Second type of bird flu detected in US dairy cows
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'Now we know why it's really important to test and continue testing,' said Angela Rasmussen, a virus expert at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, who helped identify the first spillover.
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The D1.1 version of the virus was the type linked to the first U.S. death tied to bird flu and a severe illness in Canada. A person in Louisiana died in January after developing severe respiratory symptoms following contact with wild and backyard birds. In British Columbia, a teen girl was hospitalized for months with a virus traced to poultry.
At least 67 people in the U.S. have been infected with bird flu, mostly those who work closely with dairy or cattle, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
USDA officials said they would post genetic sequences and other information about the new form of the virus to a public repository later this week. Scientists said that would be key to understanding whether the spillover was a recent event or whether the virus has been circulating, perhaps widely, for longer.
'If this turns out to have been something that crossed into cattle a couple months ago, a couple months is a long time not to detect it,' said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who has studied the H5N1 virus in cattle.
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He added that it's important for federal officials to share promptly information about a virus that has the potential to trigger a pandemic that could 'make COVID seem like a walk in the park.'
'It's a vital part of national security, global security, the well-being of people, of animals and of businesses in the U.S.,' Worobey added.
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Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump cut mental health funding for kids. These L.A. teens are stepping in
There are a lot of reasons why people reach out to Teen Line, a Century City-based hotline that connects young people in crisis to trained teenage volunteers. They call because someone is hurting them or they are afraid of hurting themselves. They text because an important relationship has ended or a troubling conflict has started. They feel disrespected, disregarded, dismissed. At the heart of almost every call, text or email is the same cry of pain: Nobody is listening. So the teenagers on the receiving end do what they wish adults would make time for more often, the thing nobody seems to be doing enough of these days: They listen. Almost every single time, for at least the length of a call or a chat session, it's enough. 'Even if their situation is really difficult, the best that we can do at the start is always just to listen,' said volunteer Mendez, 18. (The volunteers' last names are withheld to protect their privacy and anonymity.) 'And even if we don't have a solution for them, I feel like that is one thing that just helps them so much.' A project of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, Teen Line is helping to fill an ever-widening gap between the need for mental health support and the resources available. The phone and text lines are available to youth throughout the U.S. and Canada, and the email address can be used by teens anywhere in the world. Volunteers fielded 8,886 calls, texts and emails in 2024. Managers expect the total will surpass 10,000 this year. The percentage of high school students who report feeling consistently sad or lonely has risen steadily in the last decade. A study published last fall by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 39.7% of students said they experienced persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, and 20.4% had seriously considered dying by suicide. At the same time, government spending cuts have hit many support services. The Trump administration announced in April that it will stop paying $1 billion in federal grants that school districts nationwide have been using to hire psychologists and social workers. The 'Big Beautiful Bill' that Congress passed in May proposes major cuts to Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the Children's Health Insurance Program, which millions of Americans rely on to access mental healthcare for themselves and their kids. In July, the administration removed an option on the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline that allowed young people identifying as LGBTQ+ to connect directly with counselors specially trained in supporting queer youth. More than 1.3 million queer young people in the U.S. have used the service since its launch in 2022. None of this has deterred the 60 to 70 young volunteers at Teen Line, who commit to 65 hours of initial training and a minimum of two five-hour shifts per month. The program receives no federal funding and relies entirely on grants and private donations. Each evening, eight to 12 high school students file into a sunny office in Century City, often after a long day of classes, homework, practices and part-time jobs. They raid the snack room, settle into cubicles, pick up headsets and spend the next few hours talking and typing with fellow teens seeking support. The lines are open for calls and texts from 6 to 10 p.m. Pacific Time each evening (the text option closes one hour earlier). Emails can be sent any time of the day or night. They share an office with adult volunteers for the 988 hotline. With its collection of hand-painted canvases and stuffed animals, though, the Teen Line corner is easy to pick out in the sea of staid cubicles. Didi Hirsch is by far the largest of the 12 centers in California that respond to 988. Last year, the organization fielded nearly 40% of the 454,146 calls to 988 placed in the state. Total calls to the crisis hotline this year have already surpassed last year's number, with more than 462,000 calls from California alone, a Didi Hirsch spokesperson said. People of any age can contact 988, teens included. But a call or text to Teen Line, which has its own 800 number, guarantees a response from a peer who likely understands better than most well-meaning adults what it's like to be a teenager today. The public discussion about the youth mental health crisis 'really becomes removed from the actual reality of what it's like to be a teen, because the people having these conversations aren't teens. They're people kind of trying to look through the window from outside the glass,' said volunteer Max, 15. The stereotype of today's teenagers as anxious loners hunched over their phones is limiting and inaccurate, she said, as four fellow volunteers nodded in agreement. It's not that teens are cut off from real life. It's that so much is coming at them that it can be hard to know how to field it all. 