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The medical term is actually feces, but I have noticed over the past few years that in articles and in interviews, medical researchers have decided to just go with the flow and call it poop.
The most recent CDC guidance about H5N1 (released on Monday)
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-11012024.html
has a lot of background material you can scroll through before it gets to the recommended ways to avoid catching it, but once you get there, this is the second paragraph:
>>People should also avoid exposures to animal poop, bedding (litter), unpasteurized ("raw") milk, or materials that have been touched by, or close to, birds or other animals with suspected or confirmed avian influenza A(H5N1) virus, if possible.<<
They then go on to have a whole paragraph specifically about raw milk, as just a passing mention might not be enough.
Three of my grandparents grew up on farms. Some of my mother's maternal side relatives still were dairy farming until the 1990s, and AFAIK, one of the original farmhouses is still in the family (as opposed to a whole road full of them, built around a pond and the barns and fields, which have been turned into a swank development). I had raw milk a couple of times as a child, from those cows, from the fridge of the cousins.
They were confident about their own sanitary practices, and so were my parents. The milk we drank at home was pasteurized and packaged at a local dairy company, then delivered by trucks to a metal box outside the house.
I know people around here (not Boomer-era NC) who get milk delivered in the current times. When I tried to sign up in 2020, they were entirely booked up, so I haven't had that experience as an adult.
I guess the assumption about dairy cows then was that they all ate outdoors. In the spring and early summer, the milk tasted a bit like the spring onions that grew wild in the grassy fields they grazed on.
The CDC is currently only recommending PPE for people who work with animals, but airborne transmission is a thing. I'm still masking. I was interested to see in the bank yesterday that 3/6 of the customers were wearing N95s. That's a pretty high percentage, probably a coincidence, surely unrelated to avian flu. I don't think any of us left our houses expecting to get H5N1 in the bank. I am scared whenever I see dead birds on the ground, but that is more a worry about West Nile around here.
One assumes the CDC will be gone entirely by this time next year, along with all other government health programs.
The most recent CDC guidance about H5N1 (released on Monday)
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-11012024.html
has a lot of background material you can scroll through before it gets to the recommended ways to avoid catching it, but once you get there, this is the second paragraph:
>>People should also avoid exposures to animal poop, bedding (litter), unpasteurized ("raw") milk, or materials that have been touched by, or close to, birds or other animals with suspected or confirmed avian influenza A(H5N1) virus, if possible.<<
They then go on to have a whole paragraph specifically about raw milk, as just a passing mention might not be enough.
Three of my grandparents grew up on farms. Some of my mother's maternal side relatives still were dairy farming until the 1990s, and AFAIK, one of the original farmhouses is still in the family (as opposed to a whole road full of them, built around a pond and the barns and fields, which have been turned into a swank development). I had raw milk a couple of times as a child, from those cows, from the fridge of the cousins.
They were confident about their own sanitary practices, and so were my parents. The milk we drank at home was pasteurized and packaged at a local dairy company, then delivered by trucks to a metal box outside the house.
I know people around here (not Boomer-era NC) who get milk delivered in the current times. When I tried to sign up in 2020, they were entirely booked up, so I haven't had that experience as an adult.
I guess the assumption about dairy cows then was that they all ate outdoors. In the spring and early summer, the milk tasted a bit like the spring onions that grew wild in the grassy fields they grazed on.
The CDC is currently only recommending PPE for people who work with animals, but airborne transmission is a thing. I'm still masking. I was interested to see in the bank yesterday that 3/6 of the customers were wearing N95s. That's a pretty high percentage, probably a coincidence, surely unrelated to avian flu. I don't think any of us left our houses expecting to get H5N1 in the bank. I am scared whenever I see dead birds on the ground, but that is more a worry about West Nile around here.
One assumes the CDC will be gone entirely by this time next year, along with all other government health programs.
