if the bird flu started spreading between humans, how long would you need to stay quarantined before it was safe to come out??

FarFarAway@startrek.website to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 50 points –

Im talking worst case scenario, something like Station 11 or the movie Contagion

If the bird flu started spreading rapidly from human to human, and it devastated our population as it can in birds or marine life, how long would one have to hole up in seclusion before the virus burned through the population and it would probably be safe to come out.

Obviously, this is not the current situation, and this scenario is a long way from becoming any type of reality. This is just a hypothetical. If turds hit the fan, I dont want to waste time trying to figure this out in the moment while everyone's ill, and can't answer.

Move over B's, I want first dibs on the tp!

Edit: I'm not thinking of a flu, as it behaves in the human population as we know it. I'm talking like zombie virus, without the worry of reanimation. Like, pretty much, everyone that catches it, dies, and it spreads fast and stealthily enough that the end result is a drastically lower population of survivors. How long would a person have to stay isolated to outlive the worst of it.

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We killed off one strain of flu by our less-than-perfect quarantining for COVID. If we mask up for Texas Moo Flu, we'd stop spreading COVID around so much and might slow down its mutation too. At least with flu we know how it's transmitted, and have related vaccines to tweak. Maybe we'll be able to call off the Return To Workplace bullshit, too.

We killed off one strain of flu by our less-than-perfect quarantining for COVID.

We did? Do you have more information on that?

That article is interesting and important but it does not show any causal links between lockdowns and the disappearance.

It is, for example, also possible that it was merely displaced by SARS-CoV2.

I appreciate your close and literal reading of that study. This was new news to me so I looked a bit further. STATnews and others seem to think it was the various lockdown protocols.

B/Yamagata viruses haven’t been detected anywhere in the world since late March 2020, when Covid pandemic lockdowns and social distancing appeared to have halted circulation of this family of lineage of flu B.

No, they've got the same information as us. That's why they explicitly say:

when Covid pandemic lockdowns and social distancing appeared to have halted circulation

It is still speculation, not data.

I'd tend to agree with the speculation but it's still speculation.

To be honest, I agree with you that it is speculation, and also that I tend to agree with the speculation. It's important to note when something is speculative.

It wasn't the lockdown as much as the masking and hand washing, and especially having sick people self-isolate while they had symptoms.

I consider those measures to be included in "lockdown" but it's besides the point: The paper contains no evidence that those measures made it disappear, just that it disappeared.

How would it be displaced by SARS-CoV2? Wouldn't that require cross immunity?

That's pretty cool! I knew we didn't really have a flu season, but I didn't realize we actually killed off a while strain. Not for nothing, I guess.

You do have a point though, we have an existing vaccine and we are more knowledgeable about the flu in general. Maybe there would be more surviviors than one would anticipate. As long as the scientists didn't dont get infected and die before they could get the vaccine out.

When birds catch the bird flu, there can be up to 100% mortality rate. So, I suppose I'm more refering to a catastrophic, civilization altering illness. More akin the what a zombie virus would do, without the added potential of reanimation.

I prefer Houstonian butt COVID

Some people do actually need to physically be at work... in fact, it's how most work is done. Just because some are devs/IT workers and see no need to actually show up to work, that doesn't mean the rest of the world keeps on turning without maintenance.

It's not just Devs. It's essentially any office job.

Accountants or lawyers don't need to be in the same building anymore than Devs do.

Basically, a fraction of the intellectual workforce. Everyone else has to: medical professionals, carpenters, builders, civil engineers, electrical engineers, server hardware maintenance staff (in some cases, also the IT personel's job), plumbers, clerks, social workders, barternders... there's a lot more that need to actually show up for work.

But no one is talking about them.

Returning to work refers to people who left work lol

It doesn't make any sense to mention these people in a discussion about return to work.