{"id":6541,"date":"2024-05-07T19:18:15","date_gmt":"2024-05-08T00:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=6541"},"modified":"2024-05-07T19:18:19","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T00:18:19","slug":"whos-top-scientist-learned-a-hard-lesson-about-h5n1-two-decades-ago-stopping-it-takes-more-than-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/05\/07\/whos-top-scientist-learned-a-hard-lesson-about-h5n1-two-decades-ago-stopping-it-takes-more-than-biology\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO\u2019s top scientist learned a hard lesson about H5N1 two decades ago: Stopping it takes more than biology"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2024\/05\/07\/bird-flu-spread-who-chief-scientist-farrar-on-stopping-h5n1\/\">STAT<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jeremy Farrar, now the World Health Organization\u2019s chief scientist, was working in Vietnam 20 years ago when the H5N1 virus started to spread across Asia \u2014 at that point in poultry. He recalls there was a reluctance among farmers to cull their chickens because they weren\u2019t being compensated for them. Movement of infected birds to evade culling only served to disseminate the virus, which in the years since has spread to all continents except Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s important to keep that experience in mind, he told STAT Monday, as the H5N1 bird flu virus now spreads among dairy cattle in the U.S. Farrar stressed that the social context is key in responding to disease threats like H5N1, noting that a similar reluctance among dairy farmers to report outbreaks or allow testing of their workers is adding to the challenges in assessing how much transmission is occurring and the risk it poses to people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t just take the virus and the biological surveillance and divorce it from the environment and the social construct that it\u2019s happening in,\u201d Farrar said in an interview from WHO headquarters in Geneva. \u201cThat\u2019s the reality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2024\/05\/07\/bird-flu-spread-who-chief-scientist-farrar-on-stopping-h5n1\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STAT Jeremy Farrar, now the World Health Organization\u2019s chief scientist, was working in Vietnam 20 years ago when the H5N1 virus started to spread across Asia \u2014 at that point in poultry. He recalls there was a reluctance among farmers to cull their chickens because they weren\u2019t being compensated for them. Movement of infected birds [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-headlines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6542,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6541\/revisions\/6542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}