We’re applying lessons from Covid to bird flu. That’s not good—David Wallace-Wells
Bird flu is less scary for humans than we feared. But we’re not working to control it.
Almost two years after the first signs of bird flu in the United States, we are still flying blind.
‘Indications that H5N1 may have jumped to mammals first appeared in 2022, when the virus killed hundreds of seals in New England and Quebec that summer, and then that fall there was a mass infection event at a Spanish mink farm.
Epidemiologists have been warning about the risks of an overdue bird flu pandemic for decades, and so each new development arrived like the next beat in an already familiar story, almost too perfectly plotted to alarm.
‘The outbreaks on American dairy farms began this March and the first human case in the United States since then was identified in April, which means that it has now been more than three full months since a pathogen long identified as among the most worrisome potential sources of a new pandemic infected an American this year.
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There is still nothing like a serious plan to even properly monitor the spread.
‘. . . Globally, H5N1 has infected more than 500 bird and mammal species, as Sharon Guynup has documented for Mongabay — a global “panzootic” which some conservationists believe “now presents an existential threat to the world’s biodiversity.” In the U.S., the bird flu has been identified in more than 100 million chickens in 48 states and 178 cattle herds spread across more than a dozen states, each a new cluster shedding virus out into a separate community. But delays in reporting details of even those dairy cases mean that the information is not especially helpful to any effort to control spread, and U.S. officials do not even appear to be sharing all the information they do have. Most American dairy farms are not regularly testing for H5N1, partly because the decision to do so has been left up to them . . . .
‘In June, Robert Redfield, former director of the C.D.C., echoed many epidemiologists in predicting that “it’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic.” . . .
‘In this cloud of ignorance, there is an encouraging silver lining: that the human cases we have identified suggest that in its current form, the bird flu does not appear to be as virulent as long feared or casually assumed.
‘According to the World Health Organization, the human fatality rate among previously recorded cases of H5N1 is 52 percent; Redfield estimated it was between 25 percent and 50 percent. These are terrifyingly high fatality rates, comparable to the deadliest viruses the modern world has ever seen. . . . [T]he eye-popping figures seemed to confirm those warnings, made over decades, that the world was overdue for a devastating bird flu outbreak.
‘And so it is at least something of a comfort, given how little understanding we have of the scope and scale of current spread, that what we do know suggests a much lower risk profile: Among 13 confirmed cases, none have been fatal or even especially serious, with the most significant symptom so far a form of pink eye. And because none of these cases appear to have come from other humans, it does not appear that H5N1 has yet acquired the sorts of mutations capable of enabling easy transmission between people.
Although, as any specialist will remind you, the wider the spread, the greater the risk of such mutations.
‘. . . In the United States overall, more than 100 million birds have already been culled, but the true scale of the outbreak—in animals and in humans—remains a maddening matter of speculation.
‘As Covid-19 showed, diseases don’t have to be especially lethal on a per case basis to brutalize populations and wreak havoc globally, particularly if they spread fast enough. And although this strain of H5N1 appears less virulent than once feared, the epidemiologist Michael Mina told me that in the event of large-scale human transmission we should probably brace for a true infection fatality rate in the low single digits—a fraction of what was feared but still several multiples, at least, of Covid.
‘It’s not clear when such a mutation might pop up, if ever. But one might’ve hoped that in enduring that punishing pandemic, we might have grown surer than ever that we would want to avoid repeating the experience. And yet, even before the real emergency had begun to recede, . . . [we see] something like the opposite phase shift: an increasingly see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach to public health. . . .’
nytimes.com | @nytopinion | @dwallacewells
Heat waves and droughts are a bonanza for junk food companies—Lindsey Smith Taillie (h/t Lynn Brown)
When there’s no water, people turn to soda.
‘. . . As a global nutrition researcher, I frequently hear about food companies boosting their marketing campaigns for sugary drinks and ultraprocessed foods, like prepackaged cookies and crackers, as climate change disrupts food and water supplies. What’s clear is that the companies are taking advantage of worsening environmental conditions to increase their profits. To stave off a major public health crisis, governments will have to double their efforts to make sure everyone has access to healthy food and clean water. . . .
