Interview

‘Once the fighting gets intense, it's almost impossible to do peacebuilding’

Monday marks one year since the Hamas-led series of attacks on Israel and the beginning of Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza, which has unfolded along with a rise in settler attacks in the occupied West Bank. The spiralling violence has spurred renewed calls for a two-state solution. FRANCE 24 spoke to John Marks, the founder of Search for Common Ground, an organisation that has worked on peacebuilding in the region for decades, to find out how future efforts might unfold.


Issued on: 07/10/2024 -

A Palestinian man walks near the Dome of the Rock in the Al-Aqsa compound, also known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City on September 17, 2024.

 © Ammar Awad, Reuters

By:Philippe THEISE

Search for Common Ground began working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 1991. It brought together former officials from Israel, Arab countries, Iran and Turkey for a series of meetings in Rome which led to discussions between Israeli and Jordanian ex-generals in the months before Israel and Jordan signed a 1994 peace agreement

Marks is the author of three books and a former State Department employee who left his post after the US invaded Cambodia in 1970.

FRANCE 24 spoke to John Marks about his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and elsewhere, and what he thinks it will take to make progress towards peace in the future.

FRANCE 24: What do you think successful peacebuilding efforts between Israel and the Palestinian Territories will look like in the future?

John Marks: Peacebuilding works much better before the violence starts. Once the fighting gets as intense as the kind of stuff that’s going on right now, it's almost impossible to do the kind of activities that I'm talking about.

FRANCE 24: One of the principles in your new book is to “make yesable propositions”. Several European countries have formally recognised a Palestinian state, and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said he wants to help bring about a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How do you see these third-party efforts on propositions that may not be “yesable” for the primary parties involved?

John Marks: My guess is official efforts from Europe at this point are probably not going to be so successful, and that the key to the outside third parties is the United States. And probably … the only way that the United States could have an influence now on Israel in a major way is to cut off weapons.

[That] would probably get the attention of the Israelis. They might be more inclined to … stop fighting in Gaza. Make peace in Lebanon. I don't know of anything else that would stop it right now.

FRANCE 24: Is there any peacebuilding work you see taking place in Israel and the Palestinian Territories that gives you hope?

John Marks: I don’t see any in the Israeli-Palestinian context. There's stuff going on, but it's overwhelmed by the armed violence. I felt my organisation made real progress in the [Democratic Republic of] Congo, in Burundi, in the Ivory Coast. But in Israel and Palestine, I don't see it.

FRANCE 24: What do you think makes Israel and the Palestinian Territories different than those places?

John Marks: I remember we had a film festival in Jerusalem where we showed a film that described the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And I remember afterwards an Israeli saying to me, who was there, “that was wonderful, but we don't have the spirit of forgiveness here. We don't have that. That's not part of the culture.” I think that's one of the big problems they have. In South Africa, there was the spirit of Ubuntu: I am because you are. My existence comes from your existence. That was the underlying context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and that I've never seen existing in the Middle East.

FRANCE 24: Could you describe the experiences you have had since founding Search for Common Ground in 1982 that most inform your perspective on what peacebuilding in Israel and the Palestinian Territories requires?

John Marks: I learned if you had good facilitation and you treated everybody as an equal, you kept the playing field level, that you could have conversations that went well beyond what seemed to be possible on the diplomatic level.

The sessions between Jordanian and Israeli [former] generals came out of those first meetings. We were able to bring those people together to face the problem, and the problem was how to have peace between their two countries, as opposed to how to react as enemies. And the formulations they came up with were sent almost immediately to the prime minister of Israel and the king of Jordan, and when the final treaty was negotiated, the work that our retired generals had done was at the base of it.

They got it about, the eventual [peace] treaty, 75% right. And what they were able to show was it was possible to have an agreement that was in the interest of both countries.

FRANCE 24: Did the participants in those meetings come from civil society, or were they government employees or elected officials?

John Marks: They were all civilians, but many of them were former officials. We had retired generals, we had retired ambassadors. My staff and myself had gone to the region and talked to high-level political leaders, I mean at the level of Arafat and the prime minister of Israel at the time, and we had asked them, “Who should we invite to these meetings?” If the results were interesting, [we wanted to know who] could report directly to them. We didn’t want officials because officials are bound by official positions. But we wanted people who, if we came up with any interesting ideas, could talk to the highest echelon in their country. And that was one way we got the right people in the room.

[A] human rights group had human rights activists from Israel and the Arab countries, and it was a little bit of everything. The overall project was called "The Initiative for Peace and Cooperation in the Middle East".

FRANCE 24: In “a letter from our founder” on Search for Common Ground’s website, you write that the organisation has “had our share of setbacks”, and that “we have worked for many years in the Middle East, and despite our best efforts, violence has soared”. Can you talk more about that?

John Marks: The overall vision of the organisation was peace in the Middle East. We never achieved that, in fact over the last 25 years that we’ve been working there it’s gotten worse. But we had projects that were successful. Like helping to get the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. We set up something called the Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance, which brought together medical authorities from Israel, Palestine and Jordan, and the motto was “Microbes don’t stop at checkpoints”. And we were able to encourage cooperation across borders on medical issues like swine flu. We were always looking for ways that the sides could agree, or issues on which they could agree.

