The institute’s founder, Mark McAfee, told the Los Angeles Times this weekend that his customers are, in fact, specifically requesting raw milk from H5N1-infected cows. According to McAfee, his customers believe, without evidence, that directly drinking high levels of the avian influenza virus will give them immunity to the deadly pathogen.
Looks like it’s going to be a fun flu season this year 🫠 Every day I feel more justified in my decision to relentlessly mask with an N95 every time I’m indoors in public.
didn’t cats already get the virus from drinking the raw milk? honestly at this point if only they wouldn’t end up infecting a bunch of other likely non-retarded individuals, I’d be inclined to just let them kill themselves with this and pass on beleiving that they proved their point. More realistically, they will probably spread it and kill a bunch of other people that way then still act like they have uncovered some great fucking secret, while somehow being the only survivors of the incident.
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didn’t cats already get the virus from drinking the raw milk?
Yes and they had a very high mortality rate too!
Edit: sauce
They also went blind
this is a certified Darwin award moment
Is he related to John, by any chance?
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You say that like it’s a way to get infections from Campylobacter, E. coli, Listeria, Salmonella, Brucella, and Cryptosporidium
That’s just a bunch of big science words for “exotic”, doesn’t exotic milk sound delicious? I’ll drink my wild and untamed milk that is free from all the rules society uses to make it boring and safe. And since even I’m not sure if this is coming across sarcastic, /s. And for good measure, /poe’s.
Don’t forget Baccilus cereus and Clostridium perfringens.
Although the abdominal cramps and extreme diarrhea might be considered a normal day for those morons.
That’s not the virus, that’s my lactose intolerance when I’m eating a liter of ice cream
Avoid animal agriculture in general
Commenters in here fully on board with advocating against raw milk because they don’t drink it.
As soon as you advocate against something which is the source of many of our zoonotic diseases they downvote because they do not want to stop eating animals.
People who would downvote the above comment: we see you like you see raw milk drinkers.
yeppp 😮💨
Raw milk is safe to drink in the UK.
Kinda, it’s regulated because it can be so unsafe and even then you are kinda risking a bad time drinking raw milk. There is a reason we pasturise it.
Well, that’s the point of regulations - to make food good and safe.
Yeah I understand but the regulations are basically to protect people from being exposed to it. So it’s still unsafe but because it’s so regulated you have to find sources for it and those sources have to prove they don’t have sick cows to sell you raw milk I assume a lot of not safe milk gets through so I would argue that it isn’t safe to drink raw milk ever no matter what unless you are a baby cow and even them it still might kill you… they banned it in Scotland since its dangerous and you can’t buy it in any markets anywhere in the uk
That logic can be applied to literally everything. You can’t just sell random shit and say it’s food. Not sure why you’re arguing. The point is that raw milk is safe, food in the US is not.
it’s better to word it as “raw milk CAN BE safe”, not “is”.
The California-based Raw Milk Institute called the warnings “clearly fearmongering.” The institute’s founder, Mark McAfee, told the Los Angeles Times this weekend that his customers are, in fact, specifically requesting raw milk from H5N1-infected cows. According to McAfee, his customers believe, without evidence, that directly drinking high levels of the avian influenza virus will give them immunity to the deadly pathogen.
By all means, drink up, morons, get the hell out of our gene pool, we’ve got enough troubles without your Dimwit DNA.
The problem is they infect the rest of us.
Crazy. The zombie apocalypse started from people wanting to become infected.
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not if you had a cult leader and influencers and a media mogul all working together to push a narrative. People would buy that.
It’ll only be a matter of time until the virus mutates and successfully transmits from human to human.
I’ll still be safe. I don’t generally drink human milk.
Believe it or not, human milk is almost exclusively consumed by humans.
tell me more about the “almost” part …
I don’t have an inside scoop, I just try not to speak in absolutes. It’s probably a safe bet that someone, somewhere, must have a story to tell.
welp, guess you’re right. It’s not common but not just a few someone’s either.
A woman breast feeding two puppies while two Mexican peasants implore her to feed her baby.
Honestly, I get it.
That’s surprisingly wholesome.
