How to think about the risks of bird flu
đź‘‹ Welcome back to the Medium Newsletter
Issue #135: emotional connectedness at work, Olympic trivia, and cold soup
By Harris Sockel
A few months ago, I wrote a newsletter about bird flu. I sent it one week after former New York Times reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. raised questions on Medium about the safety of American milk: Since late March, hundreds of dairy cows have been infected by H5N1 bird flu across 13 states… and the virus lives in milk, so what are the risks?
Bird flu never infected cows before this year. Scientists are still trying to figure out how it jumped from birds to mammals — and what that could mean for humans.
I still drink “regular milk,” which you have to say now when you walk into a coffee shop because “whole milk” sounds too similar to “oat milk.” And as a milk drinker, I’ve been struggling to figure out how worried I should be. Here are the facts as I see them — what do you think?
- Four people who work on dairy farms have gotten H5N1. It’s a very severe flu.
- The FDA just announced the results of a study on whether pasteurization—heating milk to over 100 degrees fahrenheit before selling it—kills the virus, and it does.
- A group of food scientists posted on Medium strongly cautioning against drinking raw (unpasteurized) milk for all the reasons listed above.
- On top of pasteurization, the FDA is telling farmers to throw away milk from infected cows. Doesn’t sound like they’re enforcing that, though.
- No humans have transmitted H5N1 to other humans, but there has been cow-to-cow transmission. It’s also spread to cats, which is worrying and could be a sign of more mammal-to-mammal transmission in the future.
- New York City is preparing for what might happen if H5N1 evolves to spread between humans and triggers a new global pandemic.
What does this mean?
Honestly, thank god for Louis Pasteur, the chemist and microbiologist who invented pasteurization in 1864. Before that, milk was responsible for multiple pandemics: tuberculosis, typhoid, and diphtheria. Raw milk is a remarkably good host for viruses and bacteria. Given everything I shared above, it really seems like pasteurization is our last line of defense here.
What else we’re reading
- 80% of Fortune 500 companies surveyed last fall say they’re moving to a “hybrid” work model (some days in the office, other days remote), but remote worker Jeffery Smith believes the real metric worth tracking isn’t physical proximity but emotional proximity: How honest do you feel like you can be with your coworkers?
- To become an Olympic volunteer, according to Kathleen Murphy, you need to “submit a lengthy application, survive several interviews, and pass an FBI background check.” Volunteers also need to memorize Olympic trivia! Did you know that curling started in the 1500s when Scottish farmers passed time by “sliding large granite stones across frozen lochs”?
Your daily dose of practical wisdom: about cold soup
When you’re too hot and exhausted to cook (I am), make cold soup. Gazpacho and Andalusian salmorejo are classic examples of the form, but there’s also Bulgarian cold yogurt soup: cucumber, yogurt, dill, and olive oil. It takes five minutes to make.
Quiz: Zoom (way) in
Below is a highly zoomed-in version of an image related to one of the stories linked above. If you know what it is, email us: tips@medium.com. First to guess correctly will win a free Medium membership.
Yesterday’s winner: M Pardede for the correct answer of “Charli XCX’s left eye.” Specifically, it’s taken from the art for “The girl, so confusing version with lorde.”
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com
