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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   413 thread views

Transnational Thursday for October 31, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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I think I'm mostly focused on terrible outliers, and the mortality for H5N1 just doesn't seem that high. Say 0.05x to 3x covid, something in that range. You then have to add long-term effects, which are hard to estimate &c, but it just doesn't seem very existentially threatening.

Depends on the variant and how it mutates. If it becomes an easily transmissible virus that attacks the lungs it could get much worse than covid. Ferrets, who are quite similar to humans as far as respiratory system goes, afaik, have a terrible death rate to h5n1.

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