‘Thanks to climate change, fresh foods are often hard to find, and even when you can find them, without water, it’s difficult to cook them, making packaged and fast foods more enticing. Higher temperatures also make fresh food spoil faster.
‘Powdered drink mixes, canned soups or granola bars may seem like the ideal solution: They contain preservatives to prevent spoilage, and unlike locally produced food, they’re made by large, multinational companies that can source ingredients from around the world. In Southeast Asia, people have told me they think packaged foods are healthy precisely because they are less likely to go bad. This can create a strong affinity that is tough to break.
‘The food industry has rushed to capitalize on the opportunities afforded by climate change. During heat waves, companies often unleash a relentless barrage of advertisements on television, billboards and online, many of them for sugary drinks and junk food. In the Netherlands, McDonalds created a heat-sensitive billboard that dispensed free McFlurry vouchers when the heat broke 101.48 degrees Fahrenheit, or 38.6 Celsius. In India, during the extreme heat wave earlier this year, ice cream companies created new flavors and started selling them online to boost sales. In Bangladesh, ads showed people surrounded by orange blazes, sweating. “No matter how hot it is,” one tagline read, “just stay cool with Sprite!” In other countries such as Australia and Mexico, research has found a link between heat and soft drink and alcohol intake. . . .
‘Food companies often claim to be fighting the effects of climate change. For years, Coca-Cola has run campaigns promoting its efforts on water protection. But this is mostly marketing: Since at least the early 2000s, from India to Mexico to South Africa, Coca-Cola has been accused of extracting water from drought-prone areas. The company claims it returns 94 percent of the water it uses to nature, but the process is still incredibly water-intensive: One 2010 paper estimated that it takes hundreds of liters of water to produce just a liter of a standard carbonated, sugary beverage. . . .
‘[S]imply asking companies to change is not enough. Governments should do more to ensure that ultraprocessed food isn’t the only option in a warming world. First, countries could guarantee a right to clean water and healthy food, which creates a legal foundation for future regulations. Policies like taxes, warning labels and marketing restrictions would also help reduce consumption of ultraprocessed foods and prevent companies from pushing these products on children.
‘To ensure access to healthy foods and water, schools are a great starting place. Brazil’s school feeding program, which provides meals to 40 million children every year, requires 75 percent of foods to be fresh or minimally processed; at least 30 percent have to come from small family farms, one researcher told me. Investments in water, sanitation and hygiene have also given children access to drinking water in schools. . . .’
nytimes.com | @nytimes | @lindseypsmith
Cheap fixes could help 450m people stand taller and think quicker—The Economist
Eat right, start young
‘The first 1,000 days after conception are known as the “golden window”. During this time brains and bodies develop faster than at any other point—connections form between neurons that will affect a child’s future IQ and bones grow to determine their future height. Malnutrition in these early years can wreak irreversible damage. The most visible sign of a lack of essential nutrients is stunting, when a child is much shorter than they should be for their age. Globally, 22% of children under five are stunted. But our analysis shows that doubling the pace at which stunting rates are currently falling could help bring the figure down to just 4% by 2050.
‘Unsurprisingly, stunting rates are highest in poor and war-torn countries. Burundi, by some measure the world’s poorest country, is also estimated to have the world’s highest stunting rate, at 56% of children under five. In Libya, which was gripped by civil war between 2014 and 2020, stunting rates are second-highest at 52%.
‘In most countries the share of children who are stunted has fallen over the past 20 years. Between 2000 and 2022, the global rate of stunting dropped from 33% to 22%. The greatest progress has been in Asia. In 2000, according to the World Health Organisation, 20% of Chinese children under five were stunted, six times the rate in America. Now children in China are only slightly more likely to be stunted than their American age-mates. In India, rates fell from 50% to 32% between 2000 and 2022, and in Nigeria, from 42% to 34%. But as births shift from rich countries to poor, a greater share of children may be stunted even if the stunting rate in every country falls. Indeed, in Africa, although the stunting rate has fallen since 2010, the absolute number of children stunted has increased. . . .
