Global Threat: Will Bird Flu Spark The Next Pandemic?

Bird flu is nothing new. It has certainly become a buzzing subject recently, but we have known about the viral pandemic potential for several decades. The H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus was first discovered in 1996, but even then there were warning signs this form of avian had the potential to wreak havoc far beyond birds.

In addition to this article, i have posted a companion video on my YouTube channel, so you can check it out as well.

In 1997, poultry outbreaks in China were linked to 18 human infections — and 6 of those people died from it. Since that time, alarm bells from the scientific community have been ringing louder and louder. H5N1 began infecting more species, making the evolutionary jump from just wild and farmed birds, to mammals such as raccoons and foxes, sea lions and, most recently, hitting dairy cattle and pigs in the U.S. and Canada. The virus eventually caused more than 800 human infections around the world with a stunning death rate of roughly 50 percent.

And that is what is truly alarming. Before it was really only a threat to avian species, and presented very little risk of human infection, as the virus was just not suited for our biology. But now, just in the last couple years, we have seen explosive evolutionary advancement of the virus. The biggest signal in the increasing host range of the virus. The potential to now spread among mammals, and between a mammal and a human, is especially concerning. In addition, its wide geographical spread, and the unprecedented scale of the outbreaks in birds, shows the increasing pandemic potential of H5N1. Some of this was addressed in a May editorial in a leading medical journal, The Lancet.

Given those factors, an avian flu pandemic may feel not just inevitable, but imminent. And the reality is that such a thing is biologically overdue. Influenza viruses usually have a knack for rapid evolution, but H5N1 hasn’t yet adapted to sustain human-to-human transmission, despite circulating for the last three decades. What the long circulation has done, however, is give the virus a breadth of infection across a very deep pool of hosts, making a significant mutation all the more dangerous when it eventually does come about.

And when it eventually does happen… it will be a global health catastrophe with societal collapse potential.

Are we seeing the start of it now?

So how likely is that kind of worst-case scenario? And if H5N1 does mutate to spread human to human, what would its impacts really be? Could it happen in a month, or a year?

I have been studying most of the recent research for a while now, including those studies that have followed H5N1 influenza trends for decades. Once you actually look at the timeline of events, it does start to seem like things are accelerating. In this article, I want to help unpack the crucial unanswered questions around this virus’s capacity for sparking a possible pandemic.

Because, if you have been paying even just a little attention, you might be getting some distinctly 2020 vibes. For a long time, there was only sporadic news on the viral front for H5N1, but in recent years the newsworthy events have increased dramatically. So, are we there again, watching the beginning? Is this where we’re seeing repeated zoonotic spillovers that one day take off? Or, will it be like with COVID-19, where suddenly there’s a cluster of human cases somewhere, and then just that quickly it’s too late?

That’s why scientists are watching the virus closely now, to understand its transmission patterns and ongoing evolution, all to spot early signals that a storm may be brewing. And spot those signs they have.

The spread of H5N1 among dairy cattle and other mammals in recent months, and data trickling out from the department of agriculture, offered a treasure trove of genetic sequencing for scientists to sort through. 

Several research teams recently reached startling and concerning conclusions: The virus likely mutated to spillover from birds into cows as far back as late 2023, and then spread undetected among cattle for months before the first cases were reported this year. That allowed the range of the viral spread to grow to massive proportions.

Current ongoing analysis of the sequences released to date also outlines how the currently circulating form of H5N1 — a lineage known as clade 2.3.4.4b — features some new and concerning mutations. These are mutations that allow enhanced viral replication in mammals, a crucial step to making the jump to human-to-human transmission.

The next steps in viral progression include adaptations that would allow the H5N1 virus to better bind to human-specific receptors in the upper airway, which would give it the ability to transmit easily between people. Without that shift, H5N1 infections in humans usually end up hitting dead ends with the first host. But the danger is that, each host gives the virus another chance to make that shift, and sooner or later it will.

