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Can We Be Ready #3

JYLLINGE, DENMARK - NOVEMBER 14: Culled minks ready to be skinned seen on Knud Vest mink farm on November 14, 2020 in Jyllinge, Denmark. After a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans was discovered, the Danis... JYLLINGE, DENMARK - NOVEMBER 14: Culled minks ready to be skinned seen on Knud Vest mink farm on November 14, 2020 in Jyllinge, Denmark. After a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans was discovered, the Danish government's order to mass cull all 17 million mink in the country, including non-infected minks and minks outside the 7.8 KM zone from an infected farm. Tuesday this week Minister of Food, Mogens Jensen, admitted that the general mass culling order issued by the Prime Minister at a press conference Wednesday, October 4, was unlawful and he said that his Food Boards email was a mistake. Knud Vest, who owns this farm with 23.000 minks, says that he is shocked that the Government issued such an order to kill an entire industry without having the legal framework in place. Like the mink farmer in general he expects a compensation from the state based on expropriation, because the basis for the industry is gone.. (Photo by Ole Jensen/Getty Images) MORE LESS

February 9, 2023 1:52 p.m.

I’ve continued to read up on research into pandemic risks from strains of Avian Flu. I shared TC‘s note in which he argues that the barriers to bird-bound avian flu migrating to contagion among humans are greater than some press reports suggest. But those chances are not nil and they may be growing.

I had two follow up points I wanted to share.

The first is minks. Minks are a problem. A lot of the recent reporting has focused on a avian flu outbreak at a mink farm in Spain. The study behind those reports is published here. It’s somewhat technical but you can still glean a lot from it even if you don’t have any technical background in the relevant science. The group that studied the outbreak concluded that it was likely that the outbreak involved the virus spreading among the minks. So they were contagious to each other. It spread within the population. That’s obviously not good.

They’re not sure though.

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