H7N9 Bird Flu Mysteries

I was discussing some H7N9 bird flu mysteries with a contact yesterday:
* Only 10 of the 77 cases as of Tuesday had contact with poultry
* Virologist Fouchier says H7N9 is NOT a bird flu
* Chickens and birds do NOT get sick from this flu
* Pigs and dogs are dropping like flies in China but officials deny H7N9 has anything to do with the mass animal deaths
* Live poultry markets are being shut down all over the country, including in Taiwan - and chickens are being culled by the 10's of thousands.

My contact suddenly started laughing and said, "China engineered it! They're experimenting on their own people!" Instinctively I said, "No! Follow the money!"

Fact is, global corporations are competing for China's HUGE poultry market. Guess who benefits when the live markets and backyard chicken coops are shut down? And btw - corporations have a long history of using bioterrorism in their pursuit of profit.

So I did a little digging. For example, Cargill, a global agribusiness mega-corporation with an American base, recently cracked China's market. Used-ta-be Brazil had the lions' share, then the USA went to the World Trade Organization and things changed, supposedly to benefit Americans. Now, Cargill has a HUGE presence in China - including 12 pullet and breeder farms, a feed mill, a hatchery and a primary processing plant. Cargill plans to raise and market 65 million chickens a year in China - starting in July this year.

Better get those live markets and backyard chicken coops closed down pronto!

Looks like it's just more of the same monopoly game - Cargill used the American government to fight for access to China's poultry market, and backed the play with jobs for Chinese people. Americans lost those jobs - and we're ALL losing our rights to raise our own food, Chinese and American both.

* Was H7N9 genetically engineered and released on purpose? Is it all about killing the competition and grabbing market share?
* H7N9 mutates fast - will it evolve to become more benign or get worse?
* It's spreading fast, up to 83 cases at last count, but will it go pandemic?
* Are all cases being reported? Everyone keeps forgetting to count the 2nd case in Beijing - why IS that?
* Why are they blaming small business and small farmers when most of the evidence contradicts those "findings"?

The chicken coop was empty Wednesday at the northern Beijing home of a man who gave only his surname, Bai. On a normal day, he sells 20 to 30 chickens from the wooden structure that faces the dusty street, putting aside money to buy an apartment in his native Sichuan.

But with the recent outbreak of bird flu in China, these are not normal days in the country’s chicken markets. Bai stopped selling birds after learning of the flu two weeks ago, and the only things in the front room of his ramshackle home are a freezer and some smoked pork hanging from the ceiling. A local official has come by to make sure he was closed.

He might not be open for business any time soon.

References:

Cargill to set up integrated broiler poultry project in China 31 August 2012

American agribusiness company Cargill is constructing a $250m integrated broiler poultry project in Chuzhou city, Anhui province, China, in an effort to strengthen its presence in the country.

The integrated broiler facility, which is being built over an area of 350ha near the Yangtze river basin, will complement Cargill's current meat imports business. It will feature 12 pullet and breeder farms, a feed mill, a hatchery and a primary processing plant. …the facility is expected to start operating by July 2013.

"We will raise 65 million birds a year and it will be one of the biggest integrated plants in China," Langholz added.

US and China Playing Chicken on Poultry Trade

US and Chinese trade agreements and their implementation are going to the World Trade Organization because the US believes China is unfairly using tactics to keep US poultry out of China.

“Let me be clear: the US does not arbitrarily seek disagreements with China,” said Ron Kirk, US trade representative, as he unveiled the grounds for the US action. “But we won’t negotiate indefinitely, because US farmers, ranchers, small business owners and workers can’t afford to wait when their exports are being blocked and American jobs are at stake.” [tsk]

U.S.-China Trade Dispute, Poultry, Deficit

Brazil claims majority of China’s poultry imports

Brazilian meat accounted for 74% of China’s poultry imports in 2011, according to data released from Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA).

THE FALLOUT: An Overview

REMEMBER: Only 10 of the 77 cases as of Tuesday have had contact with poultry. …Who pays when people can't raise their own food and buy local? And who profits?

Market ban on killing of poultry brought forward April 16, 2013

TAIPEI--Taiwan could impose a ban on slaughtering live poultry at traditional markets earlier than planned because of the H7N9 bird flu scare, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said yesterday.

Bird flu fears lead to Shanghai poultry market cull
Authorities slaughter more than 20,000 birds after H7N9 strain of virus is detected in pigeons and human death toll rises to six

H7N9 still confined to live poultry markets

[Sure.]

Live poultry trade market closed in E. China

More: USDA opens new poultry, dairy, fruit export markets, April 15, 2013.

…$100,000 worth of Anjou pears to China - but NO poultry! Surprise, surprise. Meanwhile, Cargill is taking over China's poultry industry and giving jobs to Chinese people. Who are losing their right to raise their own food. That's the real world folks.