This is definitely in the top 10 weirdest things I have seen someone post that has a legitimate Wikipedia entry…
And it’s the internet, there are so many people just waiting to well-ackshually you.
I thought I saw something with kittens once, but I hope I’m remembering incorrectly. Don’t think I am though.
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directly drinking high levels of the avian influenza virus will give them immunity to the deadly pathogen
It’s like homeopathy but even stupider
To be fair to them, that is pretty close to how immunity actually works. Not quite there though.
Well it will give immunity, to the ones that survive.
Is raw milk the new anti-vax?
I know there are also conspiracy theories around pasteurization. Supposedly it doesn’t work and you don’t need it. Oh and viruses are a hoax. Or at least that’s what my very self educated husband of my cousin believes.
Can we just call this what it is as likely troll farm activity to sow discord in western society. I’m tired of it now being called out.
Probably that too, but I also think some people are just idiots
Nah, I think it’s more like: people that have constantly experienced being second row in everything suddenly have something they can feel smarter than everyone about. So they do.
“Viruses are a hoax” seems to have been growing ever since COVID. I never encountered it before that, now I’ve encountered it multiple times. There was a guy in the skeptic sub on Reddit who came in to argue like mad that viruses didn’t exist.
Polio has entered the chat
People were lined up around street corners to get the polio vaccine when it came out because they all knew just how horrible polio was.
And now that we’ve had decades of basically no polio because of the vaccine, people think vaccines aren’t needed, are dangerous, and that diseases are a hoax.
Education is critical.
a) you are correct b) those who advocate against education are insidious
I do work for a bunch of pharmaceutical companies and developing nation health outreach type organizations. (Don’t ask me much technical, I’m not personally on the medical side.) But I can tell you that most major pharmas, Health NGOs and Government drug safety regulatory bodies are keenly aware that “Vaccines are a victim of their own success.” They have multiple approaches to dealing with the problem that a successful vaccine campaign makes the need for the vaccines socially invisible. There are varying degrees of success, but not a lot of generalized and reliable ways to combat this kind of cognitive disconnect.
✨ Rabies ✨
The spectrum of human thought is astounding some times.
On the one hand you have people adamant that viruses don’t even exist against all rational thought, reason, the almost daily experience of their existence, and over a hundred years of scientific research around the world learning more about them in detail and cataloguing at least 15,000 distinct species.
While simultaneously you have people who know so much that they can manipulate viruses into becoming our own little machines to deliver working copies of genes straight into particular types of cells in someone’s body and treat their deadly genetic illness with gene therapy.
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He thought it was Big Science lying to everyone, obviously.
You joke, but I have an uncle who is basically on the liberal version of the COVID conspiracies who seems to be saying exactly this now. That big pharma is engineering everything from pandemics to allergies to psychosis to sell drugs. And that we should revert to monke to survive.
I wasn’t joking. That’s basically what this guy thought.
Good question, I would like to know as well. I wonder if he thinks that getting “sick” is something that bodies just do, no virus required. Or maybe that it’s because of the fluoride in the water. Idk, just spitballing here; my money is on demonic possession for sure.
I’ve assumed for some time that that Venn diagram was nearly a circle.
I always find it interesting that Americans are scared of raw foods. No raw milk, no carpaccio or tartare, raw pork is a no-no and raw seafood is an instant death. Really tells you that the food quality in the US is very low.
Raw pork literally has a risk of brain worms. It’s been in the news.
It is extremely rare in the UK https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13071-017-2280-8
You’re more likely to get poisoning from cooked rice. If cooked rice is ok, raw pork is more than ok.
You should also know one thing about food in the UK - if some infection is found in the food chain, Brits tend to obliterate the whole animal stock to stop it. A lot of diseases don’t exist in the UK because Brits annihilated whole animal populations. Like tick bourne encephalitis, for example. Or rabies. Or when whole chicken farms are burned to the ground when one bird gets avian flu. We take this shit real serious.
You know I used to think that would be great for all of these idiots to catch and die from whatever plagues they damn well like. But then I remembered that there are children in the world, And then also immuno-compromised people. Innocent people don’t deserve to be the victims of mass stupidity, especially children. If you’re stupid enough to do something terminal or life ruining, fine, just make sure that it doesn’t impact anyone else. Go destroy yourself in private.
