{"id":8831,"date":"2025-02-26T13:39:39","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T19:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=8831"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:39:43","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T19:39:43","slug":"us-dodged-a-bird-flu-pandemic-in-1957-thanks-to-eggs-and-dumb-luck-with-a-new-strain-spreading-fast-will-americans-get-lucky-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/02\/26\/us-dodged-a-bird-flu-pandemic-in-1957-thanks-to-eggs-and-dumb-luck-with-a-new-strain-spreading-fast-will-americans-get-lucky-again\/","title":{"rendered":"US dodged a bird flu pandemic in 1957 thanks to eggs and dumb luck \u2013 with a new strain spreading fast, will Americans get lucky again?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lakeconews.com\/news\/80910-us-dodged-a-bird-flu-pandemic-in-1957-thanks-to-eggs-and-dumb-luck-with-a-new-strain-spreading-fast-will-americans-get-lucky-again?fbclid=IwY2xjawIsTO9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQtbBnzIqzy9HEWch_JZ9HaDhWLH-tfS1-844GLqF_9EyYpRxqbvlX-LaQ_aem_HB3a4Qp9y2fAqU_Y8F_oJg\">Lake County. News<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In recent months, Americans looking for eggs have&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2025\/01\/14\/business\/egg-shortage-bird-flu\/index.html\">faced empty shelves<\/a>&nbsp;in their grocery stores. The escalating threat of avian flu has forced farmers to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/egg-prices-bird-flu-poultry-inflation-9ea9934e20e3fe393abb1bb85aa31c30\">kill millions of chickens<\/a>&nbsp;to prevent its spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nearly 70 years ago,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/B978-0-12-804571-8.00003-2\">Maurice Hilleman<\/a>, an expert in influenza, also worried about finding eggs. Hilleman, however, needed eggs not for his breakfast, but to make the vaccines that were key to stopping a potential influenza pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hilleman was born a year after the notorious 1918 influenza pandemic swept the world, killing&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.epidem.2025.100813\">20 million to 100 million people<\/a>. By 1957, when Hilleman began worrying about the egg supply, scientists had a significantly more sophisticated understanding of influenza than they had previously. This knowledge led them to fear that a pandemic similar to that of 1918 could easily erupt, killing millions again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/americanhistory.si.edu\/about\/staff\/alexandra-lord\">historian of medicine<\/a>, I have always been fascinated by the key moments that halt an epidemic. Studying these moments provides some insight into how and why one outbreak may become a deadly pandemic, while another does not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lakeconews.com\/news\/80910-us-dodged-a-bird-flu-pandemic-in-1957-thanks-to-eggs-and-dumb-luck-with-a-new-strain-spreading-fast-will-americans-get-lucky-again?fbclid=IwY2xjawIsTO9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQtbBnzIqzy9HEWch_JZ9HaDhWLH-tfS1-844GLqF_9EyYpRxqbvlX-LaQ_aem_HB3a4Qp9y2fAqU_Y8F_oJg\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lake County. News In recent months, Americans looking for eggs have&nbsp;faced empty shelves&nbsp;in their grocery stores. The escalating threat of avian flu has forced farmers to&nbsp;kill millions of chickens&nbsp;to prevent its spread. Nearly 70 years ago,&nbsp;Maurice Hilleman, an expert in influenza, also worried about finding eggs. Hilleman, however, needed eggs not for his breakfast, but [&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":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avian-influenza"],"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\/8831","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=8831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8832,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8831\/revisions\/8832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}