In 2005, I personally wrote and produced a four-part documentary series on how to resolve the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict. It was shown on Israeli television, Palestinian television and Abu Dhabi television. We had both Hebrew and Arabic and an English version. It didn’t bring peace, which I suppose was my ultimate objective with it. But we showed how the problem could be solved. And in vivid form. And we did it as much as possible from the right-wing perspective … that was part of our strategy.


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FRANCE 24: Why is that the strategy you chose?

John Marks: Everybody knows that the left, the progressives, want to have peace. And the blockage tends to be more on the conservative side of the political spectrum. In every country. And so by moving as far to the right as we possibly could, and still getting something that was promoting peaceful solutions to the problem, we felt it was more likely that we would be heard and listened to.

One of the main people we interviewed was the former head of the settlers’ association in Israel. And he had mixed views but he was able to talk about what the conditions were for peace. And on the Palestinian side, we had a former political prisoner … and we felt he would have credibility in a way that a more moderate Palestinian wouldn’t. He was somebody who had been involved in armed violence against the Israeli politics and he served his time.

FRANCE 24: What do you think a win-win situation would look like for Israelis and Palestinians?

John Marks: A win-win would be a two-state solution.

 

Review shows bird flu control strategies ‘not working’

Gaps in data highlight potential for silent spread

The Pirbright Institute

 

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A chicken 

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Credit: The Pirbright Institute

A review of sustained mammal-to-mammal bird flu transmission in diverse species, led by The Pirbright Institute, shows global control strategies are not working.

Writing in Nature, researchers analysed whether outbreaks in European fur farms, South American marine mammals and United States dairy cattle raise questions about whether humans are next. Led by zoonotic influenza specialist Dr Thomas Peacock, the scientists evaluated how recent changes in the ecology and molecular evolution of H5N1 in wild and domestic birds increase opportunities for spillover to mammals.

They also weighed various evolutionary pathways that could turn the global H5N1 influenza panzootic into a human pandemic virus.

“Influenza A viruses (IAV) have caused more documented global pandemics in human history than any other pathogen. Historically, swine are considered optimal intermediary hosts that help avian influenza viruses adapt to mammals before jumping to humans,” said Dr Peacock, who investigates the drivers of the current H5N1 avian influenza panzootic. “However, the altered ecology of H5N1 has opened the door to new evolutionary pathways.”

The review highlights potential gaps in control mechanisms, including a reluctance to engage with modern vaccine and surveillance technologies and a dearth of data collection around the transmission of H5N1 between cows and to humans on US dairy farms.

Whilst previous generations of US cattle producers had eradicated foot-and-mouth disease by rapidly sharing epidemiological data, the authors say months of missing data is leaving researchers, veterinarians, and policy makers in the dark.

“H5N1 is a reportable disease in poultry, but not mammals, in the US. The US Department of Agriculture requires H5N1 testing only in lactating cattle prior to interstate movement,” said Dr Peacock.

Current practices for H5N1 testing in wildlife focus on carcasses, not monitoring animals whilst alive, the paper notes, providing opportunities for variants of H5N1 to spread silently undetected.

“What keeps scientists up at night is the possibility of unseen chains of transmission silently spreading through farm worker barracks, swine barns, or developing countries, evolving under the radar because testing criteria are narrow, government authorities are feared, or resources are thin.”

An evolutionary process of “genomic reassortment” in viruses with segmented genomes is driving the global panzootic outbreak. When two or more viruses co-infect a single host, they can swap entire segments during genome replication to create novel hybrids.

The reassortment between H5N8 and low pathogenicity avian influenza (LPAI) viruses that generated the panzootic H5N1 virus in the Americas is believed to have occurred in Europe or central Asia around 2020, infecting South American marine mammals and US dairy cattle.

The writers say the prospect of H5N1 becoming continually present in Europe and the Americas is a turning point for High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI).

“New control strategies are needed, including vaccination. Influenza vaccines are licensed for poultry that reduce disease burden, but do not prevent infection and have varying degrees of success.”

Stocks of H5 vaccine that are antigenically related to circulating viruses are available and could be produced at scale using mRNA platforms if H5N1 begins spreading in humans, the authors note.

“The severity of a future H5N1 pandemic remains unclear. Recent human infections with H5N1 have a substantially lower case fatality rate compared to prior H5N1 outbreak in Asia, where half of people with reported infections died. The lack of severity in US cases may be due to infection through the eye, rather than through viral pneumonia in the lung.”

Older people appear to have partial immunity to H5N1 due to childhood exposure, whereas younger people born since the 1968 H3N2 pandemic may be more susceptible to severe disease in a H5N1 pandemic.

Dr Peacock’s work is funded by UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) via the Pirbright Institute’s Strategic Programme Grants (ISPGs)  and the UK Medical Research Council / Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs FluTrailMap One Health consortium, and the BBSRC/DEFRA ‘FluTrailMap’ consortium.

Read the Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08054-z

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08054-z

 

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-024-08054-z 

Method of Research

Literature review

Article Title

The global H5N1 panzootic in mammals

Article Publication Date

24-Sep-2024

USDA efforts to solve the bird flu outbreak in cows are taking center stage in central Iowa

At first glance, it looks like an unassuming Iowa farm

ByMARY CONLON Associated Press 

MIKE STOBBE Associated Press

August 22, 2024, 




AMES, Iowa -- At first glance, it looks like an unassuming farm. Cows are scattered across fenced-in fields. A milking barn sits in the distance with a tractor parked alongside. But the people who work there are not farmers, and other buildings look more like what you’d find at a modern university than in a cow pasture.