A few more references:

* Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier says H7N9 is not actually a bird flu.

Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier told CNN that this mutation in mice makes the disease up to 1,000 times more virulent. He believes that several other mutations present mean that the virus is not actually a bird flu. “Known normal bird viruses have to adapt substantially to infect people, but not these,” he said.

* Only 10 of the 77 cases as of Tuesday have had contact with poultry - where the virus is coming from and how it's spreading is still a "mystery."

Zeng Guang, the chief scientist in charge of epidemiology at the China Disease Prevention and Control Center (CDPCC), said about 40 percent of human victims had no clear history of poultry exposure, the Beijing News reported on Wednesday.

According to state media reports, only 10 of the 77 cases as of Tuesday have had contact with poultry. The CDPCC declined to comment when asked by Reuters.

* Official reports deny H7N9 is infecting pigs or dogs - BUT - 410 Pigs and 122 Dogs were just found dead in Henan province. Last month, more than 16,000 dead pigs were found in rivers that supply water to Shanghai - definitely NOT the same factory and "chemical gas" at fault.

Maybe H7N9 already has multiple reservoirs

….

410 Pigs, 122 Dogs Found Dead In China Wed, 04/17/2013

“Initial investigation eliminated an animal epidemic and H7N9 bird flu,” the (NEWS) agency reported, citing the local authorities.

…Tissue samples of the deceased animals have been sent for tests to the Henan University of Science and Technology.

Also see: H7N9 virus can be traced to 3 bird species: Chinese expert
[Ed. NOTE: Does not preclude spread to other species.]

* The media continues to exclude the 2nd case in Beijing from the count.

A seven-year-old girl in Beijing was the first case in the capital at the weekend and the boy next door has also tested positive

How many other cases are being "overlooked"?

* Only five reported H7N9 flu patients have recovered - the rest are still in hospital.

China confirms 82 H7N9 cases, 17 deaths

From 8 p.m. Tuesday to 5 p.m. Wednesday, China confirmed five new cases of human H7N9 avian influenza infection, including one in Shanghai and four in Zhejiang Province.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission said in its daily update on H7N9 cases that a total of 82 H7N9 cases have been reported in China, including 17 that have ended in death.

Of the total, five H7N9 patients have been discharged from hospitals after receiving treatment, and the other 60 patients are being treated in designated hospitals, according to the commission.

A total of 31 cases, including 11 that have ended in death, have been reported in Shanghai. Twenty cases, including three deaths, have been reported in Jiangsu Province, and 25 cases, including two deaths, in Zhejiang Province. Anhui Province has reported three cases, with one death. Beijing has reported one case and two have been reported in Henan Province.

Scary Developments and good Theories. S&F

Its only a matter of time before it jumps the pound over to America or Europe. Sounds like its only hitting the poorer communitys right now. Its only a matter of time before it works its way up to middle and upper class people who fly for a living. Would that be right?

reply to post by soficrow

When the city propaganda office tells you the mass deaths of lot of animals
are nothing to do with any bird flu for some strange reason i don't trust them
can't think why

The city's propaganda office said that the deaths were being investigated but that they suspected they had to do with nearby chemical factories. The factories have been ordered to suspend production and help police with a criminal investigation into the incident, according to a report on a Henan provincial news website.

No poisonous gases have been found in tests on the air around the village and its drinking water has met quality standards, said the report, which the propaganda office confirmed.

Local authorities said the deaths have nothing to do with any epidemic or the H7N9 bird flu virus that has recently spread to humans.

edit on 17/4/2013 by skuly because: is pink better than orange?

reply to post by camaro68ss


Sounds about right. S& ...A couple of days ago, CIDRAP predicted as much. Also interesting are the actions taken by Canada - "studies growing the H7N9 virus should not be done in labs that culture human influenza viruses and ...personnel shouldn't have contact with susceptible animals for 5 days after handling H7N9 samples." Fairly standard safety measures but interesting they should be highlighted.

China reports 3 new H7N9 cases, 64 total, 14 deaths

…The H7N9 outbreak is likely to expand to other part of China, and possibly neighboring countries, over the coming weeks, the ECDC said. It added that Europe could see isolated imported cases and that countries should get ready to detect and diagnose the disease.

Two key developments that would prompt the ECDC to change its risk assessment would be evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission of the new virus or its detection in European bird populations.

…the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) recently spelled out the conditions required for handing the novel H7N9 virus.

The groups said in an Apr 10 statement that work with live cultures must be conducted in biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) containment. It recommended that all work with positive human samples be conducted at the National Microbiological Laboratory and that all experiments with positive animal samples be done at the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease.

