Mutations are rare but have been reported in some cases in other countries and most often in extreme infections
Summary
The CDC identified rare mutations in the bird flu virus from the first severe U.S. human case, found in a Louisiana resident over 65 with severe respiratory illness.
The mutations, located in the hemagglutinin (HA) gene responsible for cell attachment, differ from those in local backyard flock samples and align with severe cases seen abroad.
The patient was infected with the D1.1 genotype, recently found in U.S. wild birds and poultry, not the B3.13 genotype seen in humans and livestock elsewhere.
The CDC states no person-to-person transmission occurred, and public risk remains low.
We should have culled all these cows, and kept culling them until nobody and nothing tested positive. And done it all a year ago. But apparently that was too hard, and now it's really just luck whether this becomes the next global catastrophe.
It has been in wild birds world wide for years now. The birds having bird flu is not an American problem. The cows somehow all having bird flu is all yours though. Thankfully cows don't fly and don't migrate long distances.
This thing is on the way, dammit. I've been seeing a lot of reports on its spread, where they say the udders of cows have receptors for both human and bird flus, and if both are present they can exchange genes and mutate a lot. Only a matter of time for human to human. And it'll likely be a lot more deadly than COVID. 😢
Yeah, something like this is pretty much inevitable. We have large, dense populations of humans living in close proximity with animals. Stuff of going to jump the species gap, and yeah it'll probably be much worse than COVID, which was not that severe in terms of death rates.