Pandemic Experts Are Worried About Bird Flu — Here’s Why

It’s hard to turn on the news or look online without seeing something related to bird flu. Also known as H5N1, the virus is spreading in a few states across the country and sickening animals and farm workers.

Additionally, bird flu bacteria was recently found in raw milk; last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered that both raw and unpasteurized milk must be tested for bird flu.

Given the circumstances, it’s only natural to worry about the virus, so we asked experts to share their thoughts. Below are the societal and health-based concerns they have about bird flu right now:

Experts told HuffPost the average person doesn’t need to panic at this point in time.

“Today, the greatest fear I have is for people that we know are being exposed to this virus directly ― so that’s the farm workers,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island.

Farm workers who are in close contact with poultry and cows are currently at risk and are largely becoming infected; 56 of the 58 reported bird flu cases in the U.S. this year can be traced back to cattle or poultry exposure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We already know that they’re getting infected, and we know that they’re getting sick, and fortunately, they haven’t gotten very sick,” Nuzzo said. “They haven’t gotten severely ill, they haven’t died, but we literally don’t know why that’s happening.”

A Canadian teenager with no underlying health conditions was also infected with bird flu and ended up in the hospital.

“That just shows you how much of a gamble the whole thing is, because you literally can’t predict it. Are you going to be like the farm worker who gets a frankly hideous case of conjunctivitis and some respiratory symptoms, or are you going to be like the teenager in British Columbia? You don’t know,” Nuzzo said.

“I want to be clear. I’m not talking about the general public. I am talking about people that we know are being exposed to this virus,” she added. “This virus is not yet capable of spreading between people, and although we’re also seeing increasing cases occurring with an unknown exposure — meaning we don’t know where they got it from ― that also is concerning to me, but those events are still quite rare.”

“The concern is that H5N1 is an avian influenza. Influenza viruses are notorious for changing. They can shift over time, they can reassort with each other and make much bigger shifts quite quickly,” said Meghan Davis, an associate professor in the department of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.

“The reason this is important is that if you would have a person who is infected with both H5N1 and a seasonal flu, you now could have one of those bigger reassortment events,” Davis continued. “So, some swapping of the genes … you might be able to give the H5N1 virus genes that make it more virulent in people or that make it possible to transmit more easily from person to person, and that’s definitely something we want to prevent.”

“For me, as an animal health specialist, I’m very worried about the amount of disease we’re seeing in animals, which is extraordinary,” Davis said. “We’re talking about millions of birds lost. We’ve got many dairy cows affected — I think we’re now up to over 700 herds in the country that have been impacted by it. It’s also a virus that can be lethal in some species, not just the marine mammals we heard about in prior years, but also cats.”

This goes for cats on farms that drink raw milk in addition to domestic cats, where the contamination source is unclear, she said. Cats could have had contact with a dead bird that’s infected with the virus, raw milk, or other infected animals, with Davis noting that “we’ve been finding that the virus can infect mice, and so that’s a huge concern as well.”

“I’m really trying to get it out there about the cats, because I think that it’s just so possible for an infection to occur,” she said. “And I worry … because if you have a pet infected in a home, that’s a very different kind of exposure than even drinking the raw milk or having occupational contact as a worker on a farm.”

These infections could happen in folks who avoid potential contamination sources like raw milk and farms because they’re immunosuppressed or pregnant, Davis explained.

“We just don’t know what we might see in terms of the kind of infection that could come out of that kind of exposure,” she said.

Davis also noted that the same concerns extend to other household pets like dogs, who could also come in contact with birds, mice or other infection sources.

In recent months, raw milk has grown in popularity as people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow promote drinking it. However, raw milk is known to carry harmful bacteria and does not have proven health benefits when compared to pasteurized milk. Moreover, raw milk is directly tied to bird flu.

“If you’re someone who is drinking raw milk … here’s what I’m worried about: The virus is spreading to more and more dairy farms. We know that when cows are infected, the amount of virus that’s in their milk is very high. We also know from animal studies that consuming H5N1-infected milk can make these animals that consume it very sick, including hideous neurologic symptoms,” Nuzzo said. “So when I connect those dots, that tells me I don’t think I would drink raw milk.”

However, you don’t need to be concerned if you drink pasteurized milk.

“Commercial pasteurization, which brings milk to a certain temperature for a certain duration of time, sometimes under pressure, is effective at inactivating the virus,” Davis said.

She also noted the importance of the USDA ordering raw and unpasteurized to be tested for bird flu, explaining that testing will help officials determine infected farms.

“I think it is really important for people to understand that the conditions that give rise to pandemics are only getting more pronounced,” Nuzzo said. “There are going to be more pandemics in the future. We should try to prevent them … sounding the alarms right now with H5N1 is an attempt to just do that.”

She also explained how climate and environmental change plays a major role in the spread of new pathogens.

“The new pathogens that have the ability to infect people and then spread between people, they have to be things that we don’t have immunity to, and the majority of those come from wildlife,” Nuzzo said. “So, anything that shakes up our interaction with wildlife is what potentially creates risk.”

This includes things like deforestation, reforestation and land use changes, she said, in addition to “wild animals having more contact with humans, either directly or through domesticated animals, like cows and pigs.”

“Ultimately, it’s about creating more opportunities for people to become exposed to wildlife pathogens [and] allowing those wildlife pathogens to become adapted for infecting and spreading between humans,” Nuzzo said.

Plenty of people are talking about bird flu right now for good reason.

“We’re trying to get government to do more to get ahead of this virus so that it doesn’t become a problem for general members of the public. Nobody wants to go through another pandemic, nobody wants a farm worker to lose his or her life just for putting milk in our fridges,” Nuzzo said. “So, we are kind of sounding the alarm for the purposes of policy and practice changes that could make everyone safer.”

Nuzzo noted that, because of how horrible COVID-19 was, people have a hard time grasping the idea that more pandemics will happen, hoping that they never have to go through something like that again. And it doesn’t help that society is often quick to say disease emergencies are over — a problem that Nuzzo argued stops us from planning more effectively against pandemics.

“And I think that is getting in the way of our doing the kinds of things that would just make us more ready for these events. … It may come, it may not. But if we’re generally ready for it, then we don’t have to sit there and work ourselves up about it,” she said.

Shutting down everything, as was the case with the COVID pandemic, is not how society should have to respond to a pandemic, with Nuzzo saying, “That is not what responding to a pandemic is supposed to be.”

Instead, she explained that, to curtail a potential bird flu pandemic — or any pandemic, for that matter — the government should focus on preventing the virus from infecting more farm workers and killing people, getting ahead of it so it can’t mutate and become more contagious, developing medications, and improving indoor air quality.

“So that when these things happen, they don’t just wash over us and upend our lives,” Nuzzo said.