Bird flu? Are you worried about it

[Peachcis]

H5N1 or bird flu - it seems to be increasing.

Are you worried about it? It seems to be very severe.

Me personally - I am petrified for a few reasons.

I was unwell when I had covid and needed an antiviral to keep me out of hospital.

Then the worst is seeing and watching people and how they behave and manners or the lack of manners. When we emerged from covid I thought we were still in a delicate place with covid and I saw people with obvious sickness with no manners, coughing and sneezing into the open and into other people's faces even and even poor hand hygiene too.

Then there is covid and the damage it can do to immune systems and how can the two of them co-exist together? Covid can still be serious. I know many people like to say it's a mild cold but for me and my family, it was more like a flue for about two weeks and feeling week, tired and vulnerable for another few more weeks. I had after effects too and I was sore in my chest and gut issues.likely due to inflammation.

Bird flu seems to be worse now and I have no faith in people and many people will get sick and just pass it on.

No.

It has happened every winter for years.

I am concerned, to be honest. I believe a human H5N1 pandemic is only a matter of time (and I have done since my Biology lectures in 2004). It could be tomorrow; it could still be decades away. But with it now circulating widely in US cattle and not being closely monitored/controlled, it’s becoming more likely all the time. We are heading into peak human flu season, creating fertile ground for potential virus reassortment that could trigger a pandemic. We have no way of knowing how severe a new human-transmissible virus would be, so we can hope that it turns out to be mild. We are also pretty good at producing flu vaccines quickly now, unlike in 1918. However, the Covid pandemic has led to deep distrust and scepticism around science and vaccinations, which is of great concern if a new, severe pandemic does arise. Covid has left us well practiced and prepared in terms of working from home etc, but a lack of compliance with measures to reduce the spread could be problematic next time around I think.

Yes- but because I have hens and it's horrible having to keep them shut in under a housing order. They're older girls and I wish they could spend their twilight years scratching around freely and bathing in the dust.

Nope

What are you talking about Ebola for?

Less worried about flu, even a potentially nasty strain, than I am about covid (which attacks many more of the body's systems and affects the immune system so you go down with everything else as well)

We had SARS, then MERS (both geographically contained) then SARS-2 (which really wasn't)

So I sometimes wonder if next to come trotting along will be MERS-2

They might not be experts if they've not mentioned airborne transmission.

Only for my chickens, but not that much.

Yay! The media has successfully explained away any scientifically backed concern as anxiety. Go them.

Great. Sounds like you've given it lots of thought.

Had flu vaccines yearly (paid for elected because it seemed better than getting flu I know they aren't guaranteed) and H1N variations have been in a few. So hopefully my immune system has some knowledge to kick into action.

Teens and H all vaccinated each year.

Not much else we can do to ease any concerns

I work in a related area and so have a personal interest in it. I think it's worrying in an abstract way, but that doesn't mean I am personally worried about it, no. Perhaps if things change I will be, but currently there is no point in worrying unless you happen to be in regular contact with infected animals, for example a dairy farmer in the US. But even then there are things that can be done to reduce risks.

More resigned to it than worried. Sadly, it feels like things will have to get worse before people will realise that we need to clean the air and stay home when sick. Never mind use a respirator. As it stands, people are accepting immune damage, whilst blaming anything but covid. Can an immune damaged population and an evolving H5N1 - and all the other resurging viruses - end well?

I think it's spread from dairy cows to humans in America now.

The fatality rate does look concerning but I assume there will be a fair few cases that are mild enough to not actually even get picked up because you aren't going to test every milder virus someone in contact with birds gets to check what it is (I assume).

Not worried in the slightest.

It is almost certain there will be another influenza pandemic in the next 10 years. The most likely is it will result in a few million premature deaths. There is an outside chance it could be a Spanish flu or worse and result in one in fifty people dying, with young and healthy most vulnerable - that could be catastrophic.

Fortunately, we are getting better and better at surveillance, vaccines and anti-viral therapeutics so I worry a bit but not too much. For sure we will have another big flu pandemic this year, next year or after but I think it won't be too lethal to humans or disrupting to the world economy.

The media and their explanation of anxiety is nothing to do with OP being more concerned about COVID than the vast majority of people.

A combination of herd immunity, vaccines and the mutation of the virus means that it is much less dangerous than it once was.

OP describes herself as ‘petrified’ of bird flu. Does that sound anxious to you?

I am not worried, I am interested with a mild concern but not actively worried. There has been and remains a lot of work going into vaccines and treatments.

For anyone else interested, the podcast This Week in Virology is very good for fact based information - especially the weekly update with Dr. Daniel Griffin

Now I no longer have chickens, no. It's a PITA when you live in an exclusion zone.

Worried as in anxious about it on a daily basis - no.
Worried as in certain that there will be another pandemic, and probably with a much higher mortality rate - yes. But that’s too frightening so I try to ignore it. It does mean I’m not very meticulous about recycling and carbon emissions though.

I don't spend time worrying about stuff that is not important yet. I realise another pandemic could happen but I will worry about it when it happens.

I do get the whole family the flu shot as we have been down with this over December and it ruined our whole season.

The price of eggs in America seems to be ridiculous because of it.

I don't know if it's because I'm a bit anxious at the moment, but some of the reporting around bird flu is giving me flashbacks to early COVID, as in 'be worried about this, but not TOO worried. Yet.

Can anyone more scientifically minded reassure me this is not likely to turn into another large scale pandemic?

It doesn't really from human to human, for a start.

And there have only been a handful of people who have had it.

I don't want my little flock to get sick, but I'm not worried for my own sake, and I am up close and personal with chickens every day.

Can anyone more scientifically minded reassure me this is not likely to turn into another large scale pandemic?

No, of course they can’t - in the sense of could we face a major wave of a type of flu to which the human population has no pre-existing immunity (or perhaps only slight patchy immunity in older people who have had many types of flu and all their flu jabs and can partially recognise it from those)

But it won’t be like a pandemic if a novel disease because it’s so much faster to make a flu jab. Also, we now know that the population is OK with letting some die from infectious diseases, and is disinclined to take personal precautions. So I think everyone is far less worried, including being relaxed about jamming up NHS with infectious diseases (more covid cases are acquired in hospitals than arrive with it, prolonging stay and presenting a hazard to other patients, but there’s no appetite at all to deal with that)