Your Local Epidemiologist
H5N1—also known as bird flu—continues to spread among animals and, for the first time, is spreading among cows. Thankfully, the risk to the public is low, but the more the virus spreads, the more chances it has to mutate and jump species to spread among humans. Given H5N1’s high mortality rate, we don’t want this to happen.
This outbreak is concerning; unfortunately, communication and data transparency have been profoundly lacking. We must do better and faster — repeating the same communication mistakes that fueled confusion, distrust, and misinformation during Covid-19 is inexcusable.
H5N1 been detected among 33 dairy cattle herds in 8 states. The virus is spreading through multiple known pathways: wild bird → cow; cow → cow; cow → poultry, and once from cow → human. Thankfully, there is currently no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
How big is the “true” outbreak? We don’t know. Symptomatic testing of animals and humans is voluntary, and asymptomatic testing is not happening (likely due to industry pressure), which means we are flying blind. It’s been reported that more workers have symptoms — such as fever, cough, and lethargy — but are unwilling to test. We could have more human cases. Among the tests conducted, it’s unclear how many have been done, how many were positive, and how many humans have been exposed.