The two groups also said studies growing the H7N9 virus should not be done in labs that culture human influenza viruses and that personnel shouldn't have contact with susceptible animals for 5 days after handling H7N9 samples, as outlined in standard foreign animal disease protocols.

reply to post by skuly


lol - no kidding. And just media reports, no test results.

S&

Hate to go on about this, but it's a HUGE CONTRADICTION.

87% of H7N9 victims had NO CONTACT with poultry - not 40%. So why do news reports say it's 40% ?
[Only 10 of 77 cases had contact with poultry, leaving 67 who had NO contact with poultry (87%).]

Zeng Guang, the chief scientist in charge of epidemiology at the China Disease Prevention and Control Center (CDPCC), said about 40 percent of human victims had no clear history of poultry exposure, the Beijing News reported on Wednesday.

According to state media reports, only 10 of the 77 cases as of Tuesday have had contact with poultry. The CDPCC declined to comment when asked by Reuters.

87% of H7N9 victims had NO CONTACT with poultry - not 40%.

According to state media reports, only 10 of the 77 cases as of Tuesday have had contact with poultry. The CDPCC declined to comment when asked by Reuters.

Only 0.00081% of poultry tested were positive for H7N9 bird flu - but small poultry farmers and businesses are getting screwed.

By Tuesday, the national and provincial labs had tested 47,801 samples from 84,444 collected nationwide, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. The 39 positive samples taken from live poultry all originated in the municipality of Shanghai and the provinces of Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangsu, all of which confirmed cases of H7N9 bird flu.

The unexpected outbreak of the new H7N9 strain of bird flu is imposing a huge financial strain on breeders and sellers, reports Yu Ran in Wenzhou, Zhejiang.

…..And it's not just the breeders who are suffering; poultry sellers who've been forced to close their stands at agricultural produce markets are waiting anxiously for an end to the outbreak, but the cases keep appearing.

"I am making some money by transporting vegetables to other agricultural markets, but we're struggling to make a living at the moment," said Xia Maochun, who sells poultry at an agricultural market in Gaoling Road, Shanghai, and regularly supplies nearby restaurants and residents.

Poultry farmers struggle to find insurance

Still, ya gotta love it when the authorities listen to us, not just the professional sensationalists.

Investigators Look Beyond Birds for Origin of H7N9 Flu Strain

As investigators looked at the possibility of human transmission, there was mounting concern that the new virus, known as H7N9, may not originate in birds but in other animals and in environmental sources, the W.H.O. spokesman said.

Experts gathering to focus on H7N9 bird flu transmission mystery

Almost three weeks after China reported finding a new strain of bird flu in humans, experts are still stumped by how people are becoming infected when many appear to have had no recent contact with live fowl and the virus isn't supposed to pass from person to person.

…Tashiro noted that proof of the assertion that contact with birds is causing the cases is missing. "They didn't show any direct evidence. That's only speculation still. It's possible, likely, but there's no evidence," he said.

I have more to report - but no time. bbl

Somehow they will turn this into a pandemic. They will turn it into a flu shot that makes profit for some corporation Another shot I will refuse to take. If I die from the flu I will die. I know the shots definitely make me sick and can possibly kill me so my chances are a lot better of survival without the vaccine.

From reports on labs taken from the birds infected with H7N9, the birds were infected by human contact first! ill have to find the link

reply to post by rickymouse


Are you saying you do not agree with the my hypothesis that corporation(s) in the poultry industry engineered this to kill the backyard farmers and small poultry businesses in China just to take over the nation's poultry market? [Not Big Pharma.]

...Most big drug manufacturers do not want anything to do with vaccines unless their butts are covered from here to Sunday - by our governments and tax dollars - but China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd. is jumping on it. Still, every other company and research facility that has tried to develop a vaccine for any/every H7 flu virus has failed. Miserably. Nothing looks too promising and I personally would not touch it with a 10-foot pole.

reply to post by camaro68ss


I recall reading that suggestion too - fact is, no one has any idea what this virus's reservoir is. True, they're trying to say domestic chickens, wild birds and pigeons - BUT - if the infection rate is 0.00081% that's really not too likely.

reply to post by soficrow


Well, your hypothesis could be real. I think the problem is in the big corporate farms also though isn't it? Big corporate farms could absorb the losses though, small farmers in China are just like in this country, they cannot afford to have losses.

reply to post by rickymouse

...the problem is in the big corporate farms ...Big corporate farms could absorb the losses though, small farmers in China are just like in this country, they cannot afford to have losses.

Yes - that's what I said. I focused on Cargill but there probably are other global agri-business mega-corporations in China now. ...Do you know of any?

