution of power to states and the environment post animal activism? Or just the "don't ask don't tell" of US policy these days? A bunch of laws got passed about revealing inner truths of animal husbandry in the wake of activist filming in chicken houses and piggeries.

We depend on the massive herds of food animals. We depend on clear information sharing about their health. They aren't just tasty beef and cheese, they are disease vectors and storage grounds of infection. This information policy nightmare isn't good.

CrossVR2• 1 year ago

Post Fauci, it's huge.

How is Anthony Fauci related to this? He headed the NIAID, not the USDA.

Blackthorn• 1 year ago

Are you really going to try to say that the absurd levels of bile, vitriol, and threats that he received for doing his job during a pandemic has zero knock-on effect for other public health officials?

guhidalg• 1 year ago

I remember in 2020 how a career public servant, colleague to those in USDA, was contradicted by the president because it made the administration's COVID response look bad.

Recently, the US president has decided he doesn't want to protect his public servant's lives anymore https://apnews.com/article/fauci-trump-security-detail-4b2e3...

ggm2• 1 year ago

As others note, its the public health aspect of being a voice for science and reason, against the political backlash and death threats. I did not mean to imply USDA and NIAD related, except in needing public health policy people making decisions and statements in the public eye.

JohnTHaller• 1 year ago

On a related note, "Trump ends Fauci’s security detail and says he’d feel no responsibility if harm befell him": https://apnews.com/article/fauci-trump-security-detail-4b2e3...

financetechbro• 1 year ago

“You can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you worked for government,” Trump said.

Coming from the guy who will have security detail for the rest of his life because he worked for the government. Truly comical time to be alive

knowaveragejoe• 1 year ago

In a Breitbart article, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins blithely assures us that increased biosecurity supported by the Trump Administration will negate the need for vaccines. I have to wonder how that’s going to work out for poultry flocks next to dairy (or feedlot) H5N1 B3.13 or D1.1 outbreaks, especially when she is also taking cattle vaccines off the table in the same conversation? I’ll give Secretary Rollins credit for one thing - she definitely does not hide her intentions in 3rd person language anonymity! She will own these comments!

That'll be something to keep in mind.

mlinhares2• 1 year ago

"negate the need for vaccines" i guess we should start to buy only imported powdered milk as US milk won't be safe for human consumption anymore. what is wrong with these people, go be corrupt and steal government money but leave this shit alone.

Hikikomori• 1 year ago

I hear raw milk is good for you.

hypeatei• 1 year ago

what is wrong with these people

Brain worms, eating road kill, the usual.

neuronexmachina• 1 year ago

Worth noting that Rollins is the same USDA Secretary who advocated for Americans to keep chickens in their yards to counter rising egg prices. Besides that not making financial sense, it also creates even more vectors for H5N1 to spread.

timewizard3• 1 year ago

This isn't my field but I always feel it's disingenuous to show PCR results without telling me how many cycles of PCR you did. PCR is effectively a magnifying glass and you're obscuring the level of magnification you used to get a detection. It doesn't seem, on it's own, to ever be a useful piece of information.

stonogo3• 1 year ago

For a diagnostic application, the cycle count doesn't really matter. Either the DNA your primers are targeting is present or it is not. That's why they talk about a "positive" or "negative" PCR test -- the presence or absense of the viral DNA is a binary.

For diagnostic use like this, the standard is 30±10 cycles, but it doesn't really matter if it's ten or a hundred, since all you're really doing is verifying the presence of the target genome.

realityfactchex• 1 year ago

Is a robust citation each available for each of those related claims?

I'm not looking for dogmatic assertions, I mean the fundamental and reproducible papers proving those claims.

Because those are all in direct opposition with the parent. And two views of an issue will not be resolved by each claiming opposite dogma.

Hopefully someone can present the evidence. A textbook citation is not enough. Are there really controlled experiments showing these things? Or is it mostly theoretical? Is it time to ask what we know--are these "facts we have been taught", or have we looked into the scientific validity of the proofs with the criticality of a practicing scientist?

I think that very solid citations here would actually go a long way to inform the parent, but I doubt that anything short of that would do so.

timewizard3• 1 year ago

is present or it is not.

Yes. And don't you use a /threshold/ mechanism to detect presence? Or you have tests so sensitive that a /single/ molecule or equivalent will deliver a reliably positive signal? I mean if it's that good why are you even doing PCR amplification in the first place?

the standard is 30±10 cycles

The difference between 2^30 and 2^40 is massive.

blackguardx3• 1 year ago

PCR is a basic tool. It amplifies, much like your car stereo. If you can hear music when tuning in an AM station, you don’t question the automatic gain correction the stereo is doing internally. PCR is the same way. If the target is present, it is detectable. If it isn’t then it isn’t. There are so many variables at play that the number of cycles isn’t very meaningful.

tanseydavid• 1 year ago

Kary Mullis, inventor of PCR does not agree with your analogy.

aftbit• 1 year ago

Is sample contamination more impactful (likely to lead to a false positive) at 100 or 200 cycles than at 20? I remember some distrust of high PCR cycle counts during COVID but I never quite understood the fear.

timewizard3• 1 year ago

You run PCR for cycles. You run it for 32 cycles? You've got a 4 billion times multiplication of the input signal. You see the problem? "Detectable" isn't a single ended specification with "PCR." You really do need to disclose how many cycles you ran.

Similarly there's ionizing radiation in your home. Right now. Flowing through you. If it's not above the background it's not interesting or material. So just saying "we found radiation" is equally meaningless unless you tell me that level in relation to something.

"It has been determined" that infected dairy herd serology can be disclosed

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