I first covered the virus in an article published on January 7, 2020, titled “Doctors scramble to identify mysterious disease emerging in China.” For that article, and many others to follow, I spoke with people who are experts in viruses, infectious diseases, and epidemiology. Often, the answer to my questions about the virus, how it spreads, and the risk of a pandemic is the same: “I don’t know.” We now face the same uncertainty as H5N1, the virus commonly known as bird flu. The virus has decimated bird populations for years, and now a variant is spreading rapidly among dairy cattle in the US. We know that it can cause severe disease in animals, and we know that it can be transmitted from animals to people who are close to them. On Monday of this week, we also learned that a 65-year-old man in Louisiana became the first person in the US to die from H5N1 infection. Scientists are increasingly worried about the possibility of a bird flu pandemic. The question is, given all the uncertainty surrounding the virus, what should be done now to prepare for the possibility? Can the vaccines saved save us? And, importantly, have we learned anything about the covid pandemic that is still not over? Part of the challenge here is that it is impossible to predict how H5N1 will evolve. A variant of the virus caused disease in humans in 1997, when there was a small but deadly outbreak in Hong Kong. Eighteen people have confirmed the diagnosis, and six people have died. Since then, there have been sporadic cases around the world—but no major outbreaks. As far as H5N1 is concerned, we’ve been pretty lucky, said Ali Khan, dean of the college of public health at the University of Nebraska. “Influenza presents the greatest infectious disease pandemic threat to humans,” Khan said. The 1918 flu pandemic was caused by a type of influenza virus called H1N1 that appeared from birds to humans. It is thought to have infected a third of the world’s population, and is responsible for around 50 million deaths. Another H1N1 virus is responsible for the “swine flu” pandemic of 2009. The virus hits young people the hardest, as they are less likely to be exposed to the same variant and therefore less immune. It was responsible for between 151,700 and 575,400 deaths that year.