Welcome to the National Animal Disease Center, a government research facility in Iowa where 43 scientists work with pigs, cows and other animals, pushing to solve the bird flu outbreak currently spreading through U.S. animals — and develop ways to stop it.

Particularly important is the testing of a cow vaccine designed to stop the continued spread of the virus — thereby, hopefully, reducing the risk that it will someday become a widespread disease in people.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture facility opened in 1961 in Ames, a college town about 45 minutes north of Des Moines. The center is located on a pastoral, 523-acre (212-hectare) site a couple of miles east of Ames' low-slung downtown.

It's a quiet place with a rich history. Through the years, researchers there developed vaccines against various diseases that endanger pigs and cattle, including hog cholera and brucellosis. And work there during the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009 — known at the time as “swine flu” — proved the virus was confined to the respiratory tract of pigs and that pork was safe to eat.

The center has the unusual resources and experience to do that kind of work, said Richard Webby, a prominent flu researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

“That’s not a capacity that many places in the U.S. have,” said Webby, who has been collaborating with the Ames facility on the cow vaccine work.

The campus has 93 buildings, including a high-containment laboratory building whose exterior is reminiscent of a modern megachurch but inside features a series of compartmentalized corridors and rooms, some containing infected animals. That’s where scientists work with more dangerous germs, including the H5N1 bird flu. There’s also a building with three floors of offices that houses animal disease researchers as well as a testing center that is a “for animals” version of the CDC labs in Atlanta that identify rare (and sometimes scary) new human infections.

About 660 people work at the campus — roughly a third of them assigned to the animal disease center, which has a $38 million annual budget. They were already busy with a wide range of projects but grew even busier this year after the H5N1 bird flu unexpectedly jumped into U.S. dairy cows.

“It's just amazing how people just dig down and make it work,” said Mark Ackermann, the center's director.


The virus was first identified in 1959 and grew into a widespread and highly lethal menace to migratory birds and domesticated poultry. Meanwhile, the virus evolved, and in the past few years has been detected in a growing number of animals ranging from dogs and cats to sea lions and polar bears.

Despite the spread in different animals, scientists were still surprised this year when infections were suddenly detected in cows — specifically, in the udders and milk of dairy cows. It’s not unusual for bacteria to cause udder infections, but a flu virus?

“Typically we think of influenza as being a respiratory disease,” said Kaitlyn Sarlo Davila, a researcher at the Ames facility.

Much of the research on the disease has been conducted at a USDA poultry research center in Athens, Georgia, but the appearance of the virus in cows pulled the Ames center into the mix.

Amy Baker, a researcher who has won awards for her research on flu in pigs, is now testing a vaccine for cows. Preliminary results are expected soon, she said.


USDA spokesperson Shilo Weir called the work promising but early in development. There is not yet an approved bird flu vaccine being used at U.S. poultry farms, and Weir said that while poultry vaccines are being pursued, any such strategy would be challenging and would not be guaranteed to eliminate the virus.

Baker and other researchers also have been working on studies in which they try to see how the virus spreads between cows. That work is going on in the high-containment building, where scientists and animal caretakers don specialized respirators and other protective equipment.

The research exposed four yearling heifers to a virus-carrying mist and then squirted the virus into the teats and udders of two lactating cows. The first four cows got infected but had few symptoms. The second two got sicker — suffering diminished appetite, a drop in milk production and producing thick, yellowish milk.

The conclusion that the virus mainly spread through exposure to milk containing high levels of the virus — which could then spread through shared milking equipment or other means — was consistent with what health investigators understood to be going on. But it was important to do the work because it has sometimes been difficult to get complete information from dairy farms, Webby said.

“At best we had some good hunches about how the virus was circulating, but we didn't really know,” he added.


USDA scientists are doing additional work, checking the blood of calves that drank raw milk for signs of infection.

A study conducted by the Iowa center and several universities concluded that the virus was likely circulating for months before it was officially reported in Texas in March.

The study also noted a new and very rare combination of genes in the bird flu virus that spilled over into the cows, and researchers are sorting out whether that enabled it to spread to cows, or among cows, said Tavis Anderson, who helped lead the work.

Either way, the researchers in Ames expect to be busy for years.

“Do they (cows) have their own unique influenzas? Can it go from a cow back into wild birds? Can it go from a cow into a human? Cow into a pig?” Anderson added. “Understanding those dynamics I think is the outstanding research question — or one of them.”

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Stobbe reported from New York.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

 

Sex and the flu

Pitt and Wisconsin researchers seek to understand how hormones impact influenza in men and women

Grant and Award Announcement

University of Pittsburgh

 

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Jason Shoemaker, associate professor of chemical engineering at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering

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Credit: Swanson School of Engineering

Turns out that there is a biological reason why women and men suffer viral infections like influenza differently – and a team of engineers, immunologists, and virologists at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Wisconsin, Madison are extending their research to better understand why and how to design better, possible sex-specific treatments.

Jason Shoemaker, associate professor of chemical engineering at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, is fascinated by how sex differences affect human immune responses to respiratory infections, like the flu and COVID. His third project in this realm, “Predictive Modeling of Estradiol Effects and Sex Differences on Immunopathology During Influenza Infection,” recently received a nearly $3.8 million R01 award from the National Institutes of Health and its Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop mathematical models that identify these differences, and precision medicine-based therapeutics that improve treatment.

