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A comment on First human case of avian flu in Texas. Parent comment

Re:First human case of avian flu in Texas by dist-epoch on Monday April 01, 2024 @02:32PM (#39897461)
This exact virus (H5N1) has at least 15-30% mortality. The exact number is really hard to know, because there have been too few cases, but it's certain to be at least 20 times as deadly as SARS-CoV-2.
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Re:First human case of avian flu in Texas by throwup238 on Monday April 01, 2024 @02:37PM (#39897519)
No, that's not certain at all. The total number of confirmed human cases in the world is under a thousand [1] in 20 years. That's not enough data to get any kind of mortality statistic for an influenza variant.

Chances are >99% of cases are so mild they were never tested. It's pretty surprising this one was detected at all. It's only the second confirmed case in the US despite tons of confirmed animal cases in poultry and migratory birds.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/chart-epi-curve-ah5n1.html

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Re:First human case of avian flu in Texas by dist-epoch on Monday April 01, 2024 @02:38PM (#39897533)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mortality_from_H5N1

> It's only the second confirmed case

We know it doesn't transmit very well in humans. Luckily people have been working on that:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/controv...

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Re:First human case of avian flu in Texas by throwup238 on Monday April 01, 2024 @02:42PM (#39897586)
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p0401-avian-flu.html

> The patient reported eye redness (consistent with conjunctivitis), as their only symptom, and is recovering.

This is not a disease with a double digit mortality rate, no matter how many times people try to do math with a three digit sample size of poor people in developing countries.

The CDC only caught this case because it's literally testing anyone with symptoms at the cattle farm.

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Re:First human case of avian flu in Texas by jazzyjackson on Monday April 01, 2024 @02:57PM (#39897741)
i'll never understand the compulsion to do these hybridization experiments to find out if its possible, how about we just live life assuming its possible and work on figuring out how to help humans recover from disease in general
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Re:First human case of avian flu in Texas by cryptonector on Monday April 01, 2024 @08:52PM (#39901194)
> We know it doesn't transmit very well in humans. Luckily people have been working on that:

You make it sound as though they're working on making it transmit well in humans. Oh wait, they are! What's wrong with them?!

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