The potential danger and challenges of Bird Flu

[littleman]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/opinion/bird-flu-h5n1-pandemic.html

As the world is just beginning to recover from the devastation of Covid-19, it is facing the possibility of a pandemic of a far more deadly pathogen.

Bird flu — known more formally as avian influenza — has long hovered on the horizons of scientists' fears. This pathogen, especially the H5N1 strain, hasn't often infected humans, but when it has, 56 percent of those known to have contracted it have died. Its inability to spread easily, if at all, from one person to another has kept it from causing a pandemic.

But things are changing. The virus, which has long caused outbreaks among poultry, is infecting more and more migratory birds, allowing it to spread more widely, even to various mammals, raising the risk that a new variant could spread to and among people.

Alarmingly, it was recently reported that a mutant H5N1 strain was not only infecting minks at a fur farm in Spain but also most likely spreading among them, unprecedented among mammals. Even worse, the mink's upper respiratory tract is exceptionally well suited to act as a conduit to humans, Thomas Peacock, a virologist who has studied avian influenza, told me.

The article continues with lots of reasons to be worried.

Recent Increase in Seal Deaths in Maine Linked to Avian Flu

Bird flu has jumped to mammals in the UK - so how worried should humans be?

[rcjordan]

>Spain

Yeah, that caught my eye yesterday. Reminded me of the jump to minks in Denmark.

[Rupert]

Lots of Chicken farms in this area.  Bird flu warning signs have been about for a year, probably longer.

[rcjordan]

After death of girl yesterday, 12 more detected with H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia (khmertimeskh.com)

[rcjordan]

India records first two H3N2 flu deaths in Haryana, Karnataka - Times of India