Are we at the edge of another pandemic? H5N1

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H5N1 may be spreading invisibly in the human population in North America.

The CDC's analysis of blood samples from 150 bovine veterinarians in 46 U.S. states and Canada during the current H5N1outbreak in dairy cows and poultry revealed that three asymptomatic U.S. practitioners (2%) had antibodies to H5N1 in September, suggesting recent infection.

Two of them reported no exposures to infected animals, and the third practiced in Georgia and South Carolina, which have had no known cases in cattle. "These findings suggest there could be U.S. states with A(H5)-positive people and animals that have not yet been identified," the study authors wrote.

Previously Undiscovered Cases of Avian Flu in Veterinarians Are Worrisome

Continuing on with this discussion.

Previously Undiscovered Cases of Avian Flu in Veterinarians Are Worrisome

The discovery of silent H5N1 infections in unexpected populations, the emergence of new variants, and its potential to evolve into a human-to-human transmissible virus necessitates immediate and comprehensive public health responses.

--- the emergence in Nevada of a new H5N1 variant, D1.1, which appears to be better adapted to mammalian cells, raising concerns about its potential to infect humans more efficiently.

The expansion of H5N1 into unexpected populations, the emergence of new variants such as D1.1, and its potential to evolve into a human-to-human transmissible virus necessitates immediate and comprehensive public health responses. Despite the current absence of symptomatic human cases in veterinarians, the silent spread to them calls for enhanced monitoring, robust communication among health agencies, and widespread preventative measures. We need to act before the virus acquires the mutations it needs to spread more efficiently among humans.

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Diseases can be spread by many ways such as by air or by food and drink or by touch. But it can be spread another way, by insect bites. Mosquitoes are very capable of spreading and exploding a pandemic. A mosquito can bite an infected bird/animal/human and then transmit the virus directly to an uninfected human by a direct blood to blood transfer. Insects such as mosquitoes can cause a human-to-human transmission, one that is caused by producing a blood-to-blood transmission.

Transmission Agent. When it was first reported several months ago that cats and mice were dying of bird flu, it immediately brought to mind one other species that must be monitored, RATS. If H5N1 is in cats and mice, then it is also in rats. And if it is in rats then it is present in our major cities. IT IS EVERYWHERE. In almost every major populated city in the world. This is because RATS are everywhere. They are a transmission agent.

Understanding Rodents and Bird Flu

The recent USDA report about four black rats testing positive for bird flu in Riverside County, Calif., has raised questions in the pest control industry. The rats, initially tested in late January, were reportedly associated with two infected poultry farms.

In the end of the article it stated, "Could USDA’s findings of HPAI-positive black rats in Riverside impact rodenticide restrictions imposed in California?" That is an interesting statement, I wonder what they are talking about here, so I dug deeper.

The California Poison-Free Wildlife Act (AB 2552) went into effect on January 1, 2025

This new California law supersedes the two rodenticide bills previously passed into law (AB 1788 (in 2020) and AB 1322 (in 2023)), which prohibited most uses, with limited exemptions, of the second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difenacoum, and difethialone), and the first generation anticoagulant rodenticide diphacinone. AB 2552 adds the same existing prohibitions, with the same exempted uses, to the first-generation anticoagulant rodenticides chlorophacinone and warfarin.

So California just changed its laws on what substances can be used to control rat populations and almost immediately rats in California have been found carrying H5N1. Interesting. Rats live at our doorstep. They are in our cities, in our homes.

Bird Flu is on the move in California.



Notice how this dairy farm is almost completely and utterly sealed. Almost nothing can get in and nothing can get out. But if something does break into the facility, then the entire herd can become infected.

Do you have any citations to medical reports about this?

My understanding is that any disease spread by mosquitoes is a disease that can proliferate in the gut of the mosquito. From what I have read in the literature is that there is at least a hundred or more diseases that can be spread by mosquitoes, but I haven't seen anything saying that influenza is one of those diseases.

Keep in mind that getting infected by a disease is to some degree a question of probability. Exposed to one virus is usually not going to do much because it will have to find its a cell that it can infect. Get a hundred of the virus and you are more likely to face issues. If the disease cannot readily replicate in the gut of the mosquito, it probably isn''t going to do much to infect whoever it bites.

