If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or need help, call or text 988.
Listeria are a type of bacteria that make up the third leading cause of death from foodborne illness in the U.S. It’s not a surprise that this recent outbreak is linked to sliced deli meat, as Listeria is most commonly tied to deli meats, hot dogs, raw sprouts, raw milk, smoked seafood, and soft cheeses. Symptoms of invasive illness include fever, flu-like symptoms, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, or seizures. Diarrhea or vomiting occur in intestinal illness. Those who are pregnant are at much higher risk for getting listeriosis, which can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth, or severe infection for babies, and should seek immediate medical attention for fever or flu-like symptoms if they suspect they’ve eaten Listeria-contaminated food. If you’re pregnant, 65 or older, or immunocompromised, speak to your doctor about whether and how to avoid high-risk foods for Listeria. For the general population, the risk is relatively low, though right now, we think it may make sense to skip or heat up your deli meat until CDC and FDA identify the specific source of the outbreak.
The availability of testing for bird flu is one of the major criticisms that some global public health officials have about the U.S. response to the potential threat. On one hand, nearly every urgent care and doctor’s office in the country has rapid flu tests, so someone with H5N1 would test positive for flu A in the doctor’s office. But the only H5N1-specific tests are in public health laboratories, which means that local clinics and doctors offices would have to make the connection and ask specifically if a patient worked with farm animals, then send the sample off for further testing in most cases. That’s not likely to happen very often, and critics say it echoes the CDC’s sluggish rollout of COVID tests at the beginning of the pandemic. Right now, this is still an issue that primarily affects people who work on poultry and dairy farms, but if a mutation led it to spread more easily between humans, the lack of easy testing could mean we’re delayed in even noticing that spread. To reiterate, that’s not happening right now - the virus would need to change to see a prolonged person-to-person spread begin.
Sources: KFF Health News, CNN