[B]y 2050, the effects of an effective push to reduce malnutrition could help 450m children approach their full potential both physically and cognitively.
‘. . . Straightforward interventions, such as distributing vitamin-enriched food, giving iron supplements to pregnant women and educating parents on healthy eating habits, have been found to help—many children suffer from malnutrition not because of a lack of food, but rather a lack of the right food. Efforts to fight disease, such as giving out bednets to fight malaria, or building latrines to reduce diarrhoea, do too. All these measures tend to be cheap to implement, and pay dividends.’
economist.com | @TheEconomist
Got milk? Get -13910*T—Razib Khan
A short genetic history of the 5,000 year human campaign to get the most out of milk
‘Americans love milk. After India, we are the world’s second largest producer of milk. Our nation’s dairy cattle are so productive that we are over a century into a seemingly permanent surplus problem. And thanks to the dairy industry’s powerful lobby and PR arm, that “problem” has given us decades of wholesome, health-focused ad campaigns including such ubiquitous slogans as Got Milk? And Milk, it does a body good. But milk doesn’t love all of us. And it doesn’t do every body good. Frankly, it never has, in all our millennia of existence as a species.
Milk isn’t made for us and we weren’t made for it, at least not after that crucial narrow window when it nourishes and fortifies us all as infants.
‘But some of our ancestors fatefully discovered that milk needn’t only be a life-giving boon to babies, it can be an essential life-saving resource for adult humans, especially, it would seem, those in survival mode. Today some 30% of adult humans can digest milk and most of us can benefit from its bounty in secondary dairy products. This is the (startlingly recent) story of how a subset of humans seem to have remade themselves… for milk. And of geneticists progressively chipping away at the complicated story of how, where and why such a transformation might have occurred. . . .
The tale of some adult humans’ ability to make use of milk sugar is one of evolutionary biology’s most intriguing.
‘Because continued functioning of the enzyme lactase allows the ability to process milk sugar to persist into adulthood, in the scientific literature lactose tolerance is today referred to as lactase persistence. Most humans stop producing lactase after the age of five. Normally indigestible, lactase breaks lactose into galactose and glucose, both of which the body can readily absorb. This same is true of all mammals; the stage when offspring can no longer digest milk sugar correlates strongly with the age of weaning, freeing the mother up to reproduce again. Here, humans have become unique.
About 30% of human adults continue to process milk sugar, with frequencies rising above 90% among both Northern Europeans and pastoralist tribes like Kenya’s Masai.
Because modern human biology as a science developed in Europe, and specifically in Northern Europe, scientists first defined human lactase persistence based on the variation and frequencies observed in their home region, where the more common and ancestral human form had actually become relatively rare through natural selection. In so doing, they mistook the rule for the exception.
‘Absent the lactase enzyme, upon ingesting milk, lactose sugar becomes available to the body's gut flora, which can cause bloating in mild cases, and diarrhea in the worst. Diarrhea today is little more than an inconvenience and embarrassment, but it’s worth noting that in the premodern world the attendant nutrient and water loss posed a serious danger. Dehydration and malnutrition when much of the population lived forever on the edge of famine could indeed prove fatal. So in the Neolithic, a mutation for lactase persistence would unlock a continuous source of calories from the cattle, sheep and goats (and in some cases, horses) herders were raising for meat and other byproducts like leather and wool. About 8 ounces (236 milliliters) of whole milk deliver 152 calories, 30% of them from lactose. Texas longhorn cattle, a breed not even raised for dairy production but for meat, can produce around 1000 liters of milk per year, so the equivalent of some 2,000 calories per day. . . .
‘Lactase persistence in adults emerges via the blocking of molecular dynamics that would gradually and inevitably repress LCT. It’s as if in the natural course of human development, a quiet janitor passing on his nightly rounds routinely pauses to manually switch off a particular bank of lights; in order to keep those lights on all night, a bunch of rowdy students mass in front of the light switch. They crowd so densely and pile up so many deep that the janitor cannot possibly wade through all of them, so the lights stay switched on.
