Is the U.S. Ready for Extraterrestrials? Not If They’re Microbes | Outdated ridge Safety Standards | Cyberattacks Caused One Texas Water System to Overflow, and more

The US and other governments around the world need to take H5N1 seriously and demonstrate that we’ve learned the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic that turned our lives upside-down for years. They should take immediate steps to get out ahead of this risk rather than taking a “wait and see” approach.
In the short term, governments should act now to deploy the capacities at their disposal to guard against the uncontrolled spread of the H5N1 bird flu virus if it evolves to spread between people. This includes funding research on vaccines that are likely to be effective against the virus, stepping up surveillance of livestock and humans and wider emergency response planning.

H5N1 Bird Flu in U.S. Cattle: A Wake-Up Call to Action  (Luciana Borio and Phil Krause, STAT News)
The recent detection of H5N1 bird flu in U.S. cattle, coupled with reports of a dairy worker contracting the virus, demands a departure from the usual reassurances offered by federal health officials. While they emphasize there’s no cause for alarm and assert diligent monitoring, it’s imperative we break from this familiar script.
H5N1, a strain of the flu virus known to infect bird species globally and several mammalian species in the U.S. since 2022, has now appeared to have breached a new barrier of inter-mammalian transmission, as exemplified by the expanding outbreak in dairy cows in several jurisdictions linked to an initial outbreak in Texas. Over time, continued transmission among cattle is likely to yield mutations that will further increase the efficiency of mammal-to-mammal transmission.
As the Centers for Disease Control continues to investigate, this evolutionary leap, if confirmed, underscores the adaptability of the H5N1 virus and raises concerns about the next step required for a pandemic: its potential to further evolve for efficient human transmission. Because humans have no natural immunity to H5N1, the virus can be particularly lethal to them. Despite assertions of an overall low risk of H5N1 infection to the general population, the reality is that the understanding of this risk is limited, and it’s evolving alongside the virus. The situation could change very quickly, so it is important to be prepared.

Baltimore Bridge Collapse Highlights Outdated Safety Standards, Experts Say  (Michael Laris, Dan Keating and Júlia Ledur, Washington Post)
U.S. standards for keeping bridges from collapsing when hit by ships hail from a different era.
They rely on half-century-old West German experiments on model ships for a key mathematical formula. Their minimum specifications cite the danger of empty 195-foot barges breaking loose from their moorings and drifting into bridges, a threat that seems quaint compared with the hulking 985-foot container ship that strayed off course after an electrical failure and toppled the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last month.
And in 2020, international researchers warned that the standards sharply underestimate the impact of a head-on collision by a big ship into a bridge.
As federal investigators probe what caused the Baltimore collapse that killed six workers and shut down a vital U.S. port, some experts say the tragedy is shining a light on the need to bring bridge safety requirements into the modern era.

A Toxic Grass That Threatens a Quarter of U.S. Cows Is Spreading Because of Climate Change  (Robert Langellier, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
America’s “fescue belt,” named for an exotic grass called tall fescue, dominates the pastureland from Missouri and Arkansas in the west to the coast of the Carolinas in the east. Within that swath, a quarter of the nation’s cows — more than 15 million in all — graze fields that stay green through the winter while the rest of the region’s grasses turn brown and go dormant.
But the fescue these cows are eating is toxic. The animals lose hooves. Parts of their tails and the tips of their ears slough off. For most of the year, they spend any moderately warm day standing in ponds and creeks trying to reduce fevers. They breathe heavily, fail to put on weight, and produce less milk. Some fail to conceive, and some of the calves they do conceive die.
The disorder, fescue toxicosis, costs the livestock industry up to $2 billion a year in lost production. “Fescue toxicity is the most devastating livestock disorder east of the Mississippi,” said Craig Roberts, a forage specialist at the University of Missouri Extension, or MU, and an expert on fescue.

Rural Texas Towns Report Cyberattacks That Caused One Water System to Overflow  (AP / Texas Tribune)
A hack that caused a small Texas town’s water system to overflow in January has been linked to a shadowy Russian hacktivist group, the latest case of a U.S. public utility becoming a target of foreign cyberattacks.
The attack was one of three on small towns in the rural Texas. Local officials said the public was not put in any danger and the attempts were reported to federal authorities.
“There were 37,000 attempts in four days to log into our firewall,” said Mike Cypert, city manager of Hale Center, which is home to about 2,000 residents. The attempted hack failed as the city “unplugged” the system and operated it manually, he added.