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A Bird-Flu Pandemic in People? Here’s What It Might Look Like. [1]

['Apoorva Mandavilli']

Date: 2024-06-17  

The bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle has so far spilled over to just three farmworkers in the United States, as far as public health authorities know. All of them have had mostly mild symptoms.

But that does not guarantee that the virus, called H5N1, will remain benign if it begins to spread among people. Accumulating evidence from the animal world and data from other parts of the globe, in fact, suggest the opposite.

Some dairy cows never recovered from H5N1, and died or were slaughtered because of it. Infected terns seemed disoriented and unable to fly. Elephant seal pups had trouble breathing and developed tremors after catching the virus. Infected cats went blind, walking in circles; two-thirds of them died.

“I definitely don’t think there is room for complacency here,” said Anice Lowen, a virologist at Emory University.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/health/bird-flu-pandemic-humans.html

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