'Being a teen is a time of huge responsibility, but with so little control and so little power,' Max continued. 'You're not the one making decisions about your education. You're not the one deciding where you live or what you're doing until you get to college, and there's so much pressure to succeed. ... We encourage them to think about their situation differently. We don't hand them a different set of cards, but we encourage them to approach it differently. And I think that's what teens need.' Teen Line isn't intended to be a replacement for long-term therapy or other necessary professional services, Didi Hirsch Chief Executive Lyn Morris said. But it can be a 'stepping stone' for overwhelmed young people who aren't sure where to turn or how to ask for help, she said. Members of every generation have complained in adolescence that adults don't understand them. But given the number of stressors that didn't exist until recently — social media, school lockdown drills, accelerating climate change — today's teenagers are very often justified in feeling that way. 'We don't have experience in that stuff,' Morris said. 'Thank God the teens have each other.' It's too soon to know how cuts to 988 and other services will affect Teen Line's caller volume. Volunteers said they're already hearing from people affected by recent policy changes. This includes teens who live in states that ban abortion and are worried that they might be pregnant, and those who tried calling the 988 suicide hotline but couldn't get through to any operators in their state. In the meantime, for adults concerned about the adolescents in their own lives, volunteers offered some sage advice. Before whisking the phone away from a teen who's too absorbed in their screen, ask what they're trying to distract themselves from. Listen to teens' opinions when they're moved to share them. And don't be afraid to say the hardest things out loud. 'Beating around the bush can be really suffocating,' said Jules, 17. 'Suicidal ideation, suicidal thoughts, self-injury, stuff like that — just not calling it for what it is can be really harmful. ... Just letting them get it off their chest, and not keep it in or be ashamed of their thoughts, can have a really big impact. You don't realize how much of a relief speaking and talking about it and being listened to can have.' If you're a young person in need of mental or emotional support, contact Teen Line by calling (800) 852-8336 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. PST; texting TEEN to 839863 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. PST; or emailing any time at
Buzz Feed
14 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
Why IKEA Turned Away My Son: A Parent's Warning
In late June, a few days before Disability Pride Month began, I took my 7-year-old child on an outing to an Ikea store. As I filled out a waiver so he could enter the store's small play area, I noticed I was the only parent present. It turned out that parents typically drop off their children while they shop, but that wasn't an option for me. My son has a rare, severe form of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome, among other medical conditions, and he can't be without a grown-up carrying his seizure rescue medication, as I was. The scary reality is that around one in five children with Dravet syndrome die in childhood because the seizures can be so severe. There is currently no cure. I explained this to a staff member and told her that I'd need to be in the room with my child. She informed me that no parents were allowed into the play area. 'But isn't there a policy for kids with disabilities?' I asked. She told me a service dog could accompany a child, but a parent could not. I stopped signing the form. I said to the staff member, 'That's discrimination against kids with disabilities.' She didn't respond. I hadn't known about the store's play area before this visit, and I had been happy to see that it wasn't a playground ― just a space with toys like a train set and dart board. Since my son had a seizure at an indoor playground a year ago, I'd stopped taking him to them. But now, even this play space was not an option for him. My child and I were both upset. He loves going to Ikea to walk through the showroom and eat in the cafeteria ― a place open enough that it was the only indoor restaurant he ate in during our four years of masking during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have several Ikea furniture items, including bunk beds, a coat/shoe cubby and a toy chest. He helped us build them all. Since his severe seizures began about two years ago, he's had to change his life in significant ways. Heat, sports, just running around to play, illness and excitement have all become triggers for him. Summer is especially hard — on hot days, he can't be outside. In fact, we had driven the hour to Ikea in traffic just so he could walk and have a change of scenery in a large, air-conditioned space because the temperature outside was dangerous for him. I told him, 'This isn't OK.' He said, 'We should talk to someone.' I was proud of him. After talking to a few staff members, we spoke with a manager, who said he wasn't familiar with the policy, and he'd get back to me the next day. He didn't. Later, I looked online, and there was a section on the Ikea website directing caretakers of children with disabilities to start a conversation with the Ikea store manager about how the child can best have their needs accommodated in the play area. I was hopeful that when we went in the future, we could show the policy to the staff. However, that doesn't undo the pain my child felt after hearing that he wasn't welcome in that play space because of his disabilities. During the hour-long car ride home afterward, we talked a lot about discrimination. I reinforced that what happened wasn't OK, and that the more than 3 million kids with disabilities in our country deserve to be included. I told him about my older sister, his late aunt, who had microcephaly and faced various barriers to equal access too, like having to sit on the sidelines of playgrounds in her wheelchair. It upset me. When I was 10 in 1993, I read about new accessible playgrounds in an issue of Scholastic News, and I hoped we could build one for her. Sadly, she died a few weeks later, but in her memory, my family and I worked with the Cincinnati Parks Department to build an accessible playground. My