It’s my hypothesis that a lot of stupid Trump voters exist because seatbelt laws prevented stupid people from killing their kids. Kids who inherited their parents stupidity and here we are today. Regarding stupid people killing their own kids thru their own stupidity, maybe we should take a Star Trek “no interference in primitive civilizations” stance.
Oh, I know that “no interference” idea from Arthur Clarke, in “Songs of Distant Earth”. This was shown in Star Trek ? I haven’t watched yet
In Star Trek, one of their most important rules is called the “Prime Directive” and it forbids them from interfering in the natural evolution of primitive cultures (where “primitive” means anyone who hasn’t figured out either warp drive or subspace communication). The movie “First Contact” is about humanity’s first warp flight and the subsequent visit from a passing Vulcan ship that starts the transition of Earth from post-apocalyptic wasteland with continued technological advancement to the Utopia it’s shown as in the main series.
It’s one of their few laws that gets explicitly referenced a lot. And broken a lot, though usually either by accident or because of special circumstances. They also have a similar rule in The Orville and IMO do a really good job of exploring it and the implications of both following and breaking it.
Btw for any Star Trek fans that have passed on The Orville thinking that it must be a silly parody since it’s by one of the makers of family guy, give it a shot. It’s a comedy, yes, but it fully respects what they are doing and doesn’t try to turn it into a big joke. I hold it just below any of the Star Trek series. The writing isn’t quite as good, though I’d put the storytelling on par.
Thanks !!
If we all have to endure another pandemic that will further worsen our overall health… we really do live in the dumbest timeline.
I think I may have long COVID or something… I got COVID in November, recovered, then caught a cold in January and have been sick since. I just want to be healthy. Why do the stupidest among us have to fuck everything up?
Good luck. Don’t catch covid again if you can help it. Repeated exposure makes it worse. Pretty sure that’s where I’m at. At least I’ve been up to date with vaccines or it could have been much worse, likely.
You might simply be allergic. It’s probably best to have it checked.
I’m extremely allergic to Covid and colds.
you know what i won’t miss? these people.
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Hey, it’s a chance for the US to shine! The “US virus” have a nice ring to it, no?
…no.
I case we do decide to miss them, they’d going to try to leave us pandemic to remember them by.
Probably how the raw milk sinkers think of themselves too. Super-powered, misunderstood, fighting an oppressive government, actually the hero.
The reality? Bit-character, backwater hicks.
Biden should tell everyone NOT to drink raw milk. Farmers will make tons of money and love him for it, and darwin will take over costing tRump votes. The end result will make for a better America.
At this point Biden could summon a genie to grant everyone in America three wishes and people would still blame him for not giving them six wishes.
It’s all milky fun and games with a side of creamy fat until someone gets a case of brucellosis.
I’m kinda ashamed of this, but I used to prefer the raw milk from a local dairy farm because it comes with all the fat and cream(you have to shake it before drinking) and it tasted soo freaking good. They vaccinate their cows and only have about 8 of them.
However, I will not be buying that anymore and go back to buying pasteurized all the time. The taste isn’t worth risking h5n1. I know it’s a pretty stupid thing to do since other illnesses can happen from raw milk, but I guess it’s better late than never to stop doing thatDude, you were taking a calculated risk before, and the calculations have changed. Good on you for adapting to this very real threat to our collective well-being.
Thanks for saying this, I hadn’t thought about it that way. I still feel foolish for taking any risk in the first place, but h5n1 is just messed up levels of scary.
Yeah you can totally get unhomogenized milk that is pasteurized. They sell one brand at my local grocery store. Look for some in your area.
Edit: they would refer to it as cream top most likely.
Thank you! I didn’t know that was available as a product and will keep my eye out for it. Probably just as good too
As Melisdrawing made clear, never feel bad about using new information to make a better decision.
Thank you, I still feel a kinda dumb, but a little less so now. I appreciate the quote and will be saving it for use in the future
Milk is gross. You are an adult human not a baby cow. What a great time to break a weird habit.
drinking milk is a weird habit? what? gross? what?
