comment: >
  
  My dad's a veterinarian. He says the profession was created to keep livestock healthy enough to bring to slaughter weight.
context: I'm a railroad worker, and finding bird smashed by trains alongside of rails is a everyday occurence, but finding dead bird not smashed on the floor wasn't, and since last year, it's a crazy the amount of them i've found and they don't even looks in bad shape, it just look like they were fine and dropped dead in an instant.
  ​
  It's been 10 years i'm doing this job and i've never seen anything like that. >
  
  When China had a bad bird flu outbreak \~15-20 years ago they blamed it on wild birds. But when they tracked the spread it followed highways, not flyways so that pointed toward commercial flocks. >
  
  ~~NEWMAN!!~~ CHINA!!!
  ​
  But in actuality all of us and our politicians and businesses which empower and enable and exploit such China for short-term personal profit. >
  
  How many Republicans or Democrats have investments in China? I’d like to know >
  
  China's cunning plan for not ending up like the USSR was to become a cornerstone of the world economy.
  Anyone who has investments has investments in China. >
  
  As cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University. >
  
  Foxford University >
  
  How long before some politician suggests we don't test the poultry as much in order to get the number of cases down? >
  
  Fox News ran a segment about how Democrats are trying to stop you from loving your chickens. Seriously. >
  
  Of course they did. 
  Biden could tell America not to shit on their dining table and Fox would frame it as an assault on our freedumbs. >
  
  BiDeN dOeSnT wAnT yOu SpEnDiNg TiMe WiTh YoUr FaMiLy!! >
  
  BIdEn hAtEs tHe ArIsToCrAtS ! >
  
  Last year Biden said he was 79
  This year he says 80
  Which is it, Biden ? >
  
  Cue tucker's stupid fucking face >
  
  “I’m just asking questions” -evil fucker carlson >
  
  Truly evil. I've only ever seen pictures until recently. Seth Meyers ran a short clip of the most outrageous shit I've ever heard and he made that signature dumb face. It was enraging and terrifying at the same time. >
  
  That face is the face of modern fascism in the US.  People mistakenly think Trump brought it on, but in actuality, tucker has been cultivating thos movement the entire time he's been on air, Trump just bumblingly benefited from it. >
  
  This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 93%. (I'm a bot)
  
  
  A lethal bird flu outbreak that has been circling the globe since 2021 peaked in Japan this week, as an agriculture ministry official said on Tuesday the country plans to cull more than 10 million chickens at risk of exposure to the virus.
  Europe is in the midst of its worst-ever spate of bird flu infections with 2,500 outbreaks on farms stretching across 37 countries from October 2021-September 2022.
  This outbreak marks the first time bird flu has been detected in Latin America with outbreaks in Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and Ecuador, posing a potential risk to farmed and wild birds including the unique species that inhabit the Galapagos.
  
  
  Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: bird^#1 flu^#2 farm^#3 infection^#4 outbreak^#5 >
  
  People sometimes gloss over this as being "an animal disease" and fail to understand the massive ticking time bomb this is.  
  Influenza has the ability to share gene segments between different strains. This is called Antigenic Shift. The danger here is that the more this H5N1 strain spreads, the greater the chance it goes through an antigenic shift that drastically alters it, potentially for the worst. All it could take is for the wrong bird to infect the wrong pig, where one of the pigs cells already infected with a different strain of influenza and is also simultaneously infected with the avian H5N1 strain. What could emerge from that cell could be a virus that makes COVID-19 feel like a mild case of allergies. The good news is that we've seen outbreaks of H5N1 in the wild before without it mutating into the strain we all fear. Chances are this outbreak will be no different, but give the virus enough opportunities to spread and it can eventually turn into the nightmare pandemic we fear.  
  H5N1 is a virus that has shown the ability to cause high levels of lethality in humans (the highly pathogenic strains), easily sitting above 50% and climbing as high as 80% in some outbreaks. So far these infections have been through direct contact with infected birds and has shown very limited human to human transmission, so low it could not become a sustained epidemic. But the effects on its victims is merciless. They drown in a pool of their own liquified lungs as their bodies immune system goes haywire trying to fend off the attacking virus. Other non highly pathogenic strains of avian Influenza have fortunately been less severe, and we'll be very lucky if one of these strains becomes the one to cause an epidemic. Even then, a virus with a 15-20% fatality rate as opposed to 50% or 60% will still be devastating. And the lethality rate doesn't necessarily impact how transmissable the virus is as Influenza can spread before a person even shows any symptoms. Once it has spread, it doesn't really matter if the infected host survived or not, hence the lesser impact the fatality rate has on transmissability.  
  Two "gain-of-function" research studies deliberately modified H5N1 to be transmissable between ferrets (a very close animal analog to humans) and found what would need to happen for it to spread easily between humans. All it took was for a few key mutations in the right places and you could have a very lethal and highly contagious strain of human-to-human H5N1. This was in a lab done with extremely secure measures, but nature is the ultimate biolab. If given enough opportunities, these very same or very similar mutations will eventually emerge naturally.  
  For decades the one virus that has kept many epidemiologists up at night has been Influenza. Coronavirus did catch us by suprise on a number of times, with COVID being the one pandemic that wasn't exactly expected. That was because the expected and greatly feared super pandemic had been and will likely always be highly pathogenic avian Influenza. Advances in vaccine and treatment research has shortened the time it would take to respond to a pandemic, and this will save millions of lives should the worst come to pass, but until those vaccines are ready and available in mass, our world will be at the mercy of what could be the worst pandemic in human history. >
  
