Concerns rise after positive cases found in Delaware’s Kent County and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
ed note–before all the usual suspects chime in with the typically one-dimensional chirps such as ‘hoax’, ‘plan-demic’ and all the rest, remember that the same template used in completely upending the world with Covid is being used again, and just because last time it was hyped into appearing more deadly than it really was, that does not mean that this time it is the same thing.
Just as it is in any game of Russian Roulette, it is just a matter of time before that cylinder comes up loaded and the whole thing goes BANG in ways that it never did before.
Washington Post
Bird flu outbreaks have been detected at three poultry operations in Maryland and Delaware, impacting more than 500,000 chickens and leading to heightened alert among officials in the Washington DC region.
On Friday, Maryland Department of Agriculture officials said the H5N1 strain of avian influenza had been detected at a chicken operation in Caroline County during routine sampling of the birds before they are harvested. The outbreak marked the first H5N1 case at a Maryland poultry farm since 2023, officials said, and it followed two incidents of positive bird flu testing at separate commercial farms in Delaware’s Kent County. Officials have also found instances of the strain in wild birds in the two states but have not detected any cases in humans in the area.
‘Everybody is already on high alert because it’s the season,’ Maryland state veterinarian Jennifer Trout said Friday. ‘We’ve had wild bird outbreaks and positive flocks in Delaware, and now we have this one in Maryland.
‘We’re tripling down now,’ she said, with safety and precautionary measures.
While experts caution that the risk of transmission of bird flu to humans is low, there is rising concern after a man in Louisiana became the first person in the United States to die of avian influenza.
H5N1 is a respiratory virus that spreads quickly among birds, often through eye and nasal secretions and manure. It spreads mostly in the fall and spring, as ducks, geese and swans migrate for the season. Wild birds carrying the disease can infect poultry in backyards and on farms.
There have also been bird flu cases in dairy cattle, in animals at a wildlife sanctuary and at a zoo, and in pet cats and humans who had contact with infected farm animals in other states.
The outbreaks in the Washington region started in late December.
Officials in Delaware said on Dec. 28 that snow geese found sick or dead at Prime Hook Beach in Sussex County tested positive for avian flu. It was the state’s ‘most recent confirmation’ of avian influenza in wild birds since 2022, officials said.
Then on Jan. 3, the Delaware Department of Agriculture announced its first positive H5N1 case of the year among chickens at a commercial farm in Kent County. Six days later, on Thursday, state agriculture officials said a flock of chickens at another large-scale farm in Kent County also tested positive for bird flu, according to Stacey Hofmann, a spokesperson for the Delaware-Maryland Avian Influenza Joint Information Center.
In Maryland, officials said Thursday that seven dead snow geese found in Worcester and Dorchester counties on the Eastern Shore had tested positive for the virus. Most of the birds were found earlier this year near Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge south of Cambridge, and a few were found on a nearby golf course, according to Gregg Bortz, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Officials have restricted public access to the state’s seven aviaries — places where rescued wild birds are cared for and used in public education programs — as a precaution, Bortz said.
On Friday, Maryland officials said their first outbreak at the commercial broiler operation in Caroline County was detected as part of the routine testing for avian influenza done before chickens are harvested.
‘There are checks and balances in place to avoid a complete catastrophe, and they worked,’ Trout said, adding that about 250,000 birds were euthanized to stop the spread of the virus at the Caroline County farm.
The poultry industry in the Delmarva area is an economic powerhouse, employing about 19,000 people and generating about $4.4 billion a year, according to the Delmarva Chicken Association. Keeping bird flu in check is a must because it can harm the profitable industry, experts said.
The Maryland Department of Agriculture warned poultry farmers to ‘remain vigilant’ as bird flu is highly contagious and a ‘devastating disease for poultry operations.’
‘The detections in our region should be very concerning to commercial and backyard flock owners,’ Maryland Agriculture Secretary Kevin Atticks said in a statement Thursday.
In Virginia, officials are ‘monitoring the situation,’ and as of Friday they had not found any cases in people or domestic animals, according to Elena Diskin, an epidemiology program manager at the state’s Department of Health.
In the United States, there have been 66 confirmed human cases of bird flu since April, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most of the human cases, except for the Louisiana man who died, have involved patients with mild illnesses.
The Louisiana man whose death from avian influenza was reported Jan. 6 was older than 65 and had underlying medical conditions, officials said. He had been in contact with dead and sick birds in backyard flocks on his property, according to Louisiana health officials.
‘Most people should be alert but not yet alarmed,’ said Meghan Davis, an associate professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Many health, wildlife and agriculture departments in the Washington region said they have protocols in place to watch for the possible spread of bird flu cases in humans. Those include testing for H5N1 in samples of flu cases from doctor’s offices, hospitals and health clinics, wastewater monitoring, and investigating reports of sick wildlife or poultry. A D.C. Health official did not respond to a request for comment about bird flu precautions.
