America’s Bird-Flu Luck Has Officially Run Out
Bird flu has spread so widely that it was always going to make someone seriously sick.
Yesterday, America had one of its worst days of bird flu to date. For starters, the CDC confirmed the country’s first severe case of human bird-flu infection. The patient, a Louisiana resident who is over the age of 65 and has underlying medical conditions, is in the hospital with severe respiratory illness and is in critical condition. This is the first time transmission has been traced back to exposure to sick and dead birds in backyard flocks. Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency after weeks of rising infections among dairy herds and people. In Los Angeles, public-health officials confirmed that two cats died after consuming raw milk that had been recalled due to a risk of bird-flu contamination.
[...]
For months, experts have warned that bird flu would continue spreading among livestock and the people who work with them but that transmission among people was unlikely. And the CDC still says the public-health risk is low. “Everyday Americans should not be panicked by this news,” but they need to stay vigilant about bird flu, Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-diseases expert at UC San Francisco, told me.America is giving the virus a lot of chances to infect people. Although efforts to control the virus, such as regular testing of herds and bulk testing of raw milk, are under way, they have clearly not been enough. The spread of the virus geographically and across mammalian species is unprecedented, Pitesky said. He believes that more efforts should be directed toward shifting waterfowl—ducks, geese, and other wild birds responsible for spreading H5N1—away from commercial farms, where the virus is most likely to be transmitted to humans. A shot for bird flu exists, and experts have urged the government to vaccinate farmworkers. “Farmers need help,” Pitesky said. As of this month, the Biden administration has no plans to authorize a human vaccine, making it likely that that choice will fall under the purview of Donald Trump.
Just as a severe case in America was inevitable, continued mutation is a given too. At this rate, the virus will adapt to infect human hosts, cause more serious disease, and result in human-to-human transmission “at some point,” Chin-Hong said. Earlier this month, a study published in Science by researchers at the Scripps Research Institute showed that a single mutation in the virus strain spreading among dairy herds could switch its preference from bird to human receptors. “In nature, the occurrence of this single mutation could be an indicator of human pandemic risk,” the paper’s editor wrote.