“While there are a lot of anecdotal stories about how men and women respond to respiratory diseases, the research shows that women are more likely to have a more serious response to some viruses,”1,2,3 Shoemaker explains. “However, we’re not sure how hormones impact the immune system. Specifically for flu, there is strong evidence that women 18-40/45 years old are more likely to experience severe infection, even though demographically they tend to be the healthiest.”4

Shoemaker, who directs the Immunosystems Lab at Pitt, has previously modeled respiratory infections to better understand how the immune system reacts—or overreacts—to a virus, including modeling age- and sex-specific immune responses. Most recently his group studied how estradiol, a female sex hormone, could impact immune response.

“Animal studies have shown that hormones potentially affect the outcome of infection, specifically in the lungs,” he notes. “In part two of this project, we’ll examine human respiratory cells and lung macrophages from male and female donors that are exposed to estradiol and then infected with influenza virus. Mathematical models will enable us to integrate the data.”

Through this computational modeling, Shoemaker’s group hopes to identify the molecules or pathways that are affecting the cells and begin to identify potential treatments that are personalized to a person’s sex or hormone levels.

“Typical treatments for respiratory infections are homogenous, but if hormones and chromosomes indeed create a different immune response between men and women, then we need to develop more targeted therapies,” Shoemaker says. “The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic gave us tremendous amounts of data to better understand the immune system, and advances in computational modeling reduce trial and error in developing more effective treatments.”

Shoemaker's Pitt and Wisconsin co-investigators include:

• John Alcorn, University of Pittsburgh, Dept of Immunology & Dept of Pediatrics
• William Hawse, University of Pittsburgh, Dept of Immunology
• Amie Eisfeld, Department of Pathobiological Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
• Yoshihiro Kawaoka, Department of Pathobiological Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

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1 Sex Differences in Influenza: The Challenge Study Experience. Giurgea LT, Cervantes-Medina A, Walters K, Scherler K, Han A, Czaikowski LM, Baus HA, Hunsberger S, Klein SL, Kash JC, Taubenberger JK, Memoli MJ. J Infect Dis. 2021 Aug 23;jiab422. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiab422.

2 Mechanisms of sex disparities in influenza pathogenesis. Klein SL, Hodgson A, Robinson DP. J Leukoc Biol. 2012 Jul;92(1):67-73. doi: 10.1189/jlb.0811427. Epub 2011 Nov 30. PMID: 22131346; PMCID: PMC4046247.

3 Klein S. L., Pekosz A., Passaretti C., Anker M., Olukoya P. (2010) Sex, Gender and Influenza. World Health Organization, Geneva, 1–58.

4 Eshima N, Tokumaru O, Hara S, Bacal K, Korematsu S, Tabata M, Karukaya S, Yasui Y, Okabe N, Matsuishi T. Sex- and age-related differences in morbidity rates of 2009 pandemic influenza A H1N1 virus of swine origin in Japan. PLoS One. 2011 Apr 29;6(4):e19409. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019409. PMID: 21559366; PMCID: PMC3084848.

 AMERIKA

Experts consider H5N1 avian flu unknowns as state fairs loom

Stephanie Soucheray, MA

 

 

July 29, 2024

 

Avian Influenza (Bird Flu)

In the next 6 to 10 weeks, hundreds of state and country fairs will take place across the United States, and thousands of Americans will attend agricultural shows, walk through barns, watch dairy cattle be milked, and even observe an animal giving birth.

But veterinarians, public health researchers, and scientists are unclear to what extent—if any—the recent explosion in cases of H5N1 avian influenza in dairy cattle will affect animals on exhibition or pose a threat to human health. H5N1 is deadly to poultry, but causes mild to moderate symptoms in the bovine population. So far, humans who have been infected with H5N1 via contact with infected cows have also exhibited mild illness, but case numbers in humans remain low. 

For decades, Andrew Bowman, DVM, PhD, from the Ohio State University, the swine-human interface has been at top of mind at county, regional, and state fairs in the United States. 

“What we do at fairs kind of violates every tenet of biosecurity that we preach, and we do it on public display, and we charge the public,” Bowman told CIDRAP News. “As great as fairs are for agricultural education, they create situations with multiple species from different farms housed in one spot.”

Bowman likens state and county fairs to the Southeastern Asian live-animal markets, so often seen as epicenters for zoonotic spillover events. 

We act like that sort of thing doesn’t happen in the US.

“We act like that sort of thing doesn’t happen in the US,” said Bowman. “But it does happen on a different scale, and every county across the Midwest does the same thing.”

Focus on dairy cows is new

Bowman said that while every year poses variant flu risks linked to swine, something the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monitors, this year will be challenging because H5N1 has now been implicated in 172 outbreaks in 13 states, with more than a dozen human cases in agricultural workers. All human cases have been mild, with case-patients recovering fully. 

“Are we giving the opportunity for H5 to reassort with endemic swine virus?” he asked. “We know we have fairly regular incursions of influenza in pigs and maybe it becomes a pig-adapted virus.”

Moreover, the transmission dynamics of H5N1 in cattle are still not clear. 

“We don’t totally understand transmission at this point, and don’t have great control measures,” said Bowman. It's clear to most scientists that milk and milking equipment plays a role in the current transmission dynamics, but respiratory spread between cows could also be happening, said Bowman.

