{"id":6846,"date":"2024-06-18T10:26:56","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T15:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=6846"},"modified":"2024-06-18T10:27:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T15:27:00","slug":"a-bird-flu-pandemic-in-people-heres-what-it-might-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/06\/18\/a-bird-flu-pandemic-in-people-heres-what-it-might-look-like\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bird-Flu Pandemic in People? Here\u2019s What It Might Look Like."},"content":{"rendered":"
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NYT<\/a> There is no guarantee that a person-to-person virus would be benign, scientists say, and vaccines and treatments at hand may not be sufficient. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle has so far spilled over to just three farmworkers in the United States, as far as public health authorities know. All of them have had mostly mild symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that does not guarantee that the virus, called H5N1, will remain benign if it begins to spread among people. Accumulating evidence from the animal world and data from other parts of the globe, in fact, suggest the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some dairy cows never recovered from H5N1, and died or were slaughtered<\/a> because of it. Infected terns seemed disoriented and unable to fly. Elephant seal pups had trouble breathing and developed tremors after catching the virus. Infected cats went blind<\/a>, walking in circles; two-thirds<\/a> of them died<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI definitely don\u2019t think there is room for complacency here,\u201d said Anice Lowen, a virologist at Emory University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cH5N1 is a highly pathogenic type of influenza virus, and we need to have a high degree of concern around it if it\u2019s spilling over into humans,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In ferrets experimentally inoculated with the virus through their eyes \u2014 the presumed route of infection in the U.S. farmworkers \u2014 the virus rapidly spread to their airways, lungs, stomach and brain, according to a report<\/a> published on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other studies have found similar patterns in mice fed contaminated milk<\/a>. The findings suggest that entry through the eyes or digestive system ultimately may not make the virus any less a threat.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYT There is no guarantee that a person-to-person virus would be benign, scientists say, and vaccines and treatments at hand may not be sufficient. The bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle has so far spilled over to just three farmworkers in the United States, as far as public health authorities know. All of them have […]<\/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-6846","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\/6846","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=6846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6847,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6846\/revisions\/6847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}