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Bird flu in Canada may have mutated to become more transmissible to humans

(www.theguardian.com)
105 points amichail | 3 comments | 20 Nov 24 23:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.557s | source
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xyst ◴[21 Nov 24 00:19 UTC] No.42199654[source]▶
Reports like this remind me of very early COVID days. And USA just elected a POTUS that did a shit job of getting us through that same pandemic. With the cabinet that he has (rfk jr, oz…), let’s just hope these are truly fringe cases and doesn’t lead to an outbreak
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bee_rider ◴[21 Nov 24 01:52 UTC] No.42200252[source]▶
Ya know, I could have sworn I remember reading a little bit about COVID in Nov of 2019, but my recollection doesn’t line up with the Wikipedia timeline. I remember being nervous around campus at the time… although there were some other pretty bad colds going around that year, so maybe I just got mixed up.

I think I recall a little bit on Reddit in Dec 2019 and Jan 2020, is that plausible?

Anyway, “early COVID” had a feeling to it—stuff was going on in China but news was taking a long time to trickle out, probably just because of the language barrier, and also because nobody (general public-wise) was paying attention to that sort of thing. The bird flu stuff seems quite different, it’s been reported on quite a bit, people are hyper-vigilant about this kind of stuff now, and it has been bouncing around quite visibly in non-human animals for ages. Plus it is in the US, so we hear about it immediately.

Not saying it isn’t anything to be worried about, but we’re getting updates in realtime.

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1. nostrademons ◴[21 Nov 24 02:49 UTC] No.42200593[source]▶
2019-2020 was also a big H1N1 (Spanish/Swine Flu) year, as were 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. Entirely possible that's what you remember reading about or getting. If COVID hadn't happened Spanish Flu would've been a big headline anyways; as it is, a lot of the people who think they got COVID before March 2020 probably actually had H1N1. Before then the case numbers are orders of magnitude higher for flu, but COVID was more transmissible and almost 10x more lethal, and so post-lockdown it dominated.
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2. thenipper ◴[21 Nov 24 09:18 UTC] No.42202490[source]▶
I remember going in for a physical Jan 2020 and my doctor talking about lot about the flu. He gave me the pneumonia vaccine and then was like oh there is this other thing but probably nothing to worry about…
3. mleo ◴[21 Nov 24 14:24 UTC] No.42204572[source]▶
My daughter’s birthday party in January 2020 was canceled last minute due to her getting the flu. No idea of the type, but remember we were unable to reschedule due to Covid lockdowns occurring before getting rescheduled at the venue.