Over 8000 Bird Flu Deaths in Gangcha County Qinghai China?

Recombinomics: Over 8000 Bird Flu Deaths in Gangcha County Qinghai China?

Dr. Niman is relying on a machine translation from a Chinese language website where anyone can post. As Crawford Kilian notes, this sounds like Nostradamus.

I think some perspective is necessary. Wild animals die all the time for a variety of reasons. Waterfowl are susceptible to several diseases that cause mass mortalities: thousands of birds die every year in North America from diseases such as avian cholera, duck plague, and avian botulism (a field manual of wild bird diseases is available here). Just skim through this report posted by the United States Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center where die-offs of many thousands of waterfowl occur regularly.

Apparently more than 100,000 birds congregate on this lake every year. 8000 deaths is likely not only precedented, but possibly normal.

I repeat my earlier cautions. Assuming that these numbers are accurate, we don't know what killed these animals. Just because H5N1 was isolated there doesn't mean it killed every animal that dies.

Update: Dr. Niman is linking to photos apparently showing thousands of dead birds. To me, the nice, uniform spacing between birds, the resting and standing poses suggest that these are nesting birds (although there likely are dead birds in there - birds die all the time). This is what a waterfowl mortality event looks like to me.