Did I stutter?
no but you made an outrageous comment that i quite dont understand
Milk is literally the mammary excretions of a random cud chewing ruminant. That’s fucking weird, and I don’t care what anyone else says.
As an adult human, would you drink human milk?
ive already had your mothers milk plenty of times, so yes i would drink human milk 😃
Can we just skip to producing a vaccine for this now? If they’re that intent on giving it every possible chance to jump to humans, and we obviously can’t stop them, let’s at least try to contain it before we get Pandemic 2: Electric Boogaloo.
We have made H5N1 avian flu vaccines many times before. We have one developed as recently as 2020 that’s been approved by the FDA for use in humans, not sure how great it is against the current incarnation though. Flu is quite good at evading vaccines, hence the need for frequent updates.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1_vaccine
The US government funds vaccine development for viruses that might become a problem at some point. There’s also work into expanding rna vaccine technology, which can allow for very quick updates as viruses change. We need way more work and funding on pandemic prep and surveillance. We’ve all seen how devestating a global pandemic can be. Even if the vast majority developed never end up needing use, one of them may save millions of lives.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccine-makers-are-preparing-for-bird-flu/
Anyways, if an H5N1 pandemic started tomorrow, there’s a vaccine that would probably be helpful already made. Would need to be scaled up massively in production of course though.
Shocked Pikachu in 3…2…1…
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Weird. My plantbased milk never made me sick.
And milk hasn’t made me sick. But clearly people get sick drinking milk, and people get sick drinking plant milk. Mold, botulism, Listeria, Salmonella…
What’s my point? That you don’t really have a point.
I’m going to play scientist here and not knee-jeek call these people names. Is there actually any evidence of viable viral transmission in raw cow’s milk? The expression and transmission of viruses in human breast milk is an extremely complex subject. Antibodies are often expressed in breast milk, and active viruses are only sometimes expressed, with highly variable infection rates among infants based on the type of virus. So my genuine question: What evidence is there supporting this warning not to drink raw milk for fear of H5N1 transmission?
Raw Milk/Cheese Concerns
**Are there concerns about HPAI and raw, unpasteurized milk? **
Based on the limited research and information available, we do not know at this time if HPAI A (H5N1) viruses can be transmitted through consumption of unpasteurized (raw) milk and products (such as cheese) made from raw milk from infected cows. However, we have long known that raw milk can harbor dangerous microorganisms (germs) that can pose serious health risks to consumers. According to the CDC, from 1998 through 2018, there were 202 outbreaks linked to drinking raw milk, resulting in 2,645 illnesses and 228 hospitalizations. These outbreaks have typically been caused by the presence of bacteria such as Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, Salmonella, or Listeria monocytogenes in the raw milk. For more information about how consumers can protect themselves from these risks see our website: Raw Milk.
Weren’t there cats showing signs of infection from drinking the milk like blindness and what not?
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Here’s one of the articles, also from ars
Over half the cats died
The possibility of bacterial growth in unpasteurized milk is without question, but this clearly states there is no known evidence that flu virus can be passed through raw milk. So why are there official warnings being issued about this? I want to be clear I don’t think drinking raw milk is a good idea, but I also want the public to trust our institutions, and putting out a warning based on zero evidence doesn’t foster trust
It’s not zero evidence, it’s just not 100% certain. There have had known H5N1 infections in other mammals consuming raw milk that spilled. Many of them have died from it. Additionally, the testing that has happened shows that 1 in 5 US dairy samples are positive for H5N1 so it’s prevelence is rather high making there be a very real risk
Zero evidence doesn’t mean it’s safe - zero evidence means we don’t know.
I’m sure it’s being looked into, but why would “go ahead, take a chance!” be the trustworthy take?
Well, they detected destroyed versions of the virus in pasteurized milk, so unless something else destroyed them before the pastuerization would have done so, there is a chance raw milk would have live virus in it. But it is certainly possible something else was responsible for destroying it before it got into the milk. I sure wouldn’t take the chance myself, it’s already a pretty bad idea to drink raw milk without this added.
