The South China Morning Post reports outbreak of deadly bird flu among chickens in Hunan province, close to coronavirus epicentre of Wuhan
China has reported an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu in Hunan province, which lies on the southern border of Hubei province, the epicentre of the rapidly spreading coronavirus.
“The outbreak occurred in a farm in the Shuangqing district of Shaoyang city. The farm has 7,850 chickens, and 4,500 of the chickens have died from the contagion. Local authorities have culled 17,828 poultry after the outbreak,” according to a statement by China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on Saturday.
No human cases of the Hunan H5N1 virus has been reported. It is possible, but difficult, to transmit bird flu from person to person, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
However, bird flu is highly deadly to humans who contract it, with a mortality rate of more than 50 per cent in cases over the last 15 years, which is much deadlier to humans than either Sars (a 10 per cent mortality rate) or the novel coronavirus (a 2 per cent mortality rate in the outbreak so far).
Official Coronavirus Stats
Official Deaths in Wuhan
The above stats as translated from China Official National Statistics.
I added the percentages.
The problem is: few believe the death totals.
Comparison Silliness
- Comparisons to the Flu are absurd without believable reporting
- Comparisons between China and US are absurd as the US may have acted in time to stop the spread
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
how come h5n1 in Denmark isn’t news but as soon as it appears in China it’s like top news ?
On 29 January 2020, low pathogenic avian influenza H5 has been confirmed in a commercial poultry holding with organic laying hens. The layers were tested in accordance with the Danish surveillance programme for avian influenza in poultry. The holding consists of approximately 48.000 organic egg layers. The egg layers at the infected holding will be culled and the carcasses will be disposed by rendering.
Racism
This is, at present, more a political and economic crisis than an existential medical one. And that is the problem. A million dead in China over a year is statistical noise. A 10% drop in global GDP is probably not survivable.
Seems like an early overreaction to compensate for late reaction to nCoV. The problem again is China.
Context: In the 2018 flu season, 80,000 Americans died from it. Why was this not a national pandemic? Hundreds died daily. No travel bans or checks at airports. No lockdowns. 250,000 die each year from medical malpractice. Doctors are so inept they have to carry expensive malpractice insurance. The whole thing is bizarre.
80,000 Americans did not die “from” the flu. At most, the flu was a contributing factor to 80,000 people dying a bit earlier, from a second to some years, than they otherwise would. The only thing people categorically die “from,” is being born. The real world is described by continuous functions. Not childishly oversimplified classifications. Leave that stuff to the “one-two-uh?-many” counting progressive indoctrinati.
And if 250,000 people’s death were even possibly fast tracked, to any meaningful degree, by “medical malpractice,” there’d be another 250,000 ex physicians in jail every year. Shakedowns by regime sycophantic, self promoting idiots feeding off of the carcass of a failed state, to the cheers of armies of well indoctrinated know-nothings, provide exactly zero meaningful information about the actual performance of medical professionals.
Doctors carry “malpractice insurance,” because in the financialized, progressive dystopias that have become the norm in the DumbAge; competent people, most doctors included, are being bled to death; in order to facilitate utterly incompetent, completely useless at anything aside from being burned for heat in a woodstove, garbage in trumped-up “insurance” and ambulance chaser rackets, living in ever greater, always unearned splendor. There is no other reason than that.
That aside, a new seasonal flu strain, is not a pandemic risk because it is a mature virus with plenty of latent immunity. There’s virtually no risk of it morphing into something the population is defenseless against. For a novel virus, this is not the case. Hence the pandemic risk.
Doesn’t mean it will become much more than another overhyped nothingburger, anywhere outside of the immediate vicinity of the meat market(s) where it first infected humans. With overwhelming likelihood, it will not. Few novel viruses do.
But because it is novel, there currently isn’t much immunity. Hence there is a non-zero probability it will turn out problematic. With a seasonal flu strain, while not a hard zero in a logical/mathematical sense, that probability is well within normal round off of zero for any practical purpose.
For those sneering and comparing the total number # of deaths due ‘common influenza, are missing the vital statistics in analyzing this death rate corona virus epidemic! Mortality rate in ‘common’ influenza’ virus is in the general population 0.1% but the Corona virus is close 2.0%! almost 2000% increase! It is the RATE and NOT the total number
M.D
Nobody knows the mortality rate of this coronavirus, and if they claim to, you can assume they are lying about other things too.
I read recently that over 20% of China’s protein comes from chicken. It’s bad news when they’re slaughtering them in huge numbers, as they do all too frequently. When they do, you know they’ve seen something that scares hell out of them.
Last year China lost a bunch of hogs to the African Swine Fever. Pork prices more than doubled there in some areas. I’d say they probably have more problems with maintaining a food supply than with This new viral outbreak.