John Yang:
Four years after the start of the pandemic, hospitalizations for COVID are at an all time low, but there are new variants. And now bird flu is in the headlines. It's been found in at least 36 dairy herds across nine states. But so far this year, there's only been one confirmed human case.
So, how concerned should we be about all of this? Katelyn Jetelina writes the popular newsletter, Your Local Epidemiologist, and she was just named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in health. So, Katelyn, how concerned should we be about bird flu?
Katelyn Jetelina, Author, "Your Local Epidemiologist": Yeah, you know, what's clear is that this is continuing to spread among cows and other animals, but the risk to the general public is very low. And this really means there's nothing we can do other than don't touch dead birds or animals, don't drink raw milk, and maybe even call your congressman for better biosecurity support.
But this is definitely not March of 2020, and it's definitely not even January of 2020. But, of course, the situation can change, and usually with outbreaks, it can change very quickly. I think that alarm bells for the general public should really start going off if we start seeing human to human spread.
Right now it's really an all hands on deck response for public health to prevent another pandemic and staying laser focused on protecting the small group of Americans that are at higher risk, and that is dairy and poultry workers right now.
Katelyn Jetelina:
It is scary, and it does sound scary. But I calmed down when I knew that we have over 100 years of data on effectiveness of pasteurization. Also, just to confirm that the pasteurization was working, the FDA tried to grow active virus from these pasteurized milk samples from grocery stores, and the experiments failed, which is actually a good thing, because that means these viral fragments were broken pieces that just could not replicate and thus cannot harm us humans.
Since those studies have been done on the milk, they've also tested other milk products like cottage cheese and sour cream. And those are say, as well as beef in grocery stores is also safe to consume. I think the bottom line here is just do not drink unpasteurized milk. It can make you very sick, especially at this time.
Katelyn Jetelina:
It's incredibly concerning because it feels like we are kind of going back to our pre pandemic times. It was incredibly important to have hospitalization data to understand where we need to be concerned, where action needs to take place, or, like right now, that hospitalizations are really low and we can relax a little.
I think the positive news, though, is that Health and Human Services is proposing a new rule that all hospitalizations continue to report COVID-19 as well as other viruses, starting on October 1 during non-emergency times.
And it's certainly open for public comment. But I'm optimistic that this reporting will continue, which will allow us to have a really nice national picture on what is going on with viruses at the moment.