Jim Lowe, DVM, the state fair veterinarian for Illinois and an associate professor at the University of Urbana-Champaign, will be watching for transmission dynamics when the Illinois state fair starts on August 5. 

Per protocols from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), all show cattle traveling interstate will be subjected to H5N1 testing 7 days before the fair starts.

Lowe said they will be following that protocol but mostly watching the animals.

“I don’t know what to think about it,” said Lowe. “We’re going to pay attention and that’s a big change for us, normally you don’t do much for the dairy cows.”

Milking parlors, stages, pose biggest risk 

Each state fair and fairgrounds has its own challenges, Lowe explained. In Illinois, beef and dairy cattle are shown days apart, and the layout of the barns has dairy cattle fairly separate from other species. But milking banks and stages, where multiple cows use the same milking equipment, are common in fairs. If transmission happens, it’s likely going to be there.

Last week, the University of Minnesota Extension service released guidance on cow exhibits, which recommends that people keep lactating cows away from public events such as fairs. Because raw milk is known to have the highest concentration of H5N1 virus, the Extension program is recommending that lactating cows not attend fairs. 

“Milking is often done in a shared parlor and may involve shared equipment, which is an efficient way to spread H5 influenza. Although closing the parlor seems like a logical control step, that strategy will simply spread the virus source since the lactating cow must still be milked, which is now likely to be done in the cow’s stall, and the milk must still be stored and marketed or discarded,” the Extension said. 

The Minnesota State Fair has already announced that its late-August event will exclude cows and calves from the popular Miracle of Birth Center, where visitors watch animals being born, and will limit lactating cows based on the recommendations from the Extension program. 

For now, Lowe is tentatively hopeful the late-summer timing of fairs will benefit from the current outbreak. He said most of the animals shown at major state fairs are likely a previously exposed population, as they have been shown at agricultural events since March.

Mike Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), which publishes CIDRAP News, said the H5 outbreaks in dairy cattle are part of a bigger trend in flu dynamics. 

“We are really in a period of human animal interface with influenza unlike any I’ve ever known in my career,” Osterholm said. "Since 1997 avian flu has thrown us curveball after curveball.”

Osterholm said if different fairs have different rules, it’s not out of incompetence. “It’s because people just don’t know what to do.”

Bird flu virus on cow milking equipment poses infection risk

By Ernie Mundell, HealthDay News

The H5N1 avian flu virus remains infectious on cow milking equipment for at least an hour, according to a new study. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

The spread of H5N1 avian flu to dairy cows has health experts and many Americans on edge, and now a new study finds the virus stays viable on milking equipment for at least an hour.

"Dairy cows have to be milked even if they are sick, and it has not been clear for how long the virus contained in residual milk from the milking process remains stable on the equipment," said study lead author Valerie Le Sage. "It is concerning that the virus in unpasteurized milk can remain stable for hours and potentially infect farm workers or spread from animal to animal."

Le Sage is a research assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh.

She and her team believe the findings underscore the need for dairy workers to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) at work, to cut down on their odds for infection.

So far, there have been three known cases of human H5N1 infection linked to the current outbreak in dairy cows. All three cases occurred among dairy workers with long and close exposures to infected animals.

The illnesses were mild, but the fear among scientists is that H5N1 will mutate in a human to become easily transmitted between people, raising the specter of a new pandemic.

H5N1 originated in birds but has now spread to many species of mammals, including seals, dolphins and cows. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is watching the situation closely, but says that, for now at least, the risk to people remains low.

In the study, Le Sage's team created a lab environment that mirrored the humidity and temperature of outdoor milking parlors in Texas.

They report that H5N1 virus particles "suspended in milk remained stable on metal and rubber for over one hour," according to a university news release.

They also tested out particles of H1N1 "swine flu," and found those particles remained viable for three hours on rubber and for at least one hour on stainless steel.

The findings were reported in the August issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

"Our data supports that milking equipment surfaces can stay contaminated for a long time, increasing the potential spread from a sick animal to a person," Le Sage said. "These findings underscore the importance of face shields, masks and eye protection, and enhanced sanitization of equipment between cows, to reduce the risk to workers and to minimize the spread between the animals."

More information

Find out more about bird flu at the CDC.

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

 

Bird flu stays stable on milking equipment for at least one hour

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

Bird flu, or H5N1 virus, in unpasteurized milk is stable on metal and rubber components of commercial milking equipment for at least one hour, increasing its potential to infect people and other animals, report researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Emory University in Emerging Infectious Diseases. 

The study underscores the heightened risk of bird flu exposure for dairy farm workers and signals the need for wider adoption of personal protective equipment, including face shields, masks and eye protection.

“Dairy cows have to be milked even if they are sick, and it has not been clear for how long the virus contained in residual milk from the milking process remains stable on the equipment,” said lead author Valerie Le Sage, Ph.D., research assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the Center for Vaccine Research at Pitt. “It is concerning that the virus in unpasteurized milk can remain stable for hours and potentially infect farm workers or spread from animal to animal.”

Clinical symptoms of bird flu can range from mild fever and cough to shortness of breath and pneumonia and can be lethal. Since March 2024, when the bird flu virus was first detected in dairy cattle in the U.S., the virus has spread across state lines and infected at least 3 people. While, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the current risk to the general public remains low, flu viruses can quickly adapt to spreading from person to person.