‘The mechanism turned out to be simple, but this was actually the story of more than one mutation. Between 2000 and 2015, several other variants that correlated strongly with lactase persistence in the same neighborhood as -13910*T were detected. Oct-1 binds to the octamer motif, a small sequence of DNA that exhibits the sequence ATTTGCAT. The various mutations to T, G and C roughly 14,000 bases upstream of LCT, all modify the DNA sequence, producing a clear binding motif, resulting in an influx of Oct-1 (the rowdy students) that elbows out epigenetic repressor elements (the dutiful janitor) downstream. All the mutations produce the same end result: continued production of lactase into adulthood.
‘Because the early genomic studies were done among European populations, -13910*T, the “European mutation,” was discovered first. But -13910*T has a distribution far beyond Europe. It is also the mutation found in Indians, in particular among dairy-reliant peoples in the subcontinent's northwest. And within Africa, the Fulani of the western Sahel also carry this mutation. But further east in Africa, lactase persistence derives from different mutations in MCM6; Nilotic peoples like the Masai of Kenya have a mutation 14,010 bases upstream of LCT, while the Cushitic-speaking Beja of Sudan exhibit a distinct one 13,907 bases upstream. Across the Red Sea from the Beja grazing lands, Arabian pastoralists carry a mutation located 13,915 bases upstream of LCT.’
www.razibkhan.com | @razibkhan
Can that gas be remoooved? The quest for climate-friendly cows—Stephanie Hanes
Methane is one of the world’s most powerful greenhouse gases—and cows are a significant source of methane. Researchers are exploring ways to manage this natural phenomenon.
‘On the campus of Cornell University, within an intricately monitored and carefully sealed chamber, there is a cow. ‘;Scientists carefully record what this cow eats and what she drinks. They open the chamber only once a day, so as to limit disturbances to her environment. Every breath she takes–or more crucially, exhales–is also measured to its molecular level. There is hydrogen. There is carbon, recorded down to its isotopic composition. There is oxygen.
‘And, most important to this state-of-the-art study, there is methane.
‘Methane is a naturally occurring gas that comes from a variety of biological and industrial sources, from oil- and gas-well leaks to decomposing garbage to, well, cow burps. It is also one of the world’s most potent greenhouse gases–far more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide. And although it lasts for a much shorter time in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, methane has been getting increasing attention by those looking to fight climate change.
‘“There is growing awareness amongst environmental advocates, policymakers, that reducing methane emissions is the fastest way to reduce warming,” says Dan Blaustein-Rejto, director of food and agriculture at the nonprofit Breakthrough Institute.
‘And that attention has started to focus on cows. . . . [R]esearchers estimate that cows are responsible for around 30% of U.S. methane emissions. This is largely because cattle, like goats or sheep, are ruminants: animals with four-chambered stomachs that ferment grass and other vegetation into consumable food. And a natural by-product of rumination is methane.
‘Although it is a natural system, this methane production of cows has become a problem, in large part because of cattle population numbers. In short, the world has an awful lot of cattle, which translates to a lot of emissions. . . .
‘[A]gribusiness and scientists are trying to figure out how to make individual dairy cows more productive, which could lead to smaller herds, while at the same time trying to find ways to make cow burps—the body function that produces the most methane—less gassy.
‘The first step to doing that, says Cornell associate professor Joseph McFadden, is to get good measurements of bovine methane in the first place. Without having an accurate baseline, it’s hard to know how effective a proposed solution is–whether a feed additive, a vaccine, or even gene sequencing. . . .
‘But measuring bovine methane is easier said than done. . . .
‘“The challenge comes in capturing the methane,” says Joe Rudek, lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. “Cows are breathing out this methane. You’ve got them walking around in a pasture, how do you capture that methane that’s coming out of the cows’ mouth and nostrils?”. . .
‘[R]espiration chambers are important. Because the pods are highly accurate, closed systems, they can calibrate other machines. . . . “These are the gold standard . . . . [T]here is a lot of attention to what those chambers are showing.”. . .
‘Across the country, at the University of California, Davis, professor Ermias Kebreab is also working with dairy cows, and has his eye on some solutions. In addition to feed additives, he is measuring what happens when cows eat local agricultural by-products, such as the grape residue from winemaking. GreenFeed measurements are finding some promising initial results, he says.
