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.

In terms of me getting it? No. Not concerned about that. But I do have concern for the impact on wild bird populations and the impact on us as a result of further breakdown of ecosystem services. So bigger picture stuff really.

Not just bird populations.

~30,000 sea lions, ~17,000 elephant seals, plus dolphins, porpoises and otters have died of bird flu in the past couple of years as its spread from mammal to mammal. In Argentina, an outbreak killed 95% of the elephant seal pups one year.

Agree it's worrying in terms of the impact on the natural world. I obviously knew about the risk to birds but hadn't realised thousands of sea lions had died of it.

In terms of the impact on humans, I don't worry about pandemics particularly. They are a thing that happens, they'll happen again, and I think if we get a really bad one in the global internet age it's probably going to lead to collapse anyway. As others have said, it's like being hit by a meteorite, for all any of us can do about it.

Not worried no but I've been ill on and off since last September and really can't afford to be hit with something else!

Also, we now know that the population is OK with letting some die from infectious diseases, and is disinclined to take personal precautions

Humans have always accepted that some people will die from infectious diseases. There’s literally no other way round it. Humans cannot avoid all infectious diseases. And some will kill. People used to throw chicken pox parties. Some children (and adults) die from chicken pox. Flu has always killed the elderly and vulnerable. But we never used to wear masks around the elderly if we weren’t ill just in case. And you CAN have asymptomatic flu and other illnesses that can still be passed on.

Some very bad illnesses humans have tried to quarantine in the past. Then they created vaccines and other things to help. But the fact is, nature will find a way round it. Some people will die. Until viruses can actually be CURED, people will die sometimes.

I’m not worried about it per se but while out dog walking at the weekend I came across a dead swan on a bank of debris in the river. Called the RSPCA and Defra but no answer. Called the swan sanctuary and they said oh the council will probably just leave it for fox food.
No idea why the poor thing perished (may have been injured or ill) but don’t like the idea of a dead animal left to rot especially when we don’t know why it died.

I'm worried generally about the next pandemic, because the Covid experience has primed our population to react with belligerent and stubborn stupidity to any measures that are taken to control it.

Whether or not it will be that particular virus, I don't know enough to comment.

Yes to this post and also. it will be difficult to get good quality information out of the US in the future due to Trump’s political philosophies. There will be a lot of deliberate obstruction from those who don’t want to be inconvenienced.

Yes, it's not like we have a choice about 'letting'. Viruses gonna virus and they don't care about feelings.

I think more people now understand than did in 2020 that restrictions kill too, when they're serious enough, and that our choices may be more about who we want to prioritise than anything else.

Increasingly, yes. Article from very reputable publication below.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00245-6

It seems people don't understand despite having lived through vivid

Humans have always quarantined infectious people ( think Typhoid Mary ) and tried to avoid infections spreading ( think Eyam ) . Think scarlet fever in the 1950s when small children were locked away from parents for weeks. Look at the devastation caused by the 1920 flu pandemic that did rip through the world - not all the problems of the 1920 and 1930/ were a direct result of WW1 ( the flu pandemic itself was a result in a way because of the movement of soldiers )

The NHS is on its knees because they had too much disruption from covid - and without lockdowns that would be much worse

We live in a hugely interconnected system and societal collapse is so close these days

But hey your freedom - to kill others and drive inflation and all the other things you hate - is the only thing that matters

This may come back to haunt you

On the bright side the development of vaccines is so much better these days

I don't think people's freedoms are at risk with the measures being put in place to contain avian flu! It only affects livestock farmers and back garden flock owners in terms of restrictions and containment laws....

Thanks @Wallaw. That was interesting (and a bit scary).

I didn’t even know it was circulating so I’m not worried.
There isn’t really any point getting caught up in any hysteria about it, and I was a person who did get caught up in the hysteria of covid and was scared.
The way I see it now is people get run over every day, but we don’t all stand at the side of the road panicking about the cars driving past and expect to be hit. So really it’s the same for a virus, there isn’t any point in worrying, you can take precautions, but you can’t change the outcome.

Except that we do take precautions, as a society. We build traffic lights, and zebra crossings, and mid-road refuges, and safety railings so you can't cross just anywhere, and crash barriers, and escape lanes. We do all of that because without them a lot more of us would be getting killed by cars.

And we do the same in the health area. We have blood banks and more ICU space than we use on most days. We stockpile PPE and we have a strategic reserve of the smallpox vaccine. At an individual level, we wash our hands after we go to the toilet.

And these precautions do change the outcome. They prevent more people being sick/dying than would otherwise be the case.

This is not just a pedantic argument (I hope). We all make both individual and collective choices, and we can't run a society on the basis of "Well, if there's a bullet with your name on it". I remember when a much-liked colleague had a heart attack and other people in the office were saying "Oh well, not much you can do about that". We shouldn't confuse the fact that we can't predict exactly what will happen in any given case, because our bodies are opaque and viruses are too small to see coming, with the fact that we can all do something to reduce the risks to ourselves and others. People who wanted to let Covid rip because "you've got to die some day" (and I'm not suggesting that you are arguing this! 🙏) were basically saying that it's fine to have a picnic in the middle of the M25.

Yes, exactly this.

More worried about my own birds (although they are indoors so very low risk) will disinfectant my (outside) bird feeders more though to try to protect them

Quite right. I’m a bird person so always have a bit of tunnel vision (it’s the binoculars). I wish we could get some greater understanding of our dependency on functioning ecosystems. People often appear to think it’s one of those extra nice to haves, only a concern for the comfortable middle classes.