To understand the potential for spread from cattle to dairy farm workers, researchers looked at the stability of infectious flu virus particles in unpasteurized milk droplets on metal and rubber components of commercial milking equipment.

In a lab environment that mimicked the humidity and temperature of outdoor milking parlors in Texas, H5N1 virus particles suspended in milk remained stable on metal and rubber for over one hour. Particles of H1N1 virus, or swine flu, which behaves similarly to H5N1 in the lab, stayed infectious for at least 3 hours on rubber and for at least 1 hour on stainless steel.

“Our data supports that milking equipment surfaces can stay contaminated for a long time, increasing the potential spread from a sick animal to a person,” said Le Sage. “These findings underscore the importance of face shields, masks and eye protection, and enhanced sanitization of equipment between cows to reduce the risk to workers and to minimize the spread between the animals.”

Other authors of this research are Douglas Reed, Ph.D., and Paul Duprex, Ph.D., both of Pitt; and A.J. Campbell, Ph.D., and Seema Lakdawala, Ph.D., both of Emory University.

This research was supported in part by the Department of Health and Human Services (Contract No. 75N93021C00015) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases supporting the operations of Pitt’s Regional Biocontainment Laboratory within the Center for Vaccine Research (UC7AI180311).

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JOURNAL

Emerging Infectious Diseases

DOI

10.3201/eid3008.240775 

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

27-Jun-2024

Simple paper-strip test might spot flu, identify strain

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News

A simple and inexpensive paper strip test could help diagnose a case of the flu, and even identify the influenza strain that caused it, a new study finds. 

Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

A simple and inexpensive paper strip test could help diagnose a case of the flu, and even identify the influenza strain that caused it, a new study finds.

The test can distinguish between influenza A and B -- the two main types of seasonal flu -- as well as identifying more virulent strains like H1N1 and H3N2, according to results published in the July issue of the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.

The goal is to create a fast, accurate and cheap test that can improve outbreak response and infection care around the world, researchers said.

"Ultimately, we hope these tests will be as simple as rapid antigen tests" used to test for COVID, said co-senior researcher Cameron Myhrvold, an assistant professor at Princeton University in New Jersey.

The test uses genetically engineered enzymes to identify specific sequences of viral RNA in samples, researchers said.

The technology was first used to test for the COVID coronavirus, and later to distinguish between the Delta and Omicron variants, researchers said.

In 2022, the team began adapting the test to detect the influenza virus, with the aim of creating a screening tool that could be used in the field or in clinics rather than hospitals or high-tech diagnostic labs.

"Using a paper strip readout instead of expensive fluorescence machinery is a big advancement, not only in terms of clinical care but also for epidemiological surveillance purposes," said co-lead researcher Ben Zhang, a medical student at Harvard Medical School.

The test can be conducted at room temperature in about 90 minutes, but researchers hope to have it eventually produce results in as little as 15 minutes.

The test also can distinguish between different flu strains. This could help doctors identify strains that resist antiviral treatments like the drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu).

"Being able to tease apart what strain or subtype of influenza is infecting a patient has repercussions both for treating them and public health interventions," co-lead study author Jon Arizti-Sanz, a postdoctoral researcher at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, said in a institute news release.

The researchers now are working to adapt the test so it can track avian and swine flu strains that are threatening to cross over into humans, Arizti-Sanz said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about influenza.

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Fauci In New Book: Trump Screamed At Me, Told Me He Loved Me

BIPOLAR SOCIOPATHIC NARCCISITIC LIAR

Lydia O'Connor
Fri, June 14, 2024 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who advised the federal government on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, detailed his whiplash-inducing relationship with Donald Trump in his new memoir.

Excerpts from the book, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” were shared Thursday by several media outlets the week before its scheduled release.

The book’s chapter about Trump, titled, “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” recounts the doctor’s time working as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ― a position he held for nearly 40 years before retiring in 2022. About 70 of the book’s 450 pages are focused on Trump, the New York Times reported.

Much of their relationship, Fauci wrote, involved Trump alternately praising him then excoriating him for things he’d said about the COVID-19 pandemic. In one June 2020 phone call from Trump, the former president unleashed his fury on him for saying the virus’ vaccine was unlikely to provide lifetime protection and would probably require boosters, according to book excerpts obtained by the Daily Beast.

Dr. Anthony Fauci appears beside Donald Trump at a 2020 press briefing on COVID-19. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI via Getty Images

“The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him. He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse,” Fauci reportedly wrote, noting that the then-president’s comments to him were often laden with expletives.

“I have a pretty thick skin, but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun,” he recalled, according to excerpts quoted by the Times.

In his last conversation with Trump shortly before the 2020 election, Fauci reportedly wrote, Trump insisted he’d beat now-President Joe Biden and used some some colorful language to describe the Democrat.

“I am going to win this election by a fucking landslide,” Trump said, according to Fauci’s book. “Just wait and see. I always did things my way. And I always win, no matter what all these other fucking people think. And that fucker Biden. He is so fucking stupid. I am going to kick his fucking ass in this election.”

The longtime scientist went on to serve as Biden’s chief medical adviser until his retirement.

Fauci also said Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, was abnormally deferential to Trump.

“Vice presidents are almost always publicly loyal to the president. That is part of the job. But in my opinion, Vice President Pence sometimes overdid it,” he wrote, per the Times. “During task force meetings, he often said some version of, ‘There are a lot of smart people around here, but we all know that the smartest person is upstairs.’”