Take the recent instance of a worker infected in Texas. An overview of the case, published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine, outlined how the worker was in close contact with sick dairy cattle, and developed illness as a result. The virus identified in the worker also had that previously seen genetic mutation that’s associated with the new viral adaptation to mammalian hosts. But in this case the patient didn’t develop any respiratory symptoms, and no one in his household or close contacts fell ill. But it did get a foothold in the man, and the step towards full blown human-to-human transmission isn’t really a big one.

So what does it take for onward transmission to occur? Very little, biologically speaking.

Influenza viruses are ones that tend to mutate fairly easily. The longer a virus circulates, the chances of it undergoing rapid evolution eventually reach a critical threshold to the point where the possibility becomes a certainty.

Scientists trying to confirm human cases

Despite the scientific concerns, the waters are particularly muddy right now regarding how the rising number of cattle infections are impacting farm workers across the continent, and the world. We simply don’t have complete data regarding the total numbers of cases, or even the outcomes.

For example, in just the U.S., physicians in states with cattle outbreaks told The Associated Press recently that there are many reports of farm workers falling sick, but confirming those cases is a problem simply because many workers are reluctant to get tested. You have groups of individuals that don’t have close contact with health care for various reasons, such as legally vulnerable populations like migrant workers, and language can also be a barrier.

The takeaway here is that, while the news of new numbers of confirmed cases is already concerning, the bigger picture is just how many unconfirmed cases are circulating. It could be quite a few. The risk of going from a few sporadic cases to something of global concern is pretty significant, as Politico recently reported. 

Remember how COVID started. A weird illness, then a handful of cases, and next thing we knew there was a full-blown global pandemic. So, we’ve all seen how a virus can spread around the globe before public health has even had a chance to get its shoes on. That’s a risk that we have to be mindful of.

To make matters worse, what we really need to think about is the one thing that never really gets considered in the scientific analysis of the issue, and that is the human response to it. Again, we have COVID to look to as an example. In some ways, the social division and controversy was an even greater disruptive force than the virus itself was. And now, with such feelings stretched to the limit given the recent political turmoil, and the divisions between people even greater and more serious than ever before, we could have real societal collapse issues on our hands with a new pandemic. 

Another point is that, while the risks of a new pandemic are very real, there are big questions about whether the various governments are taking things seriously. Scientists don’t believe data is being shared fast enough — or fully enough — to help researchers unpack what’s at stake. It’s not clear exactly how many people will be tested going forward, or how proactive officials are going to be about seeking out potential new cases or clusters. In the U.S. we are about to see a very unqualified, and opinionated, individual in charge of the department of health…

Knowing the full count and severity of human infections would provide added insight, revealing what the real numbers of infected people are, and just how much of an evolutionary barrier remains to keep this virus from striking humans on a regular basis.

There are also critical questions about how exposure pathways play a role. 

How different are these infections when someone, say, inhales large amounts of virus while handling an infected turkey, compared to someone who gets sick after milking a cow? And what are the links to symptoms, from mild illness all the way to deadly respiratory inflammation? Filling in that missing information gap is pretty important.

Mortality rate remains unclear

There is also the need to truly understand H5N1’s potential impact, for when it does inevitably begin spreading person to person. In particular, determining its true mortality rate is a question that epidemiologists have been trying to answer for more than a decade. 

Back then, the World Health Organization had estimated that the case fatality rate for avian flu in humans was roughly 60 per cent. If such a death rate were to be sustained in a pandemic, scientists wrote in a 2008 paper, H5N1 would represent a truly civilization ending scenario.

But with far more human infections having been reported since then, including those that had flown under the radar, the numbers were a bit lower. The original research team’s own analysis of surveillance data, along with blood test studies to determine prior exposure to the virus, concluded the virus’s case fatality rate in humans was likely closer to 30 percent. 

