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

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

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.

Nov sounds early but I was in China in oct-dec '19 and jan '20 and then it was definitely talked about a lot going to feb when I left (luckily and completely coincidental). I had to go on another business trip right after and returned, again completely coincidental (I was an idiot in hindsight), just 2 days before my country fully locked down. On that last trip I contracted covid which gave me an annoying couch.

Coming out of covid, suddenly it appears we can work with slack, zoom, etc and I have not been on a business trip since.

It is funny, I guess it is it uncommon at all given the nature of a, well, pandemic. But you got it so early. I dodged the thing for like two and a half years I think. Our experiences were so different, haha.

Did you get out much, being immune and all?

I guess it’s somehow just occurring to me that, despite this giant shared experience that we all had as a society, a lot of us had it in totally different ways.