‘We are staying as prepared as we can be,’ said Diskin, of Virginia’s Health Department. ‘We’re watching the national situation and working with our animal health partners to monitor animals’ health and coordinate resources.’
Since 2022, bird flu has affected about 134 million wild birds, commercial poultry and backyard flocks in 50 states, according to the CDC.
While H5N1 has been around for decades, experts said it is behaving differently from what they have seen in the past.
‘H5N1 is breaking the norms,’ said Davis, of Johns Hopkins University. ‘We’ve had these flares, and after a season they’d go away and tamp down. But we’re finding this time that it has remarkable staying power.’
In late December, 20 wild cats died at a sanctuary in Washington state after they became infected with the virus. And five animals at the Wildlife World Zoo near Phoenix died after exposure to bird flu. In Los Angeles, house cats that drank recalled raw milk became sick and died, according to county health officials.
The bird flu has also impacted consumers’ pocketbooks. Egg prices are spiking amid shortages, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture last month ordered testing of the nation’s milk supply. Experts said those who hunt wild birds, raise backyard flocks of chickens, or work in commercial poultry operations should take the following precautions:
Do not touch sick, injured or dead birds, and report them to the U.S. Department of Agriculture at 866-536-7593 or contact your state veterinarian.
Keep pets and children away from wild birds and bird droppings.
Experts said cows and raw milk can also carry the virus, so people and pets should not consume unpasteurized milk or raw or undercooked meat.
Owners of poultry should put up signs around the fenced-off area of their flocks warning people to stay away, and don’t have visitors come onto your property. Make sure wild birds are kept away from poultry.
The author continues drink the govt kool-aid and thus proves he’s an idiot! There’s no such thing as a virus that can hurt you. We need viruses to live. Do you know why author? Because our bodies produce viruses in order to dissolve chemicals/toxins when we have chemical/toxin overload. Then they try to push them out through the skin. Hence, acne in teenagers (think vaxxes). Your inability to dig deep enough is reason enough for me to never read your bullshit again. You actually think that calling people out at the beginning of the article is the way to get the non believers to believe you? You suck you globalist shill.
ed note–for those who think that this was a self-composed comment under a pseudo name and done for entertainment purposes, it wasn’t.
It is, as they say, ‘the real deal’.
So, as it turns out, here at this humble little informational endeavor, within the comments section, we have 2 nuts on opposite sides of the same spectrum saying completely opposite things.
One ‘regular’ says we have drank the ‘gov Kool aid’ by just BELIEVING that viruses exist, because, as he/she asserts whenever we run a story on H5N1, ‘viruses do not exist’ and ‘have never been proven to exist’.
And on the other side of the great divide, we have the commentor above, who says that viruses DO exist, but that our bodies make them and that we need them to live and that there is no proof–if we are reading this correctly–that a virus has ever harmed a human being.
As an aside, we are tempted to ask what the deal is then with Smallpox, rabies, and other viruses that have killed lots (MILLIONS) of people throughout human history, but we’ll have that discussion at another time.
So, as it turns out, one of the decades-long readers of this website happens to be an MD, meaning a medical doctor who knows A LOT about viruses and all sorts of other important and interesting biological info, so we asked him–
Do viruses exist?
His answer was a definitive YES.
Then we asked him–
Does the human body ‘make’ viruses, and do we have to have them in order to live?
His answer to both was a definitive ‘NO’.
Then we asked him, is there any ‘proof’ that viruses have harmed human beings throughout history?
Again, his answer was a definitive YES.
So who are we to believe here?
On the one hand we have one commentor who says that viruses ‘do not exist’, and then we have our friend the MD who says that they DO in fact exist, but that, no, the human body does not make them, (as you allege) and that ‘no’, the human body does not ‘need’ them, but rather, always reacts in a self-protective fashion whenever a virus invades the body and that if the immunological system did not do this, we would all die.
We’re betting that ‘Don’ who left the comment above and the ‘virus denier’ are the ones who have drunk either some sort of Kool aid or something else that has affected their ability to think rational, factual thoughts.
Now, as far as the other items–
Yes, after doing this for 20+ years and having had our fill of abnormal types we DO ‘call people out’ at the beginning of articles when we know that the usual BS is going to come pouring in like a tidal wave that in the end only succeeds in clouding the bigger issues being discussed.
It is like those signs on the front of stores saying things like ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’, in that–
–Barefoot, barechested (male or female) clientele will inevitably drive otherwise civilized people away from said business establishment and therefore losing the business of those who don’t have enough self-respect to do business with some shoes on their feet and clothes on their bodies are not the kind of ‘advertisement’ one wants for his/her business.
And likewise with this website. This is not a meeting ground for ‘free spirits’ to come and spew whatever kind of nonsense happens to be their flavor of the day, and if this results in someone like you deciding not to ‘partake’ of our ‘place of business’, then what more can we say about it other than goodbye and good riddance.’