“Should we be panicked about bird flu? William Hanage says not yet.”

By Alvin Powell

““A key thing that we’ve not seen in the case of H5N1 and cattle are superspreading events.””
“We will certainly see another flu pandemic. That’s not an “if”; it’s a “when.” We cannot say how severe it will be, but we can say that it has the potential to be bad. We don’t talk enough about how we would detect it early and what we would do when it happens.”
“Are we doing enough with bird flu right now?
No. I would like to see more thorough investigation of the potential for transmission. I would like to see more careful surveillance of the adapting virus. I would like to understand more about the nature of the infections in the people we’ve identified them in.”
to read the full article go to
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/01/should-we-be-panicked-about-bird-flu-william-bill-hanage/

No, we’re not ‘one mutation away’ from an H5N1 bird flu pandemic. Here are the facts
by Ignacio López-Goñi and Elisa Pérez Ramíre

“Public health efforts should continue to focus on protecting workers exposed to infected animals with preventative measures, such as vaccination, to minimize risk. It is essential to investigate each human case to swiftly detect any changes that may suggest increased virulence or human-to-human transmissibility.
In addition, research into new therapeutic strategies and the development of universal vaccines (i.e. those effective against all influenza subtypes) remain a priority. We are not one mutation from a pandemic, but the H5N1 virus is certainly not getting any further away.”

to read the full article go to
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-01-mutation-h5n1-bird-flu-pandemic.html

“How the US is preparing for a potential bird flu pandemic”
By Jessica Hamzelou
“The good news is that there are already systems in place for tracking the general spread of flu in people. The World Health Organization’s Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System collects and analyzes samples of viruses collected from countries around the world. It allows the organization to make recommendations about seasonal flu vaccines and also helps scientists track the spread of various flu variants. That’s something we didn’t have for the covid-19 virus when it first took off.
We are also better placed to make vaccines. Some countries, including the US, are already stockpiling vaccines that should be at least somewhat effective against H5N1 (although it is difficult to predict exactly how effective they will be against some future variant). The US Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response plans to have “up to 10 million doses of prefilled syringes and multidose vials” prepared by the end of March, according to an email from a representative.
If we want our vaccine production process to be more robust and faster, we’ll have to stop relying on chicken eggs.”
to read the full article go to
https://www.preventionweb.net/news/how-us-preparing-potential-bird-flu-pandemic

H5N1: How worried should we be?
By Nora Samaranayake
https://www.usf.edu/health/news/2025/h5n1-update.aspx