son thought that was cool. I also explained that many groups of people face discrimination for reasons such as gender, race, sexual orientation, immigration status and more, and we need to be allies and stand up against all forms of discrimination. I also told him that one way to help is to make disabilities more visible and raise awareness, as we have done in his school class for the past three years. This June, for Dravet Syndrome Awareness Month, he and I held a neighborhood lemonade and cupcake fundraiser and donated money to the Dravet Syndrome Foundation, which helps fund the kind of critical epilepsy research that the Trump administration has recently cut. After our experience at Ikea, as one of his bedtime books, we re-read the picture book All the Way to the Top, about a child who protested and helped advocate for the Americans with Disabilities Act, which passed 35 years ago. Afterward, I told him about children with disabilities who went to Congress this summer, asking their leaders not to make it harder for them to go to the doctor and get the medicine and treatment they need. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump's domestic policy bill has since passed, and many people, including children with disabilities, will be harmed as a result. Two days after the bill passed, my child woke up and said, 'I want to make a sign about disabilities.' He asked for my help with spelling before writing the words 'People with disabilities are important' in pencil and then tracing over them with marker. He stood by our Disability Pride yard sign, and then, since the temperature was cooler out, he walked down our street and held it up for cars passing by. He said that when he grows up, he wants to be an 'activist' and 'protester.' I told him that he already is. [Editor's Note: HuffPost reached out for a response, and Ikea US issued the following statement: 'At IKEA, we strive to offer a safe and inclusive environment for children to play while in our stores. Our Småland policies are in place to keep children safe when they are in our space. Regarding this family's recent experience in our College Park, MD store, we are incredibly sensitive to feelings of exclusion, and so we have shared information with the family about our accommodations process, so that they may have a more positive experience at IKEA. We are constantly working to improve how we create an inclusive space while maintaining policies that keep all children safe.']
Chicago Tribune
19 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Got the sniffles? Here's what to know about summer colds and the COVID-19 variant called stratus
Summer heat, outdoor fun … and cold and flu symptoms? The three may not go together in many people's minds: partly owing to common myths about germs and partly because many viruses really do have lower activity levels in the summer. But it is possible to get the sniffles — or worse — in the summer. Federal data released Friday, for example, shows COVID-19 is trending up in most states, with emergency department visits up among people of all ages. Here's what to know about summer viruses. The number of people seeking medical care for three key illnesses — COVID-19, flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV — is currently very low, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Flu is trending down and RSV has been steady. But COVID-19 is trending up in most U.S. states. Wastewater data from around the country estimates 'moderate' COVID-19 activity. CDC wastewater also shows the XFG variant — nicknamed stratus — is most common in the U.S. Stratus can cause a 'razor blade' sore throat and is considered a 'variant under monitoring' by the World Health Organization. The WHO said the variant is only marginally better at evading people's immune systems and vaccines still work against it. The expectation is that COVID-19 will eventually settle into a winter seasonal pattern like other coronaviruses, but the past few years have brought a late summer surge, said Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at University of California Davis Children's Hospital. Other viruses circulating this time of year include the one that causes 'hand, foot and mouth' disease — which has symptoms similar to a cold, plus sores and rashes — and norovirus, sometimes called the stomach flu. Many viruses circulate seasonally, picking up as the weather cools in the fall and winter. So it's true that fewer people get stuffy noses and coughs in the summer — but cold weather itself does not cause colds. It's not just about seasonality. The other factor is our behavior, experts say. Nice weather means people are opening windows and gathering outside where it's harder for germs to spread. But respiratory viruses are still around. When the weather gets too hot and everyone heads inside for the air conditioning, doctors say they start seeing more sickness. In places where it gets really hot for a long time, summer can be cold season in its own right. 'I grew up on the East Coast and everybody gets sick in the winter,' said Dr. Frank LoVecchio, an emergency room doctor and Arizona State University researcher. 'A lot of people get sick in the summer here. Why is that? Because you spend more time indoors.' For people who are otherwise healthy, timing is a key consideration to getting any vaccine. You want to get it a few weeks before that big trip or wedding, if that's the reason for getting boosted, doctors say. But, for most people, it may be worth waiting until the fall in anticipation of winter cases of COVID-19 really tick up. 'You want to be fully protected at the time that it's most important for you,' said Dr. Costi Sifri, of the University of Virginia Health System. People at higher risk of complications should always talk with their doctor about what is best for them, Sifri added. Older adults and those with weak immune systems may need more boosters than others, he said. Last month, the CDC noted emergency room visits among children younger than 4 were rising. That makes sense, Blumberg said, because many young kids are getting it for the first time or are unvaccinated. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in May that the shots would no longer be recommended for healthy kids, a decision that health experts have said lacks scientific basis. The American Academy of Pediatrics still endorses COVID-19 shots for children older than 6 months. The same things that help prevent colds, flu and COVID any other time of the year work in the summer, doctors say. Spend time outside when you can, wash your hands, wear a mask. And if you're sick, stay home.
