Don't mess with animals. This is not a Texas problem, outbreaks have been all over the world and the animal agriculture is the perfect breeding ground. The only question is where will it develop the human to human infection feature. When it happens you can only blame others if your state or country has no animal agriculture as it could happen anywhere.
Good thing there's nothing astronomical happening in Texas next week that only happens once every decade or so in the US, which people might flock to Texas to stand in crowds to see before dispersing back home across the Southern US. 😅
There are some dumb responses in this thread. Lots of misplaced vitriol at Texas and farmers.
You want to have people report this stuff? Don't act like dickheads when they do.
Stuff like this happens from time to time in agriculture. UK has issues with TB in dairy cows which requires them to cull herds. It's really shitty and unfortunate but this type of thing has happened for millenia.
It's better that they report it so we can address it and find ways to prevent it happening in the future.
And unless everyone is willing to go 100% vegan tomorrow, we need farmers, livestock, and the like to keep our meat and dairy supply flowing.
Edit:
I also want to point out that it doesn't seem like.they definitively determined it came from the cows but that he was "link" and "exposed" to infected cows.
"Genetic tests don’t suggest that the virus suddenly is spreading more easily or that it is causing more severe illness, Shah said. And current antiviral medications still seem to work, he added."
So this guy could have gotten it from the same bird the cows got it from as well. A dozen other people were tested and none came back positive.
All other cases we've seen have come from bird contact. So there is a reasonable chance this guy got it from an infected bird without realizing it.
Also, none of the cows have died (dunno if that's a good thing or bad thing).
It's only got a 56% fatality rate, some of you will die but the economy must have it's workers pronto. I expect the COVID playbook will be used again, tell you it's droplets when it's airborne, push the vaccine as the solution and shove you back to work.
There is no discussion. This is going to happen again and again and people will suffer and die. Not as much and numerous as the exploited animals, but still too much.
because meat is mostly fat and protein and is thus calorically dense and filling, and has a bunch of nutrients that are really hard to come by in plants (eg cobalamin)
if you exclude meat (as well as eggs and dairy) from your diet, you'll absolutely need to take supplements to cover those nutrients... and they're usually made from animal byproducts anyway
like, humans are omnivores. you're supposed to eat plants and meat alike. cutting meat out might be a good choice morally (after all, what's the point of eating at all if it brings you mental anguish?) but it's not like you're physiologically a different kind after that
upd. not gonna spam replies but i wasn't talking about whether or not calorie density is good nowadays, i was just talking about why humans eat meat at all
b12 is readily available as a supplement and is synthesized from bacteria. Given that we already depend on convoluted processing pipelines for our meat, that shouldn't be a big problem. Most foodstuff is already fortified with it anyway.
With obesity becoming a big problem worldwide, shifting away from caloric dense foods would seem like the thing to do.
Spitballin here, but maybe it'd even be called cow flu if it wasn't so bad for some rich people's business. That's probably just the cynicism talking, though.
The fact seems to be that many of these flu's are interspecies and the origin seems largely irrelevant. It's my understanding that covid-19 originated in pangolins, but "pangolin flu" didn't seem to stick, did it?
I'd be happy if someone with actual epidemiological knowledge could chime in here.