Sure, you might have a very low probability of getting a disease from a single virus, but it generally isn't very likely.

I don't claim to be an expert on this at all and I might completely misunderstand. That said, it needs citations to actual research that shows mosquitoes as vectors to spread influenza viruses.

The following is a link to the CDC article about H5N1 found in bovine veterinary practitioners.

Notes from the Field: Seroprevalence of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5) Virus Infections Among Bovine Veterinary Practitioners — United States, September 2024
Weekly / February 13, 2025 / 74(4);50–52

Then you wrote, "From what I have read in the literature is that there is at least a hundred or more diseases that can be spread by mosquitoes, but I haven't seen anything saying that influenza is one of those diseases."

That is true. But I did come across one research study article from 2010, that compared H5N1 and West Nile Virus. (West Nile Virus, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1, and other zoonotic diseases: what ornithologists and bird banders should know
People have been dying across the world from a version of this disease at least since 2003. The deadly version has appeared in China, Thailand, Indonesia and Pakistan. So perhaps there is a common transmission agent for both these diseases.

Then you wrote,"Keep in mind that getting infected by a disease is to some degree a question of probability. Exposed to one virus is usually not going to do much because it will have to find its a cell that it can infect. Get a hundred of the virus and you are more likely to face issues. If the disease cannot readily replicate in the gut of the mosquito, it probably isn''t going to do much to infect whoever it bites.

I don't claim to be an expert on this at all and I might completely misunderstand. That said, it needs citations to actual research that shows mosquitoes as vectors to spread influenza viruses."

That might be true, but 15 June 2024, I was working outside and injured my leg which caused it to bleed. I went back inside and cleaned and covered my wound with a bandage. On 17 June 2024, I went back to work and was outside for 2 hours. During that time I was attacked over 50 times by mosquitoes. I could hear them as they flew away. But they didn't bite me because I had placed a mosquito repellent DEET on my body before I left the house.

Sometimes you rely on citations but sometimes you rely on life experiences. The deadly form of H5N1 is very rare. But just like H1N1 the disease can become very deadly. They didn't know how to fight H1N1 (once known as the Spanish Flu) when it struck in 1918.

From 1918 to 1919, the Spanish flu infected an estimated 500 million people globally. This amounted to about 33% of the world's population at the time. In addition, the Spanish flu killed about 50 million people, about 6 percent of the Earth's population. Since the world population has grown around 5 times in the last 100 years. The threat might impact 2.5 billion people should it materialize today.

I guess that someone might compare some aspect of West Nile Virus with an influenza virus, but that does not mean that the viruses are comparable overall.

I also doubt that mosquitoes are attracted by blood. There can be many reasons why the numbers of mosquitoes may be much higher on some days. It could be something as simple as having had a rain shower a few days earlier and having places around to catch and pool rainwater, thus creating an environment that contributes to the spread of mosquitoes.

When H1N1 (formerly called the Spanish Flu) struck and produced a massive die off during the years 1918 and 1919, one of the first things that most people did was to WEAR MASKS. But it didn't help. They died by the millions anyways, they were dropping like flies. Maybe their instincts were related to an earlier pandemic. So maybe H1N1 had a precursor in a similar manner that COVID appeared first and H5N1 followed. In other words maybe there was a precursor to H1N1 of 1918.

On 25 September 2019 at 1:50 pm, I wrote on Wrong Planet.

Mosquitoes suck, both literally and figuratively. No other animal on Earth is responsible for more human deaths than the lowly mosquito.

According to MacLean's, "The general consensus of demographers is that about 108 billion human beings have ever lived, and that mosquito-borne diseases have killed close to half—52 billion people, the majority of them young children." That makes mosquitoes, by far, the world's deadliest animal.

Source, I hate mosquitoes.

Then on 30 May 2024 at 1:24 pm on this thread, I wrote,

Somehow I think the world is missing the threat posed by H5N1.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is focused on transmission by eating infected dairy cattle. But the scope of this threat is much larger. In other words:

Dairy cattle are not becoming infected by eating other dairy cattle.

So how is this infection spread between animals and between humans? My first thought is it is spread by transmitting infected blood. How is this done? The first thing that comes to mind is Mosquitoes.