‘“We found a 10% to 12% reduction in emissions,” he says. “Animals were happy to eat it … and it avoids the emissions from putting it into a landfill.”
‘Not only that, he says, but grape pomace—the fruit’s leftover skin, seeds, or stems—seems to improve milk quality.’
‘“It’s a win-win kind of situation,” he says.’
csmonitor.com | @csmonitor | @stephaniehanes
The veterinarians preventing the next pandemic—Rivka Galchen
Most new diseases have their origins in animals. So why aren’t we paying more attention to their health?
‘. . . [M]ore than two-thirds of emerging diseases in humans have animal origins. Diseases can also travel in the other direction, in what is called reverse zoonosis. . . .
[James] Herriot’s stories are inherently charming . . . but what keeps the stories compelling across so many volumes is the detailing of his local ecosystem of horses and sheep and humans and pets and farmland and microscopic agents of disease, all bound together in illness and wellness. . . .
‘That animal health and human health and environmental health are continuous—that the damage we cause comes back for us—is a commonplace, but it doesn’t commonly structure our policies. “Herd health, flock health—that is something we think about all the time, that is part of our training,” Slavinski said, of veterinarians and the perspective they bring to public health.
She said that she likes the term ‘one health,’ which is used by a number of different environmental and health organizations, as a way of thinking about the interconnectedness of humans, animals, and the planet, all the more so now with climate change and biodiversity loss.
‘“It’s such a valuable means for conveying a very complex concept,” she said. “I think in my world, in my role, it’s human-centric, in that it’s, like, What do we see in animals, in the environment, that we’re worried about then spilling over into humans? But it’s so important to know and value what’s happening in the animal and the environmental world.”’
new yorker.com | @NewYorker
Arresting headlines
WHO declares mpox outbreak a global health emergency: It is the second declaration in the past two years called in response to transmission of the virus—STAT News
Alarmed by mpox surge, Africa CDC is poised to declare a 'continental emergency': This would be the first ever emergency declaration for the African continent. What's the reason for this sense of urgency?—The Conversation
How the most powerful environmental groups help greenwash Big Meat’s climate impact: Organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund are laundering the meat industry’s propaganda. At what cost?—Vox
First gene-editing therapy may cure blood disorder—BBC (h/t Lynn Brown)
After the floods: 'A catastrophic year' on farms—BBC (h/t Lynn Brown)
1 big thing: Self-driving labs are the new AI asset: Labs that autonomously run experiments promise to speed up the discovery of new materials, but they're still not sufficiently reliable, reproducible or widely available—Axios
Mpox: what to watch out for, treatment and what to worry about: Mpox is now readily spreading from person to person. It is mutating faster and the strains are more virulent—The Conversation
The European nation ruled by sheep: Meaning ‘Sheep Islands’, the Faroe Islands owe much of their unique identity to these hardy, tangle-haired creatures. . . . [T]he rearing of semi-wild sheep for meat and wool (alongside fishing, whaling and hunting sea birds) has been key to survival for more than a millennium. . . [T]he islands' 70,000 Faroese sheep easily outnumber the Faroese human population. . . . Not much can be grown in this thin soil . . . .As a result, fermented lamb and mutton are dietary staples.—BBC
Putting a face on the 'invisible threat' of antimicrobial resistance: While it's a different type of crisis than the COVID-19 pandemic, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most significant public health threats facing the world. The most widely cited study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, estimates that drug-resistant infections contributed to nearly 5 million deaths globally in 2019 and were directly responsible for 1.27 million.—CIDRAP
Mini farm animals are adorable. There’s also a growing demand for them: Americans are showing more interest in owning miniature cows, goats, donkeys and other diminutive farm animals, a trend driven by hobby farmers looking for easy-to-manage livestock and homesteaders who like the idea of having a petite pig or a scaled-down sheep as a pet—AP
Candidate malaria vaccine provides lasting protection in NIH-sponsored trials: Approach could have role in preventing malaria in pregnancy—National Institutes of Health
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