Bird Flu Uncovered: The Silent Threat Lurking in Our Backyards and How You Can Outsmart It Today
How Dangerous Is H5N1 Bird Flu?
H5N1 developed a level of human lethality not thought possible for influenza. So far, about half of those known to have come down with this flu have died. H5N1 is good at killing, but not at spreading. To trigger a pandemic, the virus has to learn how to spread efficiently from person to person. Now that the genome of the 1918 virus has been completely sequenced, we understand that it may have taken only a few dozen mutations to turn a bird flu virus into humanity’s greatest killer, and we have seen some of those changes taking form in H5N1. The further H5N1 spreads and the more people it infects, the greater the likelihood that it might lock in mutations that could allow for efficient human-to-human transmission. “And that’s what keeps us up at night,” said the chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s task force on pandemic influenza.
Post Comment