Fauci recently appeared before the House COVID-19 committee, whose Republican members have repeatedly suggested he masterminded a cover-up of the virus’s origins. Those claims, Fauci told the lawmakers, are “absolutely false and simply preposterous.”

His book is out on June 18.
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Fauci recounts expletive-laden lecture he got from Trump when stock market didn’t increase enough on vaccine news

Katie Hawkinson
Fri, June 14, 2024 


Anthony Fauci (left) and Donald Trump (right) speak. Fauci writes in a new book that Trump went on an expletive-filled rant directed at him during the pandemic (AFP)


President Donald Trump unleashed an expletive-filled rant about the stock market not increasing enough when the first Covid-19 vaccine trials were successful, Dr Anthony Fauci has recounted.

Fauci, one of the nation’s top infectious disease experts who helped lead the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic until through 2022, is publishing On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service next week. His chapter on working with Trump during the pandemic is aptly titled, “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” according to The New York Times’ review of the book.

Fauci wrote the former president directed expletive-filled rants towards him when the stock market didn’t well enough to the Covid-19 vaccine: “The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him.”

“He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse,” he continued. “He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars.’”

Fauci noted Trump added an expletive to his rant.

Anthony Fauci (left) and Donald Trump (right) speak. Fauci writes in a new book that Trump went on an expletive-filled rant directed at him during the pandemic (AFP)

“I have a pretty thick skin but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun,” Fauci wrote, per the Times.

The physician also criticized Mike Pence’s support of Trump during the pandemic, according to the Times.

“Vice presidents are almost always publicly loyal to the president,” Fauci wrote. “That is part of the job. But in my opinion, Vice President Pence sometimes overdid it. During task force meetings, he often said some version of, ‘There are a lot of smart people around here, but we all know that the smartest person is upstairs.’”

Fauci notes other odd details about the former president, the Times reports, including that Trump once said he had never received a flu shot.

“When I asked [Trump] why, he answered, ‘Well, I’ve never gotten the flu. Why did I need a flu shot?’ I did not respond,” Fauci wrote.

Recently, Fauci was in the national spotlight again as he testified before a Republican-led Congressional committee about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the public portion of the hearing, right-wing Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene inexplicably accused the top infectious disease expert of practicing “evil science,” calling for Fauci’s license to be revoked.


Fauci wrote in upcoming memoir that Trump yelled expletives at him in a phone call in 2020

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
Sat, June 15, 2024 

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WASHINGTON —Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote in his upcoming memoir that former President Donald Trump went into an expletive-filled rant with him during a phone call in 2020 but at the same time said he loved him, the New York Times reported.

The phone call came during the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump, then the president, would downplay the effects of COVID-19 and repeatedly attacked Fauci for the guidelines he set forth to the public in navigating the virus.

In his memoir, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” Fauci wrote that during the call Trump “was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him” and dropped F-bombs, according to the New York Times and the Daily Beast.

“He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse,” Fauci wrote. “He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars.’”

He added that, “I have a pretty thick skin, but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun.”

Republicans in Congress have floated a number of conspiracy theories involving Fauci related to the COVID-19 pandemic. During a House hearing earlier this month, Fauci defended himself against those allegations.

“Whenever somebody gets up, whether it's a news media – you know Fox News does it a lot – or it's somebody in the Congress who gets up and makes a public statement that I'm responsible for the deaths of X number of people because of policies or some crazy idea that I created the virus, immediately it's like clockwork – the death threats go way up," he said.

His memoir is expected to be released this month.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fauci said Trump dropped F-bombs at him in phone call during pandemic


Fauci Speaks His Mind on Trump’s Rages and Their ‘Complicated’ Relationship

Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Sat, June 15, 2024 at 8:03 a.m. MDT·5 min read

Dr. Anthony Fauci, at his home in Washington, Sept. 9, 2021. (Jason Andrew/The New York Times)


WASHINGTON — Three months into the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci was at home in northwest Washington when he answered his cellphone to President Donald Trump screaming at him in an expletive-laden rant. He had incurred the president’s wrath by remarking that the vaccines under development might not provide long-lasting immunity.

That was the day, June 3, 2020, “that I first experienced the brunt of the president’s rage,” Fauci writes in his forthcoming autobiography.

Fauci has long been circumspect in describing his feelings toward Trump. But in the book, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” he writes with candor about their relationship, which he describes as “complicated.”

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In a chapter titled “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” Fauci described how Trump repeatedly told him he “loved” him while at the same time excoriating him with tirades flecked with four-letter words.

“The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him,” Fauci wrote. “He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars.’” (The president added an expletive.)

“I have a pretty thick skin,” Fauci added, “but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun.”

The book, which will be released Tuesday, traces the arc of Fauci’s life, from his boyhood in Brooklyn as a son of first-generation Italian Americans (his father was a pharmacist, and the family lived above the “Fauci Pharmacy”) through his 54-year career at the National Institutes of Health, 38 of them as the director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

It is 450 pages long, and Fauci devotes about 70 of them to the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, when Trump was in office. His criticisms of Trump and his White House are at times blunt and at other times oblique, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions.

Fauci served under seven presidents, shepherding the nation through infectious disease threats including AIDS, swine flu, anthrax and Ebola. But the coronavirus pandemic turned him into a polarizing public figure and a target of Republicans, particularly Trump’s most ardent supporters.