  what could be the worst pandemic in human history... so far! >
  
  An optimist! >
  
  Also, if I can survive the next pandemic and don't die a horrible death, I might even be able to almost buy a house if the market crashes or enough of the population gets wiped out! >
  
  Well if it's 50% of the population, then i ain't buying, I'm just rolling in to the empty houses. Every other neighbor will be empty too so whose gonna tell? >
  
  i already have a house i want to take over in case of an influenza apocalyps. Some rich steel magnat decided to build his mansion in the poorest town of our province. >
  
  lol, why would you want to be so out of place like that? I always feel like you generally never want to be the most expensive or least expensive house on the block. >
  
  You can't make an omelette
  That's it.  That's going to be the saying now >
  
  You can’t make an omelette without cracking a few… breaks down in tears >
  
  Cracking open the plastic seal just isn't the same. You used to be able to offend people by putting omelettes in the microwave. Now, they barely have a scent. 
  [the reviews for the vegan egg replacement Just Egg have described it as matching the texture, but lacking the slight pungency that make eggs well, eggs] >
  
  Eh, shake some black salt over it and call it a day. >
  
  This should be a bigger story >
  
  Not until we have a story of how millennials won't pay for omelettes at IHOP or some shit >
  
  They put pancake batter in the eggs at ihop. “To make them more fluffy”. So don’t go there if you have gluten intolerance or celiac >
  
  Went there the other day after so long since the last time. I swear they're watering down their drinks too. >
  
  . . . Maybe I'll wait before rebuilding my flock I lost to bird flu years ago. >
  
  Where are you? How big was the flock?
  I've only got nine and we haven't had any local outbreaks, but I still worry enough to keep them under cover. >
  
  I'm in California, my flock was 15. This was back in 2017-18  I want to say. Just poof, all my girls and boy gone.  Figure it was all the wild birds that came to eat their food. >
  
  Same thing happened to my parents in SoCal during the 2019 winter. Turns out it was likely a result of crows or crow poop in their pen (per analysis). They lost 12 chickens and 2 ducks. >
  
  It's awful.  We had to stop feeding the wild birds so they wouldn't linger in the yard. Very sad how empty the yard feels now ): >
  
  My neighbors have maybe a dozen chickens and I just got a bird feeder. Should I uhhh not be doing this? >
  
  Curious, it seems people haven't seen the egg shortage at the supermarket! >
  
  There’s no shortage at my supermarket. It’s just that the bargain eggs that used to retail at $0.98/dozen are now selling near $5/dozen. 
  Sucks because eggs were such a cheap and inexpensive protein to cook with and I had a lot of recipes with eggs. >
  
  Yeah, I haven't had eggs as a main component for months now. If i need them for baking then it is what it is but RIP scrambled eggs. >
  
  You can sub in oil, Mayo, apple sauce, or a couple other ingredients for eggs when baking. >
  
  This is just bad advice. You can't just decide to use applesauce instead. It has to be a specific ingredient for a specific function. >
  
  Oh for fuck sake >
  
  for ~~fuck~~ flock sake >
  
  Oh for cluck's sake >
  
  Oh for bok's sake >
  
  The puns have run a-fowl >
  
  Oh for cock's sake >
  
  Oh for the sake of cock >
  
  i just want to let my chickens into the garden again :( >
  
  Serious question. If they aren’t in the garden, where do you keep them? >
  
  hutch in my shed currently >
  
  You can’t let them out bc some rando bird may give them the flu? >
  
  Not OP, but yes.  It’s spread primarily by wild bird populations to backyard flocks.  Incredibly contagious, and this latest strain is especially lethal.  It could wipe out the entire flock :(. >
  
