Rising bird flu in US cattle could be ‘dangerous’ step toward human outbreak

Michigan is leading the way for measures to curb the spread of bird flu, including daily texts and phone calls to farm workers to monitor contagion and offering free tests for symptomatic patients, The Guardian reported. But not all farmers are embracing these tracking efforts, Reuters wrote, as they are “rekindling unwanted memories of COVID-19” and raising concerns of rising costs and lower incomes. “Nobody knows if these things that we’re being told to do are going to stop it,” a local dairy farmer told the outlet. “Just like 2020, people didn’t like to be told what to do.”

Avian flu has grown into an “unprecedented” pandemic among animals, BBC Future wrote, and is “decimating wildlife” globally. Before the recent spread to cows, the disease killed half a billion farmed birds, millions of wild birds, as well as over 20 species of mammals, including bears and seals. Notably, the flu originated as a non-fatal disease that first occurred in wild animals. Its highly pathogenic and fatal strains began developing in poultry farms before spreading to wild birds and other species. People, and their ever-growing need for farmed meat, “are the real problem,” a pathologist told the BBC.

Public health experts have warned that bird flu could be a new pandemic “unfolding in slow motion,” Reuters reported. While few humans have contracted it, more than 50% who did have died, according to the BBC. Just how close we are to a potential human outbreak remains unclear, the Association of American Medical Colleges wrote; the flu isn’t passed on to people easily, but frequent human-cow contact could increase the risk, and the newly-developed strain could be more infectious than prior ones. Governments are already taking pre-pandemic measures: The European Commission bought more than a half a million doses of the avian flu vaccine.