5mo ago

U.S. will buy regular flu shots for farmworkers to prevent bird flu from getting more dangerous

www.pbs.org U.S. will buy regular flu shots for farmworkers to prevent bird flu from getting more dangerous

Health officials are worried about what might happen if people are infected with bird flu and seasonal flu at the same time. It's possible the viruses could swap gene segments, in a process that scientists call reassortment.

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Flu shots won't be mandatory.
Idk, should mass animal farms be limited by density?
- Let's stop "farming" animals. I suggest converting these barns to mushroom farming, I can never have enough mushrooms.
  
  There are people that don't like mushrooms.
  They'll make a good substrate for the mycelium.
  
  More importantly, mushrooms very commonly cause digestive upset for a lot of people, even safe ones and even when cooked. I love mushrooms and even go foraging, but I recently realized I'm one of these people.
  
  I'm sorry for you. That would suck so hard for me, I love my little 'shrooms.
  Tonight I'll harvest my oyster mushroom, the lion's mane needs just a few more days.
  
  Thank you. It is very hard. I spent years learning to identify and find mushrooms! I had just been looking to start cultivating them myself when I went on an extreme elimination diet to try and see what are all these things that must be upsetting my stomach. Mushrooms, which I ate pretty much every day and sometimes more than once, are sadly one of them.
  That will not stop me from eating morels and the occasional chanterelle when I find them. Worth it.
  
  I do dream of the day I can buy more than mini bellas and white buttons at the store. Give me a nice big chunk of lionsmane or a bag of chestnuts
  
  So... You just want more than 1 option at the store?
  White button, baby bella/cremini, and portabello mushrooms are all the same mushroom, just at different maturity.
  
  Yes, but they taste different. If I'm at a store that only offers fresh shiitake and dried shiitake, that's still two different types of mushroom they have on offer.
  
  Lions Mane doesn't ship very well for commercial purposes. You might find it at markets... But you're best off growing it yourself.
  
  ewwwww mushrooms, icky.
- I don't think limiting density would control bird flu specifically considering that wild bird populations are high enough density to spread this disease.
  I do generally support lower density farming though. Anecdotally, the white blood cell count of dairy cows on pasture is way lower than when they are in barns during the winter. And even the winter white blood cell counts on the small organic dairy farm I worked on was an order of magnitude lower than what is considered normal for conventional dairy.
  White blood cell counts in milk are used as a proxy to monitor for infections. It's impractical to test for every pathogen, but looking for the immune response of the cow works reasonably well.

23 comments