But even 30 percent is an astronomically high mortality rate, and one it is unlikely that civilization can bear intact. Especially now, with the various stresses people and nations are under, the impact of a new flu virus sweeping through the population would grind society to a halt, causing never before seen levels of death and illness.

The case fatality rates of prior influenza pandemics have ranged from less than one per cent, during the 1957 and 1968 pandemics, to an estimated 2.5 per cent in 1918, which studies suggest may have killed anywhere from 23 to 50 million people around the world in just a few years. And the scary part of those numbers is that this many deaths were achieved without the level of travel and exposure people would experience today.

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by a coronavirus rather than influenza, had a case fatality rate of up to 8.5 per cent in early 2020, according to one analysis, which later dropped all the way down to 0.27 per cent by late 2022. But that dramatic shift was primarily due to missed early cases that were mild or asymptomatic, skewing the rate, along with high numbers of deaths early on among older adults being exposed to the virus for the first time. That influence of the elderly who were most exposed had the effect of making the CFR appear higher than when the whole population was considered.

If H5N1’s human death rate ends up any higher than those numbers, that’s getting up there to absolutely catastrophic or disastrous terms. Real world-ending stuff. And the biggest problem right now is that, while we know H2H transmission is going to evolve, we simply don’t know exactly what’s going to happen when this thing spreads into humans.

Calls for enhanced testing and increased surveillance going unheeded

Without swift intervention and active surveillance, the odds of H5N1 infecting more people, and thus more swiftly gaining those fearsome adaptations allowing its onward spread, well, those odds will start to rise dramatically, as multiple scientists have recently warned.

In a report published in early April 2024, European health authorities outlined various necessary measures, including enhancing surveillance and data sharing, careful planning of poultry and other animal farming, and preventive strategies such as the vaccination of poultry and at-risk people. In May of 2024, federal officials in Canada and the U.S. said they are planning to expand surveillance for avian flu amid the growing outbreak of H5N1 in dairy cattle, with monitoring efforts now set to include testing of milk being sold on store shelves.

But there’s real concern in both the U.S. and Canada that actual government efforts aren’t going far enough, or fast enough. Especially given the recent political distractions that basically put the entire world on hold. And now, we have a new incoming federal government in the U.S. that is distinctly unfriendly towards scientists of any stripe, and particularly wary of any new pandemic warnings. To put it simply, like with climate change, they just don’t want to hear about it.

But now more than ever, countries can’t afford to look the other way, given the inevitability of this virus eventually making its last few evolutionary leaps. 

In fact, one of those leaps may have just begun in British Columbia just a few days ago. November 14th, 2024, a Canadian adolescent ended up in critical condition in a hospital after becoming infected with a new genotype of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza.

New genotype… Some people never want to believe it is possible, until suddenly it’s happening right in front of them. This could be the harbinger that rings the alarm.

Scott Hensley, a viral immunologist and professor, recently posted on X as well as on Bluesky about the findings of the research team, saying that “The preliminary sequence from the H5N1 human case in British Columbia has been posted and it is not good news.” He goes on to explain that “this is bad news” because we know that these specific mutations increase binding to human receptors.

And that is where we are now, waiting for more news of this case, and others… Some new stories just hit the media at the time of this writing with regards to that Canadian case, and none of that news is good.

But it is happening again. Potentially, much worse this time around. We need to make sure that we are all taking this seriously, and preparing now while we still have a chance. Once this thing actually starts to break loose, and news of it hits the mainstream media, there will be various kinds of panics across the board, none of which you want to participate in.

Despite the monumental efforts to combat the current health crisis, recent findings and expert opinions suggest that the global community remains perilously unprepared for future pandemics. That means that you have to take personal responsibility. No one else will. Do your preps now. Get your supplies now, and make your plans. Get ready to carry them out. Because it may not happen this month, or even this year, but it is going to happen soon. And you need to be ready to respond at a moment’s notice when it does.