  I have family who live in a rural area and plan on getting a few chickens because eggs are so expensive.
  They don't "believe" in the bird flu outbreak.
  They think Biden is somehow intentionally making eggs expensive. On a global scale, apparently.
  So... can you eat a chicken after it dies from bird flu? Asking for a relative, probably... >
  
  It's unwise to eat animals that were infected and or killed by a zoonotic disease. >
  
  I’m sure it can’t be anything to do with the billions of industrially reared broiler chickens routinely fed unnecessary antibiotics that we don’t need as part of our diet and contributing to illegal deforestation in the Amazon like every other major zoonotic disease outbreak, if only there was something we could do to stop these things >
  
  Stop supplying a third or more of the global population with cheap protein?
  Fair enough. It's really only been in the last 120 years, and REALLY SO in the last 60 years, that majorities of populations in "first world" countries were no longer food insecure and below poverty. I'm not a doomer, but maybe.... we have reached peak civilization for a couple of decades.
  Since we didn't dial back growth and efficiency on our own, the chain of systems that created this bountiful world are starting to crack. I personally don't think we are headed to complete collapse, but a second great depression is very much a possibility, and a very long, difficult period of recession with high-priced, out of reach goods and widespread poverty is already happening. >
  
  It's cheap because governments subsidize it, how can something yield a cheaper product than its input? >
  
  140 Million farm birds had been culled in a 12 month period. Wild birds are dropping in unknown numbers. The scale is huge. >
  
  What is done with all these millions of euthanized chickens? Seriously inquiring. >
  
  I'm not sure, but my guess is they burn them. Cheaper than digging a hole and it keeps other wildlife from scavenging. >
  
  I have a feeling that mrna vaccines will suddenly become very prevalent in the world. We’re going to need faster responses to all kinds of diseases. >
  
  Poor chickies >
  
  They’re all being killed anyway >
  
  Awesome, this decade has been boring so far... >
  
  Bruuh we started it off with a pandemic and a war. what is your standard for not boring >
  
  I want at least a year where there's no looming threat of war, famine, economic collapse, a climate disaster, etc >
  
  You’re gonna need a time machine for that >
  
  What are the studies about the likelihood of this jumping to mammals/people? (Yes I know people are mammals I have hair on my ass) >
  
  People get infected with bird flu occasionally, and it is very deadly. Almost 900 cases since it showed up over half of which ended in death.
  The biggest threat would be human to human spread which thankfully hasn't happened yet. >
  
  It would probably have to lower how severe it is as well in humans. The reason covid became such a problem because so many people can have mild symptoms and spread it around to 100 people before they even know they’re sick >
  
  It depends on how the disease progresses. If people are infectious with a light cough before getting very ill they can spread it just as well even if the final mortality rate is very high. Think of the plague, which was both deadly and spreads easily. >
  
  What do you expect when you shove billions of animals together and let them live in their own shit and piss while being abused then killed? Ofc we're gonna get more pandemics. You have to be braindead not to see the problem here. >
  
  but people “need” “their” eggs/flesh/milk etc >
  
  Yep, we do. >
  
  Really though? >
  
  Upvoting for visibility. People are not aware of this disaster. >
  
  Wow, 140 million dead chickens. RIP birdies 😢 >
  
  Holy moly, that's a lot of dead birds 💀 >
  
  Yep it’s depressing. We kill something to the tune of trillions of animals a year (counting sea life). Just straight up cruel. >
  
  Our decendents are going to look back at us in disgust. >
  
  Bird up >
  
  I know this sucks for humans, but I just learned how factory farm animals are put down en masse and it's intensely cruel and awful. It edged me closer to giving up meat. This might edge the whole world closer >
  
  check out the stuff i’ve linked in my profile about the animal industrial complex (lots is in the youtube link as well). you’ll probably be vegan after that. 
  it’s always a new low of a horror with this stuff, and it’s well past time for us all to stop going the wrong direction and actually truly respect the other animals. people deserve to know the truth about what’s going on. >
  
  What kills me is that it is veterinarians who invent and approve the means of extermination. So far from "caring" for animals. I find that most people can't even begin to think about what other animals go through so that they can have bbq.