Then on 17 June 2024 at 12:30 pm on this thread, I wrote,[/i]



And as I dug deeper I found that the known information on what attracts mosquitoes to bite humans has several different routes, not just one route. In other words, they are also attracted directly by warm flowing human blood, a blood to blood transfer then occurs.

After H5N1, US reports outbreak of deadly H7N9 strain of bird flu

The state of Mississippi in the United States has reported an outbreak of the deadly H7N9 strain of the highly pathogenic avian flu (HPAI) virus in commercial poultry. The strain is known to have infected humans and birds. The infection was confirmed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory to the Mississippi Board of Animal Health (MBAH), found in poultry located in Noxubee County, Mississippi, bordering Alabama.

The H7N9 subtype has a North American wild bird lineage, according to a statement by the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH). The outbreak began on March 8, when the workers noticed clinical signs in the birds and rising fatalities, WOAH noted. The virus was first detected in March 2013 in China. This is the second outbreak since March 2017, when the strain killed 74,000 chickens in Lincoln County, Tennessee.

Subsequently, another outbreak was reported in commercial and backyard flocks in Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia during routine surveillance, according to a study published in PubMed Central in 2019.

A total of 47,654 birds at commercial poultries were culled until March 13, 2025. “Mississippi has experienced three avian flu outbreaks in commercial poultry since the spring of 2023, and since November 2024, the virus has been detected several times in migratory waterfowl in multiple parts of the state,” a statement from Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy said.

So why not provide cites about mosquitoes being attracted to blood on the surface?

I actually started looking at this plague beginning on 20 January 2020. I discussed this new threat on Wrong Planet. You can find the discussion here.
Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

By the end of March 2020, I knew how to protect myself and my family and I implemented this 3 step scientific approach and it worked very well. When most people were hiding in their homes during 2020, I was going out, going to movies, eating at restaurants, going to stores and shopping. I knew how to protect myself and my family and for the most part none of us got COVID.

Even to this day, even though I am 76 years old, I never got COVID.

Much of the advice given was wrong, dead wrong. This was generally an indoor threat. It could be spread up to 50 feet indoors. It was a very small virus that could travel through most masks but N95 mask could provide protection. It was also spread at high and low humidity levels. So generally, if the indoor humidity levels remained between 40 and 60 percent, for the most part you were safe. Many homes in the U.S. were designed to be very efficient. But that was a threat. They were very efficient at controlling temperature but they ignored humidity.

So in the U.S., much of the advice given was extremely wrong and was given by Dr. Fauci who was involved in Gain of Function Research. We allowed a fox into the hen house.

Mosquitoes are attracted to their target by several different methods not just one. For example:
-- Blood Type
-- Carbon Dioxide
-- Body Heat
-- Sweat
-- Skin Bacteria
-- Pregnant Women
-- Beer Drinkers
-- Diet
-- Darker Color Clothing

There is not just a single tool they use but many.
Source: 9 Reasons Mosquitoes Are Attracted to You

So in a similar manner to the fact that they are attracted to pregnant women, in my case since I had an open wound, they could smell my blood and it drove them crazy.

A United Nations food agency warned that the continued spread of the H5N1 bird flu virus is an unprecedented food security risk that requires a coordinated global response.

In a briefing held on Monday, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations cited the loss of hundreds of millions of poultry around the world and the increasing spillover into mammals as key concerns stemming from the spread of the H5N1 bird flu.

The agency noted a major shift in bird flu’s geographic spread in the past four years, with at least 300 newly affected wild bird species since 2021.

Calling the spread unprecedented, FAO Deputy Director-General Godfrey Magwenzi said the disease was “leading to serious impacts on food security and food supply in countries, including loss of valuable nutrition, rural jobs and income, shocks to local economies, and of course increasing costs to consumers.”

Source: H5N1 bird flu spread ‘unprecedented,’ UN agency warns

Merriam-Webster Definition

I think we can safely say Bird Flu is a pandemic and has been for a while now. There is nothing in this or other definitions I have looked at the specifies the disease must affect a significant portion of the human population.

Yet your source doesn't mention open wounds or surface blood at all. Neither does any other source I've looked at.

Do you have any source that does support the idea that mosquitoes are attracted to open wounds?