From: rokimoto557@gmail.com   
      
   On 3/30/2025 10:26 AM, RonO wrote:   
   > On 3/29/2025 11:41 PM, jillery wrote:   
   >> To provide a historical perspective on the effects of the current bird   
   >> flu epidemic, it's worthwhile to share what happened when undocumented   
   >> Canadian horse flu viruses illegally crossed the border into the   
   >> United States:   
   >>   
   >>    
   >>   
   >> Not a sound was heard in the silent street,   
   >> as home from the concert we hurried.   
   >>   
   >> We found not a streetcar, carriage, nor bus,   
   >> and we felt considerably worried.   
   >>   
   >> We hailed a driver we used to know,   
   >> and hurriedly ask him the reason.   
   >>   
   >> He said as he sadly lowered his head,   
   >> "The horses were all a sneezin'."   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> The first cases of horse flu were reported in Toronto Canada in   
   >> September 1872.  By the spring of 1873, it had spread to both coasts,   
   >> Cuba, and Mexico.  Although it wasn't especially fatal to the horses,   
   >> from 1% to 5%, they were incapable of labor for at least two weeks   
   >> while they recovered.   
   >>   
   >> To appreciate the epidemic's impact, almost all economic activity at   
   >> the time was powered by horses.  Imagine what it would be like today   
   >> if all electric motors and internal combustion engines suddenly   
   >> stopped working.   
   >>   
   >   
   > In those days it was literally horse power.  The initial dairy cattle   
   > cases in March 2024 in Texas and Michigan only had around 2% mortality,   
   > but the California herds started to have 10 to 15% mortality in September.   
   >   
   > High density of horses and the fact that they were needed to move goods   
   > between cities and states spread the disease.  The video claims that in   
   > a city of 100,000 people there was one horse per 15 people.  Some   
   > stables were immune, but my guess is that they were just infected first,   
   > and the horses had recovered before the disease took over all the other   
   > horses.  They would have just had to have been infected 3 weeks before   
   > the peak of the epidemic in that city.   
   >   
   > There is a difference between the economic loss due to the loss of horse   
   > power and the current egg shortage.  Horses likely spread the disease   
   > among themselves and were likely infective before showing symptoms   
   > themselves.  The density and the required distance travel spread the   
   > disease.  For poultry most of the commercial layer flocks lost in 2024   
   > were due to dairy virus infection.  The most likely vector was dairy   
   > workers that worked on both dairies and poultry farms.  This was   
   > understood from the first commercial flock infections in Michigan and   
   > Texas where dairy workers were found to work on infected poultry farms.   
   > When Utah lost it's first commercial layer flock they immediately tested   
   > the dairies in that county and found 8 of them infected.  California did   
   > not learn and lived in denial of the dairy workers spreading the virus,   
   > and did not restrict dairy worker movements and they lost over 40% of   
   > their commercial layer flocks to the dairy virus.  They knew that dairy   
   > workers were being infected and shedding virus, and they knew that dairy   
   > workers were working at more than one dairy and also at poultry farms,   
   > but they refused to do the right thing, and it resulted in over 70% of   
   > their dairy herds being infected and the loss of over 40% of their   
   > commercial layer flocks.   
   >   
   > Ron Okimoto   
   >   
   The latest number from California is 757 infected dairies this would be   
   around 80% of the herds in California (around 950 total dairy herds)   
      
   https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/AHFSS/Animal_Health/HPAI.html#:   
      
   Ron Okimoto   
   >   
      
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