During a tense hearing this month before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Fauci forcefully denied Republican allegations that he had helped fund research that started the pandemic or had covered up the possibility that it originated in a laboratory. He called the accusations “absolutely false and simply preposterous.”

In Fauci’s telling, the Trump White House was different from any other he had experienced, not least because of its passing relationship with the truth. Trump, he wrote, “shocked me on Day 1 of his presidency, with his disregard of facts such as the size of the crowd at his inauguration” and his “aggressive disrespect for the press.”

Those differences extended to the relationship between Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, the chair of the White House coronavirus response task force.

“Vice presidents,” Fauci wrote, “are almost always publicly loyal to the president. That is part of the job. But in my opinion, Vice President Pence sometimes overdid it. During task force meetings, he often said some version of, ‘There are a lot of smart people around here, but we all know that the smartest person is upstairs.’”

Then, without explicitly saying Pence was referring to Trump, Fauci wrote, “He was of course talking about the man sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.”

Fauci also makes clear he had little use for some of Trump’s advisers: his chief of staff, Mark Meadows; his chief economic adviser, Peter Navarro; and his medical adviser, Scott Atlas. He said Trump’s aides were feeding negative stories about him to journalists in 2020.

“The growing White House hostility toward me over the spring and summer seemed to trigger at least in part the overt attacks on me by right-wing media and trolls using social media platforms,” Fauci wrote. That August, he opened a letter containing a “fine white powder” and “instantly feared anthrax or worse.” Hazmat teams were called into his office at the National Institutes of Health; a few days later, the FBI confirmed the powder was harmless.

Fauci’s first encounter with Trump was before the coronavirus pandemic, at a White House ceremony where the president signed an executive order that called for improvements in the manufacturing and distribution of flu vaccines. After the event, Trump remarked to Fauci that he had never had a flu shot.

“When I asked him why, he answered, ‘Well, I’ve never gotten the flu. Why did I need a flu shot?’ I did not respond,” Fauci wrote. The implication was clear: The doctor was flabbergasted to discover that Trump knew so little about the purpose of vaccines.

On the morning of Jan. 29, 2020, Fauci wrote, conservative political commentator Lou Dobbs, whom the doctor had known for years, called to say Trump wanted to meet him. Several hours later, Fauci found himself in the White House Situation Room, briefing the president and his top advisers on a new virus that was circulating in China. It was instantly clear to Fauci, the scientist from Brooklyn, that he and Trump, the president from Queens, could relate to each other in the way that only New Yorkers can.

“He had a New York swagger that I instantly recognized — a self-confident, backslapping charisma that reminded me of my days in New York,” Fauci wrote.

But that is where the kinship ended. Fauci wrote that when Trump embraced hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, as a COVID-19 treatment on the basis of anecdotal evidence, he realized that “sooner or later I would have to refute him publicly.”

He painted the president as consumed with television ratings and the economy; after one coronavirus briefing in March 2020, Trump summoned Fauci into the Oval Office and called Fox News personality Sean Hannity. Fauci recalled the moment: “‘Hey, Sean,’ he said on speakerphone. ‘You should see the ratings we have!’”

c.2024 The New York Times Company

Greene alleges Fauci committed ‘crimes against humanity’ with COVID response

(PROJECTION)

Yash Roy
Sat, June 15, 2024 







Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), speaking at a Turning Point Action conference on Saturday, vowed to have former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci sent to prison over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Dr. Anthony Fauci should be tried for crimes against humanity,” Greene said at the conference, in comments highlighted by Mediaite, leading to the crowd chanting, “lock him up.”

She responded, “Well I can assure that if I have anything to do with it, I will lock him up. He belongs in prison.”

Green also attacked President Biden and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during her speech.

“I’ll never forget when the Biden administration and Nancy Pelosi, as speaker of the House, brought in nearly 30,000 National Guardsmen and turned our Capitol complex into a military base,” she told the audience. “They masked schoolchildren. They shut down schools. They closed beaches. They silenced your speech.”

Biden was not president at the time. The Trump administration, at the request of Congressional leaders, including Republican leaders Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), deployed the National Guard to secure the Capitol after supporters of Trump led an insurrection in the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden as president.

Greene has been accused of helping some of those insurrectionists by providing them with tours before January 6, 2021.

After taking over on January 20, 2021, Biden’s administration instituted a mask mandate on public transportation but did not impose a federal mask mandate.

Fauci has been a frequent target for conservatives who claim his advocacy for masking and social distance restricted freedoms and was ineffective, and have accused him of covering up the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic called Fauci to testify at a heated hearing earlier this month, where Republicans accused Fauci of attempting to skirt federal Freedom of Information Act requests by using a private email server. Fauci denied the accusation.

At the hearing, Greene marked the most contentious moment of the hearing, with Democrats quickly calling for points of order after she refused to recognize Fauci as a doctor.

“Mr. Fauci, because you’re not doctor, you’re Mr. Fauci in my few minutes,” Greene said. “That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked, and he belongs in jail,” Greene responded.

Fauci is set to release a book on June 18, and according to excerpts obtained by the New York Times, Fauci detailed his experience with Trump and his career. According to the Times, Fauci has a book entitled “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” in which he describes how Trump would alternate between telling him that he “loved” Fauci and then later screaming expletives at him.

The Hill.