4 ms·

H5N1 was a thing about 20 years ago. Why is today any different?

• oldpersonintx 2y ago
  [dead]
• pm215 2y ago
  The article's answer to this seems to be: 1) over the last 20 years H5N1 has spread from birds to minks and cows and in the last few months also to pigs 2) pigs in particular are hosts to both human and bird viruses, so they're a likely place for an H5N1 virus to do the reassortment with a human flu virus that might make it become human to human transmissible 3) but nonetheless, today is still not that much different -- the risk now is only a little elevated from the baseline ~5% risk of some pandemic flu breaking out that we might get in any year
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • floatrock 2y ago
    Don't forget the consolidation of big ag / factory farming conditions ever since the Butz/Nixon "get big or get out" era. Turns out cramming a lot of animals into ever tiner spaces creates more opportunities for pathogenic recombination and evolution.