Bird Flu Uncovered: The Silent Threat Lurking in Our Backyards and How You Can Outsmart It Today
Leading public health authorities, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the World Health Organization, feared that this bird flu virus was but mutations away from spreading efficiently though the human population, triggering the next pandemic. “The lethal capacity of this virus is very, very high; so it’s a deadly virus that humans have not been exposed to before. That’s a very bad combination,” said Irwin Redlener, former director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Scientists speculate worst-case scenarios in which H5N1 could end up killing a billion or more people around the world. “The only thing I can think of that could take a larger human death toll would be thermonuclear war,” said Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Laurie Garrett. H5N1 has the potential to become a virus as ferocious as Ebola and as contagious as the common cold.
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