Bird Flu Uncovered: The Silent Threat Lurking in Our Backyards and How You Can Outsmart It Today
So there were three influenza pandemics in the twentieth century—in 1918, 1957, and 1968—but, as the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases has said, “There are pandemics and then there are pandemics.” The half-and-half bird/human hybrid viruses of 1957 and 1968 evidently contained enough previously recognizable human structure that the human population’s prior partial exposure dampened the pandemic’s potential to do harm. In contrast, the pandemic strain of 1918 was wholly avian-like. Instead of diluting its alien avian nature, the 1918 bird flu virus “likely jumped straight to humans and began killing them,” noted Taubenberger, the man who helped resurrect it. The same could be happening with the new spate of avian influenza viruses sporadically infecting people in more recent years, like H5N1. The human immune system had never been known to be exposed to an H5 virus before. As the WHO points out, “Population vulnerability to an H5N1-like pandemic virus would be universal.”
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