The USDA said the Oregon farm has been quarantined to prevent the spread of the virus and there are no concerns about the safety of the nation's pork supply.
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A pig in Oregon has tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus, the Agriculture Department said Wednesday. It’s the first time the virus has been detected in swine in the United States.

Test results are pending for two other pigs found on the farm in Crook County, Oregon, the USDA said, while two others tested negative.

The pig that tested positive didn’t show signs of illness.

The five pigs were tested for H5N1 out of an abundance of caution, officials said, and “because of the presence of H5N1 in other animals on the premises.”

The case is concerning as pigs can become infected with both bird and human viruses at the same time, which can give rise to mutated strains that can more easily infect humans.

Officials said there are no concerns about the safety of the nation’s pork supply.

The farm is noncommercial, the USDA said, and the animals weren’t intended for the commercial food supply. Additionally, the farm has been quarantined to prevent the spread of the virus. Sheep, goats and other animals on the farm are under surveillance, officials said.

The update comes as the H5N1 virus continues to spread rapidly among dairy cows across the country.

The bird flu outbreak in dairy cows has infected 387 herds across 14 states so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since March, there have been a total of 36 human cases, the majority of whom had direct contact with farm animals, such as dairy cows and poultry. Most cases have been reported in California and Colorado.

All of the patients who had tested positive have recovered. Most had redness and discharge from the eyes, and some had mild respiratory symptoms.

There is no indication yet that this strain of flu virus is mutating in ways that would allow it to spread easily among people. Last week, the CDC released results of a monthslong investigation that found no evidence of bird flu spreading from human to human.

It’s unclear how the pig in Oregon was exposed to bird flu, although earlier this month state officials detected the virus in poultry on the farm.

Officials said livestock and poultry on the farm shared water sources, housing and equipment. In other states, officials said, the combination has enabled transmission between species.

The pig that tested positive was euthanized so investigators can do additional testing to determine whether it was truly infected with the virus, or perhaps whether it had simply sniffed up some particles that contained H5N1.

“This could be environmental contamination in the nose,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “I commend them for doing the necropsy. It’s really important to understand — is there evidence of real infection?”

  • REgon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    25·
    16 days ago

    The pig that tested positive didn’t show signs of illness.

    Oh no.

    Hey all you disease knowers: What should I do to protect myself from the bird flu and also the giga covid variant that is gonna mutate with it somehow?

    • tactical_trans_karen [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      16 days ago

      Well… I’m not a virologist, but I know some things. It seems that viruses gravitate towards symbiotic relationships with those it infects. Covid now is less deadly, partially because of the vaccines and immunity being built up in all of us, but also because of evolutionary principles - if you get infected and drop dead foaming at the mouth a second later, the virus doesn’t get much of a chance to propagate. So the pig transfer is concerning because pig physiology is very close to humans (which is why we use pig hearts and valves for human transplant), and that means we’re probably VERY close to having a full human outbreak. More concerning is the lack of symptoms, because that could likely mean that the whole farm is infected and it’s already transferred to humans. But… at the same time, with it not showing symptoms for the pig, which is close to our own physiology, might indicate that it could quickly become an endemic but mostly inert virus to humans.

      Idk, just spit balling from the knowledge I’ve absorbed through COVID.

      • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        26·
        16 days ago

        Covid now is less deadly,

        This is likely because we let it kill off those most vulnerable, not due to a change in the virus.

        Countries like Japan, which didn’t front load all their deaths like the USA did are still seeing a pretty disturbing number of excess deaths. Not to mention, the USA is still bumping around 5-10% excess deaths, not accounting for the millions already dead which should have lowered our excess deaths into the negatives.

        • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          12·
          16 days ago

          The Stand was a documentary brought to us from the future

          One of the key plotpoints in that book was the downplaying of the virus.

          Don’t worry though I a fully prepared to be Randal Flagg and we can all make a utopian hedonistic society in Vegas before we all die in nuclear hellfire because some christofascists radicalize a neurodiverse pyromanica to kill us all.

          Yes I know this is a contrarian reading of a guy who is supposed to be ontologically evil.

          I am also doing Randal Flagg inspired costume for halloween.

        • tactical_trans_karen [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          6·
          16 days ago

          yea

          Yeah, there has to be a balancing point at the intersection between infection rate, population density, and death rate, where there’s an endemic deadlier strain that just barely avoids snuffing itself out. I’m curious if long term the more mild strains may have an effect of reducing those deaths as well though, by building up immunity in the population. Shit’s complicated, I’m going to go schedule my booster.

          • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            22·
            16 days ago

            Not to be a bummer, but I feel it’s important to point this out, but so far Covid isn’t getting milder or imparting any sort of long term immunity. And most epidemiologists I’ve been following aren’t expecting it to. It in fact damages your immune system and opens you up to opportunistic infections, on top of vascular damage which is contributing to more heart attacks, brain damage, strokes, cancer, diabetes, and pretty much everything else that can wrong in your body. The balancing point is looking likely to be when enough of us die so that it can no longer spread.

            Plus, herd immunity for all pathogens are dependent on a healthy populace… and since it’s causing mass Immune Dysregulation, that makes everything else more deadly and more contagious.

            Again, sorry for being a bummer. this-is-fine

            • Grebgreb [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              7·
              16 days ago

              This is something I’ve been meaning to ask for a while but have refrained because it’s doomer; with the way things are is it pretty much inevitable that practically everyone is going to get covid and probably long covid? Is there anything that can realistically be done now to stop covid?

              It in fact damages your immune system and opens you up to opportunistic infections, on top of vascular damage

              Is it just going to indefinitely harm us and compound to the point that essentially everyone is going to have severe health issues?

              https://hexbear.net/post/3805083?scrollToComments=false

              Additionally its ability to disrupt our immune system effectively increases the lethality of other things like the flu right? Maybe that’s a truncated way of describing it but I think that’s what a lot of knowledgeable people convey.

              • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                10·
                16 days ago

                Yes. We are killing herd immunity, basically. It is very important that you mask with a kn95/N95, for your safety and those around you. This idea that people are going to get Covid once or twice a year and everything is gonna be “normal” is flat out Social Murder. Long Covid odds are like 50/50 or something like that by your 4th infection. And every infection will further worsen (is that a word?) your health. Children should not be getting Covid. It is dramatically going to shorten their life span, leave them with medical issues for the rest of their life, however short that may be and probably give them early onset dementia. Like in their freaking 20’s.

                Is there anything that can realistically be done now to stop covid?

                Revolution. Covid is a Class Struggle, they are sentencing us to death and people are going along with it. To not Mask is reactionary. Mask. Please.

    • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      13·
      16 days ago

      What if I told you that they aren’t and the same dairies that are incentivised to hide cases are also using legal loopholes to sell raw milk to the same reactionaries who don’t believe COVID exists? Because that’d be the one thing we don’t want to happen.

    • dat_math [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      6·
      16 days ago

      which is a relief.

      For me it’s the opposite. Suppose we go rockhounding hoping to find some opals, which we believe are quite rare for the location. We bring some small tools and survey an area of a few square feet near a creek, finding one opal.

      On our short hike back to the car, we spot a few mineral enthusiasts downstream of where we were digging with huge mechanical rigs set up to more effectively separate the rocks. They’re processing hundreds of thousands of pounds more material every day than our quaint hand tools can manage, so when we ask “did you find any opals” and they say “nope! not a one”,

      would we conclude it’s more likely that a) they’re churning through opals all day, but not looking for them or actively ignoring them when they find any or b) the opals are only in our tiny spot upstream ?