The data, which appeared fleetingly online on Wednesday, confirmed transmission in two households. Scientists are calling on the agency to release the full report.
NY Times
Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished.
The data appears to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets.
In one household, an infected cat might have spread the virus to another cat and to a human adolescent, according to a copy of the data table obtained by The New York Times.
The cat died four days after symptoms began.
In a second household, an infected dairy farmworker appears to have been the first to show symptoms, and a cat then became ill two days later and died on the third day.
The table was the lone mention of bird flu in a scientific report published on Wednesday that was otherwise devoted to air quality and the Los Angeles County wildfires. The table was not present in an embargoed copy of the paper shared with news media on Tuesday, and is not included in the versions currently available online. The table appeared briefly at around 1 p.m., when the paper was first posted, but it is unclear how or why the error might have occurred.
The virus, called H5N1, is primarily adapted to birds, but it has been circulating in dairy cattle since early last year. H5N1 has also infected at least 67 Americans but does not yet have the ability to spread readily among people. Only one American, in Louisiana, has died of an H5N1 infection so far.
The report was part of the C.D.C.’s prestigious Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which, until two weeks ago, had regularly published every week since the first installment decades ago. But a communications ban on the agency had held the reports back, until the wildfire report was published on Wednesday.
Experts said that the finding that cats might have passed the virus to people was not entirely unexpected but were alarmed that the finding had not yet been released to the public.
‘If there is new evidence about H5N1 that is been held up for political purposes, that is just completely at odds with what government’s responsibility is, which is to protect the American people,’ said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.
It’s important that the C.D.C. immediately publish the full data and the context in which they were collected for other scientists to review, she said.
Scientists have long known that cats are highly susceptible to the virus. At least 85 domestic cats have been infected since late 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But there had not previously been any documented cases of cats passing the virus to people.
‘Given the number of cats in the U.S. and their close contact with people, there is definitely the need to understand the potential risk,’ said Dr. Diego Diel, a veterinarian and virologist at Cornell University.
Although cats may be infected when they prey on infected wild birds, cases among domestic cats in the United States began rising last year as the virus spread through dairy farms. On many farms, dead cats were the first signal that cows had been infected. Several recent cases in pet cats have also been linked to contaminated raw pet food or raw milk.
H5N1 is often fatal in cats, which may develop severe neurological symptoms.
Historically, H5N1 has primarily affected birds, but over the last several years, new versions of the virus have proved capable of infecting a wide range of mammals, including wild and domestic cats, seals and dairy cows. Infections in mammals give the virus more opportunities to evolve in ways that could allow it to infect humans more easily.
My neighbor’s cat seems healthy and happy – but like ‘covid’ – that may be ‘one of the signs’. Guess we’ll have to go put him down before he ‘super spreads’ to us!!
By the way, for you morons who CONTINUE to believe the nonsense the government and its lackey agencies puts out? My friend just brought back ranch-fresh eggs from across the border (30 miles)….
$4 for 32 eggs. Seems Bird Flu can’t cross the border. Much like if you sat in a restaurant, covid safely passed over your head so removing your mask to eat was safe.
And you people yelled at unmasked-me for not falling for such a pathetically apparent hoax?
~Occams
ed note–stupid comments such as this explain in a microsecond why it is that we live our lives with a rusty razor blade at our collective throats..
Our cat is also perfectly healthy and fine, as well as our dog, our sheep, the deer on the property, and all the moose, elk, coyotes, mountain lions, etc that traverse our terra sancta here in the PNW.
And, to the best of our knowledge, none of them has contracted rabies either, so I guess–using your ‘logic’, rabies doesn’t exist?
Assuming that what you wrote about your neighbor buying 32 eggs for $4 is accurate and truthful, I don’t know what country he may be living in, but right here where this website is published, $4 buys you a mere 6 eggs, $8 for a dozen and up $1.50 from just a week ago.
Seriously, what’s wrong with people like you? How is it that you are not able to see the dominoes falling, one by one, and where they are destined to end up?
Have we really become THIS thick-headed today that someone such as yourself, with a supposed ‘neighbor’ who has a healthy cat and another supposed ‘neighbor’ who buys eggs ‘across the border’ for roughly 1/8 of what they are selling for everywhere else, concludes–based upon these 2 statistically-insignificant pieces of circumstantial ‘evidence’–that there is NOT something serious afoot and that a major move on the part of ‘them’ is NOT unfolding in real time as we speak?
From the Gentile point of view, this–your hair-brained comments–is way beyond embarrassing…It’s downright humiliating and dispiriting.
Bet those two cats are in the possession of the CDC; and sitting in one of their labs; as I type. If the transmission from cat to human did indeed happen in this case; I guarantee the CDC went completely crazy and went and confiscated those cats. They are carrying the “Holy Grail” the Elites have so desperately been pursuing……..or…….it could all be a lie to put fear into everyone.