Bovine Vets “Infected” with HPAI?

Reprinted with permission from Dr. Will Falconer, DVM

The latest on bird flu?

Cow vets were tested for the presence of antibodies to this bird killing disease, and, by golly, were found positive.

 As a past dairy vet, I dug deeper when I heard this, and there’s a lot there. Let’s dive in.

So, Are They Dead or What?

Here’s the actual report from the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Some testers crashed a national vet meeting (the annual meeting of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners) and offered attending vets a $50 gift card to roll up their sleeves for a blood draw.

And guess what?

• 150 got tested, cow vets from the US and Canada

• 82 practiced in states known to have HPAI positive herds

• 25 worked with dairy cattle with known or suspected “infections”

• 3, sum total 3, had antibodies to bird flu.

Most significantly, of those three (2% of the test group)…

“None of the practitioners with positive serology results reported respiratory or influenza-like symptoms, including conjunctivitis…”

Remember that lovely word, “asymptomatic” we discussed earlier?

Yeppers, just like the cows have largely gone from early cases being off feed and down on milk, to now showing no symptoms at all, these cow vets, in essence, went, “We got this. A trifling lil virus?Hey, we got work to do, sic em immune system! I was born with a well designed defense system, so get outta my lane!”

Ok, So Good News Then, Right?

Asymptomatic means no one got sick, even after the virus got in to them.

“Oh, hail no! Spin doctors! Let’s run with this!”

The main stream media jumped on it the very next day, splashing the ugly word I dislike strongly: “Infected!”

Gaaa!