Regulatory animal health officials have minimized risks for aerosol spread of influenza- it's time for complete candor and acknowledgement of the implications
Let me step in here - H5 and H1 are BOTH likely transmittable via air droplets. There are a host of factors determining risks for transmission:
1) dose; 2) temperature; 3) humidity; 4) distance; 5) time; 6) viral genotype. We can't generalize based just on the H or N types alone.
In the research article I cited, the source flock shed huge amounts of viable virus into the air and the infected recipient flocks were housed in buildings where the ventilations systems "concentrated" incoming air towards large numbers of susceptible birds.
In humans, this might be compared to crowding 25 day care kids into a poorly ventilated room with a newly incubating infected child. 2 days later, 10 of them are incubating influenza. Now we can debate whether it was aerosol or contact - there are likely studies to point each way.
I remember, in the case of COVID, a nice paper out of China showed pretty conclusively that the virus was transferred in air shafts between floors of a quarantined hotel.
This whole debate soon degenerates into the masking debate, which I want to avoid, but I'm an aerosol proponent as one route, from what I've seen in population epidemiology in pigs and poultry influenza and PRRS.
https://youtu.be/by0CvrQgosE
I really enjoy these posts, John. Thanks for sharing.
This data is about H5N1
Let me step in here - H5 and H1 are BOTH likely transmittable via air droplets. There are a host of factors determining risks for transmission:
1) dose; 2) temperature; 3) humidity; 4) distance; 5) time; 6) viral genotype. We can't generalize based just on the H or N types alone.
In the research article I cited, the source flock shed huge amounts of viable virus into the air and the infected recipient flocks were housed in buildings where the ventilations systems "concentrated" incoming air towards large numbers of susceptible birds.
In humans, this might be compared to crowding 25 day care kids into a poorly ventilated room with a newly incubating infected child. 2 days later, 10 of them are incubating influenza. Now we can debate whether it was aerosol or contact - there are likely studies to point each way.
I remember, in the case of COVID, a nice paper out of China showed pretty conclusively that the virus was transferred in air shafts between floors of a quarantined hotel.
This whole debate soon degenerates into the masking debate, which I want to avoid, but I'm an aerosol proponent as one route, from what I've seen in population epidemiology in pigs and poultry influenza and PRRS.
It has been detected in the air in Antarctica. Here’s a recently published article, it’s quite alarming:
https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-02-14/worst-avian-flu-crisis-ever-recorded-spreads-across-antarctica.html
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/virus-transmission/avian-in-humans.html#:~:text=This%20can%20happen%20when%20virus,birds%2C%20poultry%20and%20other%20animals.