...For example, Cargill, a global agribusiness mega-corporation with an American base, recently cracked China's market. Used-ta-be Brazil had the lions' share, then the USA went to the World Trade Organization and things changed, supposedly to benefit Americans. Now, Cargill has a HUGE presence in China - including 12 pullet and breeder farms, a feed mill, a hatchery and a primary processing plant. Cargill plans to raise and market 65 million chickens a year in China - starting in July this year.

Better get those live markets and backyard chicken coops closed down pronto!

Looks like it's just more of the same monopoly game - Cargill used the American government to fight for access to China's poultry market, and backed the play with jobs for Chinese people. Americans lost those jobs - and we're ALL losing our rights to raise our own food, Chinese and American both.

The biggest mystery remains - where did this virus come from? Where is it hiding? How are people being exposed? How are we getting infected? If it's a bird flu, why only 0.00081% positives in the 48,000 birds tested?

With Bird Flu, 'Right Now, Anything Is Possible'

...Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization's top influenza scientist …. in an interview with NPR.

"The biggest question is just what's going to happen," he told Shots. "We've had a lot of experience in the last decade with new animal influenza viruses. But ... we haven't seen this combination before. So I think right now, anything is possible."

…."Where is the virus?" Fukuda wonders. "Where is it keeping itself? How are people getting exposed to it? How are they getting infected by it? Those are some of the really basic questions that we're asking."

…however people are getting infected — whatever they're getting exposed to — it's not just in one location, but it's spread out."

Another mystery is what animal species are serving as the source of the virus. It's presumed to be poultry, but Chinese authorities and WHO officials say a significant proportion of H7N9 victims have had no known contact with poultry.

So far, testing of nearly 48,000 animals — nearly all birds — has found the virus in only 39.

reply to post by soficrow


Big business did that in this country in the past. They had laws made to make it hard for a person to raise livestock. That was going on up until not long ago. Now Monsanto is doing the same thing. I don't know why we bother having a government, they are expensive and worthless. It has been Big Business sided since before we were a country. Seems like the people who elect the government aren't aware of how this political training works.

It is funny how someone can get someone to do whatever they want with a big ego boost or money and power. What a screwed up world, I can't wait to graduate from this place.

reply to post by rickymouse


Yep - big business is doing it everywhere, and has been for a long time. People who raise their own food have too much independence for the economic-powers-that-be. The goal is to force dependence - and servitude.

Yes, H7N9 "bird flu" is "mutating under the radar." H7N9 first appeared in turkeys in Minnesota in 1988 - then it spread to other countries in domestic poultry (trade) and wild birds (migrations). But it only started infecting people about 3 weeks ago, in China. Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier (of H5N1 fame) says the kind of mutations H7N9 now has show this new strain is NOT a "bird flu."

Only 0.00081% of birds and chickens tested had the H7N9 strain infecting humans (39 out of 48,000). None of the pigs and dogs tested positive. So if it's not in birds and chickens, and not in pigs and dogs, where is it hiding? How is it spreading? Where did it come form? ...Was it genetically engineered?

The worst flu kills the young and healthy, and lets the elderly and chronically ill live. This new improved H7N9 strain culls the old and sick, while leaving its younger, healthier victims symptom-free - as carriers. The type of people inclined to design pandemic flu would likely engineer it to kill off the useless eaters but not the healthy worker bees. Just sayin.

One of the odd mysteries posed by the H7N9 influenza virus emerging in China is why most of the patients are on the older side—a fact that stands in sharp contrast to the pattern seen with that other deadly crossover avian virus, H5N1.

...The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), in an epidemiological update released today, but based on cases as of yesterday, put the median age of H7N9 patients even higher: 64, with a range of 4 to 89.

A related puzzle is the gender balance, or rather imbalance, among H7N9 cases. The ECDC report says just 25 of 82 patients with available information have been female. For H5N1 the gender balance has been much more even. Looking at H5N1 cases in the same provinces as the H7N9 cases, Kelley found that six were female and six were male.

So far, authorities on influenza generally seem stumped by these differences, much as they are stumped on exactly how the virus is getting into humans. The suspected source is poultry, but Chinese authorities reported this week that only 39 of about 48,000 samples from more than 1,000 poultry markets, farms, and other sites were found to contain the virus. Further, they said about 40% of H7N9 patients had no clear history of exposure to poultry.

Originally posted by soficrow
where is it hiding? How is it spreading? Where did it come form?

This might be stretching the imagination too far but what if H7N9 found its way into sleeping pills?

Remember this?

Chicago Tylenol murders

The Chicago Tylenol murders occurred when seven people died after taking pain-relief medicine capsules that had been poisoned. The poisonings, code-named TYMURS by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, took place in September and early October 1982, in the Chicago area of the United States.

If an individual can get away with murder why couldn't Big Pharma? Besides, the Chicago "killer" hasn't been found (that I'm aware of) so who's to say it was an individual that tampered with tylenol capsules?